Public sector enjoying half-price IT thanks to G-Cloud

G-Cloud bods promise to raise its profile among buyers

The government has claimed G-Cloud has enabled departments to slash their IT bills in half as it promises to raise the framework's profile even further in the coming months.

Writing in an April update on its new blog, the government's digital commercial programme director Tony Singleton said the initiative is doing well, but more can be done to ensure government buyers are aware of what G-Cloud can do for them.

G-Cloud is set to release a full progress report soon, but Singleton unveiled some key figures in his update. He claimed that on average, the government saw savings of about 50 per cent – with some examples of savings much higher than this.

"Other benefits buyers have spoken about include greater transparency; flexibility; a simpler, clearer, faster way to buy; and ultimately better value for the taxpayer," he added. "Once the requirement has been defined, we have put a contract in place in three minutes...

"G-Cloud is about more than sales; it is about transforming the way the public sector buys cloud-based services, and it is one of the frameworks supporting a wider business IT transformation."

But Singleton admitted that more needed to be done.

G-Cloud came under fire last year after research found the majority of cloud buyers did not even know what the framework was, and it since promised to pull up its socks as a result.

Singleton conceded that not all civil servants are aware of potential cloud benefits and pointed to a recent survey by education IT firm Eduserv, which showed that a minority of those in the public sector understood the technology.

He said raising awareness of G-Cloud and its benefits was top of his to-do list, and promised to personally update the monthly blog as part of his campaign.

"It is essential that we get the message across to service owners and those developing policy, senior civil servants and the equivalent in the wider public sector," he said. "We will involve as many leaders involved in IT procurement across the wider public sector as possible.

"We will capitalise on the great work and success stories from those who have already successfully adopted cloud-based strategies and harness the goodwill of early adopters to build supplier and buyer community ‘champions'."