The Government has asked for outside help to cut its spending.

A request for proposal said there was a “data deficit” and expert assistance was needed to analyse the $200 million to $300 million spent on goods and service every year to identify where cost reductions could be made.

The RFP said: “Visibility of that expenditure data is instrumental to the senior management and the procurement team’s efforts to enable cost savings, to reduce cost, be more efficient and more actively manage indirect spend across government.

“While the Government’s existing financial management systems are adequate for financial management and budgeting purposes, the data derived from these systems may be incomplete and/or inappropriately classified for use in automated spend analysis processes.”

The 33-page document added that a cost-savings target had not been set.

But it said: “The visibility of the expenditure data will help decision-makers determine those numbers in the future.”

The document added: “The Government is looking for a sophisticated, scalable and public sector-specific methodology to address the data deficit by rapidly transforming its spend, supplier and contract data into actionable business intelligence.

“Clean-spend data is required if the Government’s senior management and procurement team are to understand where efforts should be focused to effectively change its spending decisions.”

The request said that the successful bidder would “provide data enrichment and classification spend analysis services to make the Government’s expenditure data more useful for analytical purposes, and to provide an easy-to-use toolset for analysing the data after transformation”.

Services asked for included an analysis of one fiscal year of government spending information, delivery of cleaned and classified information and training in the use of a “web-based managed service analytical toolset”.

Wayne Furbert, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, did not respond to a request for comment.