UK Government commits to cloud computing for public sector

"The establishment of a G-Cloud will however require investment in technical development and physical facilities, and the CIO Council and the Intellect Public Sector Council are now developing the strategic business case to justify funding the G-Cloud," it said.

The Government said that if the business case is proven then it would expect a G-Cloud to be saving money in procurement and IT projects within three years.

In order to ensure a consistent policy across Government, the report says that the CIO should have the ultimate decision making responsibility on IT procurement. "That will secure Government-wide standards and systems," it said.

The report also highlighted the Government's policy that when it commissions work which creates intellectual property rights (IPR), those rights should not stop others from using the work.

It is OPSI [Office of Public Sector Information]'s overriding recommendation that, wherever possible, IP under Crown copyright is made available for re-use by anyone, thereby maximising the potential economic benefit," it said. "This is consistent with the Government’s approach to open source, open standards and reuse, where IP created by Government IT is available for re-use by anyone."

The report said, though, that Government departments do not follow this guidance and many not only restrict the use of IP in different ways but even use different definitions of IP itself. It said that the Government would establish a pilot system of simpler IPR licensing in projects by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA).

The Digital Britain report also said that Government needed to try harder to make its procurement processes accessible for smaller companies that might come up with more imaginative technical solutions than large existing suppliers.

"The barriers to entry can lead to the Government or wider public sector becoming dependent on incumbent providers," it said. "The complexity and scale of both the tender process and procurement information demands can often also militate against entry to the market of smaller, innovative companies, to the detriment of public service users."

It said that the Government should create some trials of a simplified, fast-track procurement process that would be more accessible to companies that previously could only have been sub-contractors to larger firms.