{"id":15025,"date":"2015-06-04T14:27:50","date_gmt":"2015-06-04T14:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.businesscloudnews.com\/?p=227081"},"modified":"2015-06-04T14:27:50","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T14:27:50","slug":"g-cloud-much-has-been-achieved-but-the-programme-still-needs-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/g-cloud-much-has-been-achieved-but-the-programme-still-needs-work\/","title":{"rendered":"G-Cloud: Much has been achieved, but the programme still needs work"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

The UK government is ahead of the curve in cloud, but work still needs doing<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Thanks to G-Cloud, the once stagnant public sector IT marketplace that was dominated by a small number of large incumbent providers, is thriving.\u202fMore and more SMEs are listing their assured cloud services on the framework, which is driving further competition and forcing down costs for public sector organisations, ultimately benefitting each and every UK tax payer.\u202f\u00a0But the programme still needs work.<\/p>\n

G-Cloud\u00a0initially\u00a0aimed\u00a0to achieve annual savings of more than \u00a3120m and to account for at least half of all new central Government spend by\u00a0this year.\u202fThe\u00a0Government Digital Service has already estimated that G-Cloud is yielding efficiencies of at least 50\u00a0per cent, comfortably exceeding the initial target set when the Government\u2019s Cloud Strategy was published in 2011.<\/p>\n

According to the\u00a0latest figures<\/a>, the total reported G-Cloud\u00a0sales to date have\u00a0now\u00a0exceeded \u00a3591m, with 49\u00a0per cent\u00a0of total sales by value and 58\u00a0per cent\u00a0by volume, having been awarded to SMEs.\u202f76\u00a0per cent\u00a0of total sales by value were through central Government; 24\u00a0per cent\u00a0through the wider public sector, so while significant progress has been made, more work is clearly needed to\u00a0educate local Government\u00a0organisations\u00a0on\u00a0the benefits of G-Cloud and assured cloud services.<\/p>\n

To provide an example of the significant savings achieved by a public sector organisation following a move to the cloud, the DVLA\u2019s \u2018View driving record\u2019 platform, hosted\u00a0on\u202fGOV.UK<\/a>, secured\u00a0online access to driving records for up to 40 million drivers for the insurance industry, which it is hoped will help to reduce premiums.\u202fDue to innovative approaches including cloud hosting, the DVLA managed to save 66 per cent against the original cost estimate.<\/p>\n

Contracts held within the wider public sector with an estimated total value of over \u00a36bn\u00a0are\u00a0coming to an end.\u00a0\u00a0Therefore continued\u00a0focus\u00a0must be placed\u00a0on\u00a0disaggregating\u00a0large contracts to ensure\u00a0that all digital and ICT requirements\u00a0that can be based on\u00a0the\u00a0cloud\u00a0are<\/i>\u00a0based on\u00a0the\u00a0cloud,\u00a0and sourced\u00a0from the\u00a0transparent and vendor-diverse\u00a0Government Digital\u00a0Marketplace.<\/p>\n

Suppliers, especially SMEs and new players who don\u2019t have extensive networks within the sector,\u00a0also need much better visibility of downstream opportunities.\u00a0Currently,\u00a0G-Cloud is less transparent than conventional procurements\u00a0in this respect, where pre-tender market engagements and prior information notices are now commonplace\u00a0and expected.<\/p>\n

However,\u00a0where spend controls cannot be applied, outreach and education must accelerate, and G-Cloud terms and conditions must\u00a0also\u00a0meet the needs of the wider public sector.\u00a0The G-Cloud two year contract term is often cited as a reason for not procuring services through the framework, as is the perceived inability for buyers to incorporate local, but mandatory terms and conditions.<\/p>\n

The Public Contracts Regulations 2015 introduced a number of changes to EU procurement regulations, and implemented the Lord Young reforms, which aim to make public procurements more accessible and less onerous for SMEs. These regulations provide new opportunities for further contractual innovation, including (but not\u00a0limited to) dynamic purchasing systems, clarification of what a material contract change means in practice, and giving buyers the ability to take supplier performance into account when awarding a contract.<\/p>\n

The G-Cloud Framework terms\u00a0and conditions must\u00a0evolve to meet the needs of the market as a whole, introducing more flexibility to accommodate complex legacy and future requirements, and optimising the opportunities afforded by the new public contract regulations. The introduction of the Experian score as the sole means of determining a supplier\u2019s financial health in the G-Cloud 6\u00a0Framework is very SME unfriendly, and does not align to the Crown Commercial Service\u2019s own policy on evaluation of financial stability. The current drafting\u00a0needs to be\u00a0revisited for G-Cloud 7.<\/p>\n

As all parts of the public sector are expected to be subject to ongoing fiscal pressure, and because digitising public services will continue to be a focus for the new Conservative Government, the wider public sector uptake of G-Cloud services must continue to be a priority. Looking to the future of G-Cloud, the Government will need\u00a0to put\u00a0more\u00a0focus on educating\u00a0buyers\u00a0on\u00a0G-Cloud procurement,\u00a0the very real opportunities that G-Cloud can bring, underlined by the many success stories to date, and ensuring the framework terms and conditions are sufficiently flexible to support the needs of the entire buying community.\u00a0G-Cloud\u00a0demonstrates the possibilities when Government is prepared to be radical and innovative\u00a0and in order to build on the significant progress that has been\u00a0made,\u00a0we hope\u00a0that G-Cloud will be made a priority\u00a0over the next five years.<\/p>\n

Written by Nicky Stewart, commercial director at Skyscape Cloud Services<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to G-Cloud, the once stagnant public sector IT marketplace that was dominated by a small number of large incumbent providers, is thriving. More and more SMEs are listing their assured cloud services on the framework, which is driving further competition and forcing down costs for public sector organisations, ultimately benefitting each and every UK tax payer.  But the programme still needs work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[673,2728,1297,2113,2723,2729],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-g-cloud","category-nicky-stewart","category-opinion","category-public-sector","category-skyscape","category-uk-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15025"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15026,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15025\/revisions\/15026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}