Nearly 90 per cent of UK councils and local authorities are yet to procure IT services through the Government's G-Cloud initiative, new research suggests.
In the survey of 300 UK councils and local authorities by G-Cloud accredited managed service provider Six Degrees Group, 87 per cent of respondents said they are not using the procurement framework to purchase cloud-based services at this time.
The industry has overhyped and marketed cloud without slowing down to realise the wider market needs a simpler education on what it really means and entails.
Furthermore, 76 per cent of those surveyed said they had no idea what the G-Cloud framework is for.
The procurement framework was launched in early 2012 to make it easier for public sector bodies to procure cloud-based services, and boasts around 1,180 suppliers.
The Cabinet Office regularly publishes details about the amount of money spent by public sector organisations on G-Cloud services, and recently hailed November as its best ever sales month.
"Total G-Cloud spend by central government and the wider public sector had jumped to 78 million by the end of November, after an uplift in overall sales of 15 million since the previous monthly update," the Cabinet Office revealed, in a statement to IT Pro's sister title Cloud Pro.
"Spending by the wider public sector had risen to 37 per cent of all purchases by value," it added.
Even so, Six Degrees Group claim its survey results bring to light concerns about the way G-Cloud is being marketed to public sector organisations, with the firm's group strategy and marketing director Campbell Williams citing communication issues.
"Cloud services have the potential to be revolutionary for the public sector and G-Cloud is a framework specifically intended to make sourcing these services simple," he said.
"However it's clearly not doing its job for a huge number of councils and local authorities in the UK, which could otherwise be benefiting from the expenditure savings, innovations, agility and security of cloud computing.
"We're disappointed G-Cloud is still failing both customers and suppliers alike. If those behind G-Cloud don't educate the public sector soon, government procurement for IT will continue to be handled by the same old faces delivering the same poor outcomes for the taxpayer," Williams added.
Cloud-based CRM vendor Workbooks has been certified in all four rounds of the G-Cloud programme to date.
The firm's sales director Ian Moyse backed the survey's findings, and said much work is needed to educate the public sector about the benefits of cloud.
"The industry has overhyped and marketed cloud without slowing down to realise the wider market needs a simpler education on what it really means and entails," said Moyse.
"Simply building it (a G-Cloud programme) does not mean they will come. G-Cloud is a good central endorsement of the cloud as a strong and viable form factor for the public sector, but it now needs to mature and work on educating and informing the masses, rather than simply giving them a means to procure."
Robin Pape, public sector advisor at G-Cloud provider Memset, also supported the survey's findings, explaining the majority of its G-Cloud business is done with central, rather than local, Government.
"These figures are disappointing but our experience does support them...and we still see too many local authority procurements demanding old-school bespoke outsourcing of all IT functions rather than seeking individual commodity IT services, which is what G-Cloud is about," said Pape.
However, Pape said the fact 13 per cent of local authorities are using G-Cloud is something to be celebrated, and even offered to lend a hand with communicating the benefits of G-Cloud to local authorities.
"We would be pleased to work with Cabinet Office and other G-Cloud providers to help get the message over to local authorities and build the G-Cloud market to realise its potential to deliver high quality, innovative services at substantially lower cost," Pape concluded.
In a statement to Cloud Pro, a Cabinet Office spokesperson insisted educating public sector organisations about the benefits of G-Cloud is an issue it's in the throes of tackling.
"The need to increase awareness and understanding of the advantages of G-Cloud in this sector is an issue we are focusing on," the spokesperson wrote.
"The public cloud first policy introduced in the summer is mandated to central government and we strongly recommend it to the wider public sector."
