Digital Marketplace Opens For Business

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is encouraging buyers to start using the new Digital Marketplace ahead of its official launch date later this month.

In February, it was announced that the G-Cloud and Digital Services frameworks would be combined to form one Digital Marketplace.

The new system has been in public alpha phase since June this year, but as it moves towards beta, GDS wants people to start buying cloud G-Cloud services from the Marketplace.

The Digital Marketplace is set to become the single place to go for government to buy what it needs to design, build and support its digital services.

It will replace CloudStore as the new store for G-Cloud services and will also house the Digital Services framework from the new year.

“CloudStore will continue to be available while we transition across and it will be possible to award contracts to services found through both CloudStore and Digital Marketplace,” explains Ivanka Majic, GDS digital commercial services service manager, in a government blog post.

“Digital Marketplace has a dedicated, multidisciplinary team who are working to make sure it continues to improve as it moves towards a fully live service,” she adds.

GDS is currently urging potential users of the new framework to sign up for user research in order to provide feedback that will help shape the service.

Search Instructions Provided

The blog post also addresses searching effectively on the Digital Marketplace – G-Cloud has previously been criticised for how difficult it is to find things on there.

“[Search] starts with preparing your requirements and understanding what are your must haves,” claims a separate blog post.

“This will help you to define the keywords to start searching with,” it adds.

© 24N.biz