More than three quarters of council staff have not heard of the G-Cloud framework, according to new research, raising questions about government initiatives to improve awareness.
A survey by cloud computing supplier Iomart found that 77% of staff across all departments said they hadn’t heard of G-Cloud.
Another 17.8% said they had heard of it but had not used it. However, of the 4.4% who had used G-Cloud, almost 80% were overwhelmingly positive, believing it had improved procurement.
Bill Strain, chief technology officer for iomart, said: “Our survey shows that when G-Cloud is used for procurement by local authorities the results are very positive but that message is still not reaching the wider management working across local government.
“IT managers cannot bring about better local public services alone. There needs to be much more work done to explain the benefits that procuring through G-Cloud can bring, particularly during this continuing time of austerity.”
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The survey of 809 local government staff was carried out for Iomart by Dods Research – sister organisation to PublicTechnology – during May 2015.
It also discovered that almost half (45%) of respondents were worried about the lack of security and control cloud services offer, with 26% worried about compliance, and a further 23% raising concerns over a lack of control.
Submissions to the latest iteration of the G-Cloud marketplace G-Cloud 7 are due to close tomorrow, with the framework due to go live on 23 November.
Last week, government figures showed that three months of plummeting G-Cloud purchases by local government ended after sales to the sector rose 29% in August.
Download the white paper: Cloud services – the shifting context