The government's CIO, Andy Nelson (pictured), has spelled out his future wishes for the ongoing G-Cloud project, which include a structure more like Apple's App Store, and a service contract that can be shifted easily between suppliers.
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The service, which launched in February 2012, has seen gradual uptake across the UK. But according to Nelson, key changes are on the horizon to improve the service's useability.
Speaking to an audience of IT leaders at yesterday's Westminster Cloud Computing eForum, Nelson said: "What we'd love to be able to do with this is be in a world where it's more like an app store, where it works on multiple devices, and has an online catalogue that's just there all the time, and where you can find ratings. We're not there yet."
Nelson spoke of the need for a more developed ratings and feedback system.
"Every six months, we'd like to refresh this catalogue," said Nelson.
"A procurement process [currently] exists where people have to apply, then go through commercial checks, and checks on their services. We've put this down to a process that takes 10 minutes or an hour to go through, and we're not doing due diligence around the service; what we're actually doing is relying on the buying community who uses them."
What Nelson would like to see is a wider-reaching audience feedback system, including those who no longer, or regret, using services that did not work out for them.
"Say the service isn't any good - say it's really cheap and that's why I bought it," said Nelson, "but I discovered why it's really cheap; because it was crap, frankly, so I'm not going to buy it anymore. So I'm going rate it that way. Do we have a rating system up there? No, we don't at this point."
Nelson also wants to make it possible to shift software licences around the G-Cloud ecosystem, suggesting that the government already has security systems in place that could provide a backbone for this.
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'Friction free' is a great phrase, but I think it is some way off from being real," said Nelson, "but with this we'd say 'I can move this around, I can actually switch it from a standard commodity service, to a better place more easily'.
"We are pretty good in government, it's fair to say, at defining the same level of security across government," said Nelson, "so if we had a cloud service, we could, as government, give it a pan-government stamp and say, 'you can all use that, and you can trust it'."
The government also wants G-Cloud to offer a wider range of services.
"[The focus] still seems to be on big procurements and legacy technology, whereas I'd like to be in a place where this isn't just a price game," said Nelson. "So if I use development and testing as an example; can I deliver things faster with this model? Can I get the services I need, can I deliver services faster?"
Asked by a member of the audience whether there were any plans to widen G-Cloud's target customers beyond central government, Nelson didn't offer much hope.
"No, to be honest," he said, "that's just a capacity thing. We're primarily focusing on central government. If you listen to Frances Maude, it's apparently hard enough joining up central government, let alone the rest. But we have local authority representation on the CIO council. And we try to invite people; the best evangelists on the CIO team are from local authorities."
Nelson offered no concrete plans or timelines on any of the above changes to the G-Cloud.
