G-Cloud to rain change on public sector IT

Leeds City Council plans to axe in-house systems and replace them with G-Cloud services

Of all the planned efficiency-creating initiatives within government, the G-Cloud will be the most transformative, according to some of the UK’s most high-profile chief information officers (CIOs).

First mooted in the Digital Britain report last year, the G-Cloud will be a secure solution enabling government departments and agencies to share applications. While it promises to revolutionise public sector IT strategy, many local government CIOs are now talking about how the G-Cloud will affect the role of IT leaders.

Dylan Roberts, CIO at Leeds City Council and newly appointed Socitm Futures president, has put a lot of faith in the initiative.

“I’m going to use the G-Cloud to create efficiencies and cut costs,” he said. He went on to explain that about 90 per cent of Leeds City Council’s services are currently hosted in-house, but with the introduction of the G-Cloud, he expects the figure to drop to about 40 per cent, with 60 per cent of the services delivered by the cloud.

He also said that he hopes and expects government departments and local government CIOs to be mandated to use the G-Cloud, to promote shared resources and consistency across government.

However, Jos Creese, president of Socitm, said mandating the G-Cloud was a bad idea. “Rules that are brought in artificially, saying that you must outsource or use this particular solution, often lead to poorer quality and service inefficiency,” he said.

In addition, public sector IT leaders are concerned about which solutions will be hosted in the cloud. Roberts called for a stiffer approach to accrediting vendor solutions, to ensure they are the best fit for the public sector.

Creese agreed, saying that there has to be a regulatory process that guarantees the quality and performance of solutions hosted in the G-Cloud. But he argued that this probably would not be that difficult to achieve. “For example, we already have a programme for assessing supplier performances across government,” he said. “You would want to use something like that to ensure that there were no suppliers or products in the G-Cloud that were not fit for purpose. But after that, you would want some flexibility and choice over how those solutions are applied locally.”

Another effect will be a need for fewer CIOs in the public sector, according to David Wilde, CIO at Westminster City Council. This will be the result of CIOs taking on responsibilities for more than one administrative area, he explained.

“To drive shared services more aggressively, CIOs will begin to have broader
geographical remits. Practices around information governance and data security will become standard across authorities.”

He explained that in London alone, there are currently 40 CIOs in local government bodies and agencies.

“Wouldn’t information sharing, cost savings and working practices be improved if there were just 10?” he said.