G-Cloud 9 discovery phase found that users struggle to find suitable services - Photo credit: Flickr, Art Hitklif

In a provisional timetable published last week, the Government Digital Service’s Digital Marketplace team said that it is aiming for services under G-Cloud 9 to be available from May.

The announcement follows the completion of a discovery phase for the new iteration, which has resulted in a number of changes to how services are listed.

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In a blog post, the Digital Marketplace team said: “We’re doing user research to understand how different users think about cloud technology and this is helping us define a new list of questions for suppliers.”

In October, GDS said that its discovery phase discovered that users struggle with ineffective searches, producing audit trails and difficulty comparing suppliers.

It said: “There is no shared terminology for the way G-Cloud products and services are being described. Suppliers often describe the same types of services in a variety of ways,” the post said.

“This inconsistency in language makes it more difficult for buyers to find what they need. Suppliers told us that they resort to guesswork to find the keywords buyers are using when searching for services.”

Last week, the Digital Marketplace blog said that a set of new questions will be designed to help buyers compare services more easily and make more informed decisions.

“We’ll share this new list of questions before applications open to help suppliers prepare, and we’ll talk more about this in a blog very soon,” it said.

When G-Cloud 9 goes live, all services under previous iterations will be removed, and suppliers will have to reapply to be included.