New G-Cloud Service For Cloud Public Sector Procurement

Public sector bodies can now access a Government catalogue with an additional 3000 IT services in the cloud. The addition of these new services doubles the total previously available since February, and the government expects the benefits to include tax savings and greater efficiency in public sector organizations.

Buyers from the public sector can now search through the catalogue of services to find something that matches their business requirements. Instead of going to the expense of having custom software built, or adapting to existing solutions, each group can hand-pick the supplier that most closely matches their needs.

Benefits of Using G-Cloud Services

The move towards using cloud-based services has a number of advantages for the government and public sector organisations. The first year of this initiative,has proved so because of the following benefits:

• Cost savings

Pay-as-you-go cloud services eliminate the need to develop costly systems, and the ability to share services eliminates unnecessary and expensive duplication. According to Rohan Silva, David Cameron´s senior policy officer, cost savings could be as much as £10bn over the next few years thank to the implementation of this new method.

• Flexibility

There is no longer a need to enter into long-term restrictive contracts to ensure the level of service required. The availability of so many different providers also means that individual agencies and departments can tailor their procurement to fit their needs instead of using a one-size-fits-all approach./p>

• Independence

The majority of suppliers in the CloudStore are small businesses, and the variety of providers available eliminates the dependence on a core group of larger suppliers who previously dominated the market. Government and public sector organisations can take back control of their services by selecting what they need from the G-Cloud catalogue.

• Efficiency

It is now much quicker to find service providers for a specific task, and the implementation of services is much faster. Procurement no longer has to be a long drawn out process, taking months to authorise or implement the distribution of new services. Suppliers are carefully vetted and then listed on the G-Cloud for selection as and when needed.

The Future of Government Procurement

Since the introduction of the G-Cloud in February, government officials have realised the extent to which cloud-based services can substantially reduce their IT budgets, while providing a much greater scope of services than limited frameworks from traditional suppliers.

The G-Cloud store will continue to add new approved suppliers to improve the efficiency of government services, by extending the availability of software tools that can be shared and adapted as necessary. The initial testing of the G-Cloud proved so successful that the addition of these new suppliers shows the government is fully committed to the use cloud services.

Managing procurement centrally is cumbersome, expensive and only partially effective, because it does not address the needs of all the users. The CloudStore will finally take government away from restrictive IT frameworks, give SMEs the chance to work with public sector organizations, and save billions in taxpayers money.

    Gareth

About the Guest Author:

Gareth is a promoter and writer who enjoys contributing articles on behalf of Procserve. If you are interested to learn more on eProcurement and public sector spending check out their website.