It was the media that was sceptical about G-Cloud, not the government, says former GDS boss

Tony Singleton tells CRN that the government was always committed to working with SMEs, despite frameworks like G-Cloud being criticised

Government organisations have been open to G-Cloud since the beginning, according to former G-Cloud director Tony Singleton, who says that criticism around their effectiveness was born in the media.

Singleton brought a 35-year civil service career to a close earlier this year, before joining public sector procurement advisor Advice Cloud this month.

The government's approach to procurement frameworks has often come in for criticism from suppliers for a number of reasons - including not giving SMEs a fair crack at its procurement opportunities - but, speaking to CRN, Singleton said the government's reluctance to work through the frameworks is a myth.

"The scepticism was more around the media saying ‘is G-Cloud just a gimmick to try and help SMEs?'" he said.

"With the parts of government that I was working with on the digital side it was very much about supporting SMEs and the SME agenda.

"When I first set up GDS a lot of it was around how we work with the smaller suppliers. Also CCS (Crown Commercial Service) took it very seriously, so all the people I came across knew what we were going to do and what the benefits were."

Singleton explained that a key focus of the G-Cloud framework was to remove unnecessary barriers from tenders and contracts, making it easier for suppliers with less resources to complete the lengthy application processes.

A concern for the future, he said, is the process of obtaining a place on the frameworks once again becoming too complex.

"One of the things I want to do with Advice Cloud is work with the public sector to avoid that approach, but also work with SMEs to try and understand the clauses on the large frameworks if they get added back in."

A full write-up of the interview will appear on Channelweb soon.