CCS and GDS work to identify affected firms

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Website outages on the closing date for bids left some suppliers unable to file their applications for a place on the G-Cloud 12 framework.

Potential providers had until 20 July to apply for a spot on the twelfth iteration of government’s flagship cloud-services procurement vehicle. But, as bids came to a close on the last day, some users reported problems with the Digital Marketplace online platform for filing applications.

In a number of cases, the site crashed and presented users with a 502 bad gateway error message. Others saw a display that informed them the site was “experiencing technical difficulties”.

Although the deadline for applications has not been universally extended, suppliers were contacted by the Crown Commercial Service to inform them that work has taken place to ascertain which companies were impacted. These firms are being contacted directly to make alternative arrangements by which to apply.

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“CCS has worked with the Digital Marketplace team at the Government Digital Service to identify applicants who were affected, and has contacted these applicants individually,” the message said. “If you were not affected, you won’t hear from CCS until after your application has been evaluated.” 

The message also indicated that the outages were caused by the high volume of people using the site to file last-minute applications.

“CCS is aware that some applicants could not submit their G-Cloud 12 application on the Digital Marketplace by the deadline on the afternoon of 20 July 2020 due to intermittent problems caused by unprecedented network traffic,” it said. 

Suppliers are scheduled to be informed of whether or not their bid was successful on 1 September. After the conclusion of a standstill period, the framework is due to come into effect about four weeks thereafter.

The incumbent G-Cloud 11 deal was due to expire a month ago but, after the UK entered lockdown in March, the decision was taken to extend it by nine months. It now reaches its end on 2 April 2021.

About 4,200 suppliers – offering a cumulative total of more than 30,000 services – feature on G-Cloud 11. The deal is split into three lots, respectively covering software, support, and hosting.