G-Cloud Sales Pass £314m

The total value of sales made through the governmnent’s G-Cloud framework since its 2012 launch surpassed £314m in September, with central government driving demand, according figures released by the Government Digital Service.

Overall, 53 percent of sales by value and 61 percent by volume have gone to small and medium enterprises since G-Cloud’s launch, the government said.

Local government sales rise

Sales for September totalled £26.5m, including £21.4m on specialist cloud services, £3.03m on cloud infrastructure, £1.96m on cloud software, and £158,000 on cloud platform services.

Central government has accounted for 80 percent of G-Cloud sales since 2012, with the other 20 percent accounted for by the wider public sector.

Sales to local government bodies for September stood at £1.75m in September, up 40 percent over August. The 135 purchases by local government included 28 sales to councils, one to a standalone company and four to housing associations, as well as a sale to the London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.

The largest local authority purchase for the month was valued at £91,520 and went to Peterborough City Council in a contract for website redevelopment with cloud services supplier Arus Global. The London Borough of Hounslow made the highest volume of local authority purchases, with 51 contracts totalling £356,058 during the month.

A study published at the end of last year found that most UK councils were ignoring G-Cloud, which is intended to cut the costs of government IT procurement and provide more flexible services.

Sixth iteration on the way

A sixth iteration of the service is scheduled for next month, and GDS said it will be revising the way suppliers describe themselves in order to cut down on “keyword-spamming, confusing jargon and indirect language” and make it clearer to buyers “what a service actually does”.

“Instead of giving suppliers an open invitation to describe their services, we’re breaking down the content we expect suppliers to provide into fixed, manageable chunks,” GDS said in a blog post.

Suppliers will now be given 50 words to introduce their service, 100 words to describe up to 10 service benefits, and another 100 words to describe up to 10 service features. On a separate page suppliers can describe their organisation in 50 words, and list up to 10 client names.

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