Public Sector Spent Almost £200 Million Through G-Cloud
In line with the government’s promises, most of the money went to small and medium businesses
Cumulative spending on G-Cloud, UK’s digital procurement network for the public sector, has reached £192 million in May – an increase of £12 million over the previous month.
According to the figures provided by the Cabinet Office, the growth is accelerating, especially if we look at the number of contracts awarded to small and medium businesses (SMBs).
As advertised
G-Cloud makes it easier for civil servants to locate alternative suppliers of IT and services. By October 2013, it featured 1,186 companies, 84 percent of which were SMBs. The aim of the government is to have 50 percent of IT spend go through the framework by 2015.
According to the Cabinet Office, SMBs were responsible for 57 percent of G-Cloud sales so far, or £109 million of the total.
The value of contracts awarded to SMBs as opposed to larger organisations remained just about equal, ever since the first iteration of G-Cloud was launched in April 2012. The situation changed in January, after the government published new IT procurement rules, which promised to involve an increasing number of smaller businesses in public sector work.
Since then, SMBs have consistently outperformed their bigger rivals, as far as the total monthly value of contracts is concerned.
The Cabinet Office reports that 80 percent of sales have been made with central government departments, while the rest went to other public sector organisations and non-profits.
Local councils were responsible for just five percent of the contracts, suggesting that they are far from embracing G-Cloud when they shop for IT, despite the alleged benefits of the framework.
Specialist cloud services were the most popular type of services available on G-Cloud in May, followed by Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Software-as-a-Service.
Earlier this month, the government reported savings of more than £200 million achieved by improving the public-facing digital services. This includes £62 million saved by merging various government resources including DirectGov and BusinessLink into a single GOV.UK portal.
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