Home Office IT Director To Lead G-Cloud

Denise McDonagh, Home Office IT director, is to take control of the government’s G-Cloud initiative, taking over from Chris Chant, who will retire at the end of the month.

McDonagh will continue in her Home Office role, but will be especially busy now that she is taking over G-Cloud from 30 April, which recently saw the launch of the CloudStore – the first customer-facing part of the project.

The next iteration of the G-Cloud framework is due to be launched at the end of April or in the first week of May. “That will incorporate a new approach where we will be able to add new suppliers and services on a quarterly (or possibly more frequent) basis,” a blog from the G-Cloud team read. “This will be a first in procurement, certainly in the UK, and perhaps even in the world. Existing G-Cloud suppliers should be able to move to the new framework with just a small amount of effort.”

A “series of new deals” is on the way too, but the G-Cloud team did not mention what those were, only saying “we’ll let everyone know about those as soon as we can”.

Chanting praise

The team thanked Chant for all his work. “In just the last 18 months Chris has achieved an enormous amount including, to mention just a few, starting off the alpha.gov project, moving many cabinet office staff to cloud-based email, shaping/launching/concluding the G-Cloud procurement, convincing (many personally) suppliers to join the framework and steering the first sales through the pipeline,” the team added.

“He’s been an inspiration and a delight to work with.  We will carefully shepherd what he’s started to make sure no momentum is lost.”

Chant was delighted by the decision to appoint McDonagh as his replacement. “I could not be happier that Denise will succeed me,” he tweeted. He was not in such a positive mood earlier this week, when he launched a scathing attack on government for its “unacceptable” quality of IT.

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