Gov.UK inhaled G-Cloud, spat out framework – ex-lead claims

Whitehall is coming under fire for subsuming the G-Cloud into its coding house GDS (government digital service) at the expense of encouraging uptake of the framework. Mark Craddock, former G-cloud lead, said: "GDS is obsessed with what I call pub-prietary software – the public sector building everything in-house and putting …

[Francis Irving]

GCLoud's UX has got better

To be fair, the user experience of the old GCloud software, from a suppliers point of view, was pretty shonky. New stuff is a lot easier to use. Those 14 developers haven't been for nothing!

The article is right that the frameworks are still problematic - better packaging up of projects for outsourcing, and nurturing ecosystem of good suppliers are where attention's needed (body shopping useful for some projects, but will only go so far)

If you're reading and think buying IT is easy, go join GDS and help them :) It's our job as an industry to improve things, not just whine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as a public sector IT person, GDS are a royal PITA. They're even further up the ivory tower than enterprise architects.

[billynomates]

Hear, hear. Ooooooh, shiny front end. What the back ends 17yrs out of date and ready to fall over? Doesn't matter cos we get a web ui.

Really gov it is pretty paralysed and some basic maintenance and remediation decisions aren't being made cos of digital paralysis.

It'll all end in tears.

[Caoilte]

I'm enjoying this level of openness. We didn't see it on previous government buildouts and I think that is why some of them managed to spend hundreds of times more before getting cancelled.

Every successful programme of work contains basket case projects that should get canned early and may not for political reasons.

This may be one of them. With the heat on like this, we may get to find out.

I just wish The Register wasn't so openly gleeful about solely pouncing on every misfortune and could give the balanced view as well. I guess they've read the clicks - but first dotcom boom around this (then: proudly) "rag" used to float above that sort of laziness and read between the lines.

[Phil Wainewright EuroCloud]

G-Cloud needs nurturing

A lot of those who have been involved in getting G-Cloud off the ground are rightly concerned to see that it continues to grow. There are a lot of positives to celebrate - 1,450 suppliers in the current round and increasing spend going through the framework every month - even though the potential is much greater.

As another commenter said, the industry must also do more to support G-Cloud and not leave it all to the government. That's why EuroCloud, as the UK's largest member-owned, cloud-only industry body, recently published a manifesto to galvanise support for G-Cloud (full text here: http://www.eurocloud.org.uk/G-Cloud1). We are pursuing several action points, among them calling on GDS to invest resources into raising awareness of G-Cloud and helping buyers and suppliers to build and improve their knowledge and quality of services available.

G-Cloud as a brand is a valued asset and has already had a massively positive impact in promoting values of openness, competition and reform of IT procurement. The success of these reforms requires increased awareness and the continuous development of a healthy and varied supplier base. GDS should be building on the success of the G-Cloud brand, not burying it.

[Anonymous Coward]

G-cloud seems pointless to me

Just tried looking at procuring a service via gcloud. It seems the price they've agreed with the provider is higher than the provider's "retail" price for the service which seems like poor value to me when I know I can contact the supplier and get a better price myself. There appears to be no difference I can see in the service on offer for that price to explain this difference.

Assuming that this isn't a one-off fluke I have found then either gcloud is in trouble because its poor value for public money, or its in trouble because it doesn't make the benefits of using it terribly clear to someone like me. Either way, I understand why its seen as strategically important to some people but if its poor value for money then it deserves to fail. I'm not planning to waste my employer's share of the public purse on paying more than retail for a service.