G-Cloud Costs Jump £40m With Second Round Of Procurement

The cost of the government’s G-Cloud has leapt from £60 million to £100 million as the next round of procurement was announced and interested parties were told they could apply from today.

The second round is being held to ensure that the content of the store is kept fresh and up-to-date, with regular frameworks taking place every couple of months.

Round two

The G-cloud planners said they want to ensure that the government’s use of technology can keep  up with developments, adding they aimed to make the process as simple as possible. It will be much more straightforward to include services already on a G-Cloud framework, provided there are no material changes from the original service description.

“The whole purpose of G-Cloud is to create a dynamic type of procurement to facilitate this,” said the G-Cloud team in a blog post. “So, to keep the constant flow of new services and suppliers flowing on to the CloudStore our plan is to undertake regular frameworks every few months. This procurement round is the second in an ongoing programme of continuous iterative procurements.”

They claimed that the first round of procurement was “hugely successful”, gaining nearly 260 suppliers and around 1,700 services. The deadline for suppliers that wanted to join was extended in February, with G-cloud completing its first sale in March.

A number of changes have been made to this procurement. Firstly, the framework will run for 12 months, not six, and, although the maximum length of a contract remains one year, this can be extended to two years in exceptional circumstances. The value of total procurement possible through G-Cloud has also been raised from £60 million to £100 million.

Last week, the second iteration of the Cloudstore was opened, promising improved functionality.

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