G-Cloud listed IT suppliers are getting concerned that the next iteration of the framework agreement could be delayed by up to a year, and claim it could harm the public sector’s digital transformation efforts
Public sector IT suppliers want government procurement chiefs to confirm when the 10th version of the G-Cloud procurement framework will go live, as concerns mount that it could be delayed by up to a year.
Speaking to Computer Weekly, Peter Middleton, chair of the Cloud Industry Forum’s G-Cloud-focused Special Interest Group, said any significant delay in the roll-out of G-Cloud 10 would go against the founding principles of the framework.
“It would be a fundamental betrayal of the whole G-Cloud principles to drive innovation, choice and value and it would be particularly bad for SMEs,” he said.
“It’s a case of doing that [delay] at your peril because it would be fundamentally breaking the trust model that underpins G-Cloud in the marketplace.”
The latest version, G-Cloud 9, went live in May 2017, and the supporting documentation for the 12-month framework confirms that the Crown Commercial Service reserves the right to extend it by up to a year if needed.
The CPS confirmed it is exercising this right for the Digital Outcomes and Specialists 2 Framework in October 2017, which means it will now run until January 2019, and suppliers fear a similar fate could befall G-Cloud.
There is an expectation within the G-Cloud supplier community that details of the next framework release should start to circulate about six months after the previous version has gone live, but – at the time of writing – no information on this front has been forthcoming.
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