G-Cloud will boost public sector services

Guy Hodges, public sector sales director at integrator SCC says the benefits should not be ignored

In an era of austerity and budget cuts, it is small wonder that G-Cloud, and its potential to deliver a range of benefits across government agencies, has remained one of the public sector's biggest talking points of the last year.

The issue has gained greater clarity in recent weeks however, with senior delegates at last week's G-Cloud in Practice conference being told that thanks to emerging technology, the public sector faces a very real opportunity to make significant cost savings, improve front line public services and help reinvigorate the UK economy.

The primary message to come out of the event was that there is broad consensus that traditional, siloed approaches to public ICT have proved over complex, expensive and ultimately unsuccessful. That's paired with a growing appreciation that G-Cloud presents the opportunity to share costs and engage services on a Pay-as-you-Go basis, offering not only a significant opportunity to save substantial sums of money, but also to enable a renewed focus on improving the delivery of front line services.

That's a key point: G-Cloud is not about cutting costs by reducing headcounts. It's about slashing the time and resource invested in maintaining ICT infrastructures in order to enable existing teams to focus on core operational issues rather than technical housekeeping. It's crucial to remember that cost cutting is not the only factor at play.

One of the primary drivers behind the push for cloud adoption is that ultimately, its main focus is on accessing some of the most critical skills in British industry to become better at delivering key services.

Cloud has enormous potential to have a positive impact upon the bigger picture. Ultimately we are creating an ecosystem where rather than engaging solely with monolithic international players, the public sector now has the opportunity to not only exploit the benefits of working with a dynamic, innovative range of SMBs, but also to spend within the national economy, promoting our native technology sector and ultimately strengthening the country's financial position.