New survey by cloud company iomart reveals 77% of Local Government Unaware of G-Cloud
The majority of local government have not heard of G-Cloud despite government efforts to encourage more engagement with the framework, a new survey has revealed.
With submissions to the latest iteration of the G-Cloud marketplace G-Cloud 7 due to close tomorrow (Tuesday 6 October), a survey by cloud computing company iomart suggests that barriers still exist to wider take up of cloud services within local government in the United Kingdom.
The survey results follow the news that of the £753.2m sales made through G-Cloud since it began in 2012, only 5.9% were to local government bodies.
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The survey – which was carried out for iomart by Dods Research throughout May 2015 – found that while continuing austerity measures are driving local authorities to consider outsourcing their IT services, there was very little awareness of G-Cloud and the benefits it can bring.
Of the 809 local government staff surveyed, 77% of those questioned said they had not heard of G-Cloud, while 17.8% said they had heard of it they hadn’t actually used it. However of the 4.4% who had used G-Cloud almost 80% were overwhelmingly positive, believing it had improved procurement.
The survey also revealed local government staff were concerned about the lack of security and control cloud services offer. 45% of respondents were worried about security in the cloud, 26% of respondents were concerned about compliance and the benefits of cloud and 23% of respondents were worried about lack of control over cloud services.
Speaking about the results, 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.”
G-Cloud 7 is due to go live on 23 November.
For more detailed analysis, download the results here.