G-Cloud in the sky: The future home for gov't apps

Communications minister Lord Carter has said that "substantial savings" can be made in public spending by building a government-wide cloud computing platform.

In the government's Digital Britain report published yesterday, Carter said the so-called "G-Cloud" should be created within the next three years, to allow local and central government departments to share centrally hosted applications.

The CIO Council and UK IT trade association Intellect are currently developing a business case for funding the G-Cloud.

"Provided that this business case can be properly developed, the adoption of the G-Cloud will be a priority for government investment to secure efficiencies," Lord Carter said in the report.

Savings could come from cutting the number of government datacentres and reducing overall hardware spend, slashing software licensing costs and lowering maintenance and security costs by using a standardised platform.

"The G-Cloud delivery model would also help make other parts of the government IT marketplace more cost-effective, flexible and competitive," the report added.

"It would support and encourage the adoption of higher levels of standardisation and sharing of IT services across departments."

From now on all government bodies buying new IT services or systems should do so "on a scalable, cloud basis such that other public bodies can benefit from the new capability", the report said.

The G-Cloud could help the public sector meet savings targets outlined under the Operational Efficiency Programme (OEP), announced in April, which revealed increased use of shared services and outsourcing could help cut government IT and back office costs by £7.2bn per year.

Steve Palmer, president of the association for public sector IT managers Socitm, said that the benefits of the G-Cloud would extend beyond savings to better collaboration and information sharing within government.

"It has the potential to revolutionise the way that computing power is delivered - the way we run our infrastructure, our costs, the collaboration tools available and the ease with which we manipulate information.

"It can help transform and innovate in delivering services, as in future the public sector will not have the money to deliver the services in the way it delivers them now," he said.

SMEs supplying services to the government would also benefit from the G-Cloud model, with the report saying they "would be able to provide services running on standardised, secure infrastructure without having to incur the costs of establishing and accrediting their own infrastructure".

Julian David, vice chair of the Intellect Public Sector Council, said: "It's based on a well-established and proven approach to generating savings opportunities and encompasses the very latest and best technologies which could lower cost, improve service and provide greater choice and offerings to all types of government organisations."

But peer Lord Merlin Hay, a member of the Parliamentary Information Technology Committee, warned spending money on large IT projects is no substitute for reforming the way government departments work together.

"It is no good thinking that the cloud is going to solve a problem when very often how you operate is the real problem.

"The Varney report found that when notifying the government about a death of a family member you had to give the same information to departments about nine or 10 times.

"IT is not a panacea to solving all their ills if it is their own procedures and the way they operate across departments that needs real revision."

He also cautioned against the government being too hasty to embark on another high-cost, long-term IT project, such as the £12.7bn National Programme for IT, adding: "If they have to redesign systems to run in the cloud then I can see it turning into another huge IT project, with consultants seeing another opportunity to charge the government large sums of money."