Peter Groucutt, managing director of infrastructure supplier Databarracks said that there is a lack of guidance and clarity surrounding recently announced changes to security requirements.

Earlier this week, the Cabinet Office announced that suppliers seeking to join G-Cloud would not be able to apply for the Pan Government Accreditation (PGA) from the end of the month.

PGA certifies IT suppliers to handle data up to certain levels of sensitivity under the impact level (IL) classification scheme, without the need to 

recertify for each organisation they work with.

Groucutt said: “Local government departments can’t be blamed for failing to keep up with G-Cloud.

“We’ve gone from it being controlled by the Government Procurement Service (now the Crown Commercial Service) to the Government Digital Service (GDS), and now we’re swapping the CloudStore for the Digital Marketplace – not to mention the changes to the security classifications.

“While central government has the resources to adapt to these changes, local authorities do not and as a result it has painted an unfair image that they are unwilling to embrace cloud services.”

He called for greater stability and continuity within the programmes, along with better education.

Groucutt continued: “The concern we have as a G-Cloud supplier is that in light of the continuing uncertainty, local authorities will opt for what they perceive to be the safe option by continuing to procure expensive, inflexible IT solutions from their existing large suppliers.

In April, the government announced a series of measures to increase awareness of services and products available through the G-Cloud framework in response to surveys showing low awareness of the platform.