Supplier mutiny over government framework duo

Digital Services and G-Cloud blasted by angry IT firms

The government has come under fire from angry IT suppliers which have teamed up to speak out against the "failed, flawed" Digital Services Framework (DSF) and "disappointing" G-Cloud.

The government frameworks were set up in 2013 and 2012 respectively and sit under its Digital Marketplace umbrella. They were each designed to comply with the government's "digital by default" ambitions and its aims to get more SMBs supplying the public sector with digital and cloud services.

But a trio of tech suppliers have joined forces to voice their concerns about DSF, branding their involvement in the scheme "pointless" because of the way it is structured.

Suppliers Helpful Tech, Clearleft and DXW - which provide the government with web-design services through DSF - each issued blogs about the framework with a view to encouraging the government to make positive changes.

DXW's managing director Harry Metcalfe said his main problem with DSF is the way it tenders for projects according to an individual's capabilities instead of a company's entire offering.

"If [an organisation] wanted some designers, some developers and a delivery manager [for one project], they would put that contract out but all those roles are on different lots on the framework," he told CRN. "This means you have to respond to these individually and there is no guarantee you would win all or any of them.

"In which case, from my perspective of running a business, all my developers will run off to deliver a project and the designers and delivery managers have nothing to do because they can't work. This in practice is very, very difficult for companies to accommodate so many companies have not bid for work through DSF."

He said companies with large freelance networks - often big enterprises - are more able to adjust to this approach, meaning the government's SMB agenda is undermined.

"There is no way SMBs can work this way," he said. "We either need to have everyone involved in a project or have several going at once in order to keep everyone busy, so a situation where half the team gets taken out to deliver a project on-site is completely impractical."

Fellow DSF supplier ClearLeft's founder Andy Budd agreed with Metcalfe.

"This sort of piecemeal selection of roles strips the value of teams' experience, techniques, and processes away, just leaving the bare individuals to try to make the best of projects they've had no part in setting up or defining. The framework as it's currently set up is essentially a body-shopping process."

Metcalfe called on the government to make changes to DSF so it is closer to the approach used by G-Cloud, which tenders for complete offerings from a company instead.

In a statement, the Cabinet Office said:"The Digital Services Framework is levelling the playing field for government contracts and supporting growth by giving opportunities to smaller suppliers - with SMBs making up 84 per cent of those on the framework.

"We know more needs to be done to ensure that the needs of those who are building digital public services are met. We will further reduce the barriers for suppliers to provide highly capable individuals and teams to work with them. We welcome feedback, and we're constantly iterating and improving the service to ensure we offer suppliers the best experience possible."

G-Cloud

Despite being hailed as the example to follow by angry DSF suppliers, the G-Cloud framework is far from perfect, according to Memset, one of its SMB suppliers.

Last week, G-Cloud hailed a boost in supplier numbers in the latest iteration of the framework. Memset acknowledged that the rise proves the scheme is making progress, but said its true intentions are yet to be realised.

According to G-Cloud sales data, 78 per cent of G-Cloud's total £31.7m sales go through lot 4 - specialist cloud services - which Memset claims has a heavy focus on consultancy services. The remaining lots - software-, platform-, and infrastructure-as-a-service - collectively account for the remaining 22 per cent of sales.

Memset described the latter three lots as "true" cloud services and said it was disappointing that more sales do not go through the lots.

"Doing lots more consultancy through specialist cloud services just gets them back into the old trap," said Memset's managing director Kate Craig-Wood (pictured). "What they should be doing is true cloud services, which are reusable, scalable and pay-as-you-use. The experience we have had is that the government is just not ready to make that transition yet and that is a real problem.

"G-Cloud is great and it was always going to be a slow burner, but it is frustrating to come across clients who want to buy through G-Cloud but really what they want is the same old monolithic contract where they get everything together in one bunch.

"It has been a perennial issue with cloud adoption in government: there is a motivation among suppliers to not actually sell cloud because the most money is in selling people - selling consultancy and bespoke stuff - and that is what the industry is geared up to do. That's how they have historically made their money. A lot of companies have armies of consultants and the cloud puts them out of business."