Government hungry for the cloud after £55m G-Cloud spending splurge

The Digital Marketplace has hit £1bn mark

Sales of IT software and services via G-Cloud rose to £959m in December, up by £55m as sales continued to increase via the procurement framework.

Small and medium-sized enterprises won 51 per cent of the sales by value and 61 per cent by volume during the month.

As usual, the majority of spending on G-Cloud - some 75 per cent - was attributed to central government, while the wider public sector was responsible for 25 per cent of the sales.

This was an increase of 11 per cent on the previous month, suggesting that local councils and non-governmental public organisations are showing a greater interest in the cloud.

However, the Cabinet Office has yet to update the sales figures dashboard that details the spending breakdown across the public sector and the type of services procured by the government.

Spending through the Digital Services framework reached a total of £43.6m in December, rising by around £7m from November's spending.

Smaller companies accounted for 71 per cent of the sales made through the digital products and services procurement framework. Some 87 per cent of sales were made to central government and 13 per cent to the wider public sector.

The combined figure for G-Cloud and the Digital Services framework, which make up the government's Digital Marketplace, have broken the £1bn mark.

Cabinet Office minister Matt Hancock suggested that the figures prove the success of the Digital Marketplace.

"From a small handful of suppliers five years ago, there are now 2,433 suppliers to government of digital services on the Digital Marketplace. It shows that this is not just an agenda for delivering public services but for developing a whole industry that can supply the cutting-edge technology we need," he said at the Sprint 16 event.

More elements of the public sector, such as local councils, are adopting digital services, and spending through the Digital Marketplace does not look like it will slow down any time soon.