Local Government "Overly Cautious" About CloudStore

Local government has been very cautious when it comes to adopting services via G-Cloud since the framework was first launched, according to a new piece of research highlighted by Outsourcery.

The Cabinet Office has revealed that when it comes to the CloudStore, 80 per cent of purchases made in the last year were by central government, with local authorities only accounting for 20 per cent.

Outsourcery believes that much more needs to be done to promote the potential benefits of the CloudStore to local government, aside from taking the obvious tack of pointing out the potential money savings.

The Co-CEO of Outsourcery, Piers Linney, commented: "Highlighting cost savings is great. However, IT decision-makers are also looking at business performance and what they can achieve within their financial limitations. While cost is of course a key feature, there needs to be a lot more work undertaken to show that local government objectives are more easily achieved by using the cloud."

"A new wave of service collaboration is developing in local government and an essential part of this will be making sure that data is used and shared in the most effective way. For example, combining social services from more than one local authority means bringing together a lot of back office data and information, enabling it to be used in different ways. CloudStore is the most effective way for local authorities to develop these types of initiatives."

Outsourcery notes that G-Cloud services have been reviewed in terms of providing high levels of security, reliability and compliance when it comes to the needs of the public sector. The company is set to offer its cloud-based IT and Unified Communications services on the CloudStore, as part of the recently launched G-Cloud 5, and it has just put the finishing touches to the design of its secure O-Cloud Government platform.

Linney said: "In order to create services fit for local Government, issues like security and data sovereignty need to first be addressed and we have worked hard to ensure what we are developing does just this. Emphasis now needs to be placed on communicating the business benefits in order to increase confidence in cloud-services within local government authorities."

This isn't the first time we've heard about local authorities failing to make use of G-Cloud, of course, with accusations of "wasting millions" having previously been levelled.