Ireland’s Answer To G-Cloud Scrapped

The Irish government has scrapped its Government Cloud Services Catalogue (GCSC) project, which many hailed as the Irish G-Cloud.

According to the local press, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform recently wrote to suppliers explaining the programme was being cancelled because economic and technical requirements have “fundamentally changed.”

Instead, Ireland is now focusing on a new approved ICT strategy including “build to share” objects and a government “cloud” to provide common IT systems and infrastructure across the public sector.

The government claims work is underway on the new strategy and the only costs incurred were internal resources to develop and evaluate the framework and responses.

“This new approach involves a more focused cloud service framework for key infrastructure and common ICT system in public service,” claimed the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

“Work on developing this is underway. On this basis it was decided to cancel the GCSC as it would not have delivered what was now required for either the public sector, or the industry,” it added.

Not A G-Cloud Carbon Copy

The GCSC project, which began almost two years ago, was set to be pre-approved list of IT suppliers and pricing models for email, IT security, HR and payroll and records management.

Whilst similar in premise to the UK’s G-Cloud, there were going to be some key differences – GCSC for example, would ban typical cloud terminology such as IaaS, PaaS and SaaS and instead called for “clear business language.”

Some 100 suppliers had applied to be included on the GCSC project since 2013, but reports claim that the application process steadily increased in complexity until the final request for tenders was issued in June 2014.

© 24N.biz