Editorial

G-Cloud 11 details could be released this week

PublicTechnology.net believes government would then have a “tight – but achievable” window in which to complete the bidding and award process before G-Cloud 10 reaches the end of its scheduled one-year term on 1 July.

Posted 28 February 2019 by Gary Flood


Details of the next (11th) version of the G-Cloud IT goods and services buying and selling framework could be with as soon as this week, reports PublicTechnology.Net.

The website also claims that this news will detail a bidding process scheduled to start as soon as April, though the site admits that when it asked the Crown Commercial Service the latter declined to confirm its prediction.

But if true, in its own words such as G-Cloud 11 timeline “will give the government a tight – but achievable – window in which to complete the bidding and award process before G-Cloud 10 reaches the end of its scheduled one-year term on 1 July”.

G-Cloud 10 was launched around the same time a year ago, with bidding taking place between 18 April and 23 May, winning bidders getting informed around a month later ahead of contracts coming into effect early July 2018.

A total of 3,505 suppliers got a place on 10, including nearly 700 appearing on a G-Cloud framework for the first time, but PublicTechnology.net claims that government figures show that G-Cloud 10 has so far generated much smaller sales than its predecessors, with just £91.2m spent via the contract up to the start of 2019 compared to £771m spent via G-Cloud 9: “The need for technologies available on G-Cloud is certainly rising within local authorities,” it claims in a blog on what we might expect from 11.

In any case, so far over £4bn has been spent via G-Cloud across its 10 releases, with it going over a billion pounds a year in sales in the 2017/18 financial year, and G-Cloud consultancy Advice Cloud expects more of the same from 11 – noting that over 500 machine learning and AI-related listings appear, including systems that provide medical diagnoses, CCTV analysis and financial auditing, for instance.

We wish any and all bidders the best of luck!