More than three quarters of council staff have not heard of the G-Cloud framework, according to a new survey.
The survey, carried out by Dods Research on behalf of cloud computing supplier Iomart, revealed 77% of staff across all departments said they hadn’t heard of G-Cloud, the digital marketplace designed to ease procurement for public bodies of digital commodities.
A further 17.8% said they had heard of G-Cloud but had not used it.
The survey of 809 local government staff did, however, discover that of the 4.4% who had used G-Cloud, almost 80% were overwhelmingly positive, believing it had improved procurement.
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,’ he continued. ‘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.”
Further findings in the survey reveal that 45% of respondents were worried about the lack of security and control cloud services offer, with 26% worried about compliance, and a further 23% raising concerns over a lack of control.
Submissions to the latest version of the G-Cloud marketplace, G-Cloud 7, are due to close tomorrow. The framework will go live on 23 November.
