Week in Gov. Tech: G-Cloud sales figures hold steady -- but is procurement getting any easier?

Top Story:

Cost-cutting, not performance, is still the primary driver in local government technology decisions, a survey of public sector technology executives finds.  The market for local government solutions is complex and fragmented, and IT decision-makers say deploying shared-services solutions have proved difficult because of organisational silos, according to the report by RPC Consulting. "The problem is whether IT is actually seen as an enabler of change or just viewed as another cost? If the CIO doesn't articulate the value of IT to the rest of the organisation then there's no chance of transformation," said Sheffield City Council CIO Paul Green.

Cloud first:

G-Cloud sales totalled £6.3 million in July, marking the fifth consecutive month with more than £6 million in sales and bringing total G-Cloud sales to £37.4 million. More than two-thirds of sales were related to the central government and about 3 in 5 contracts were won by small- and medium-sized enterprises.

Of course, selecting the right provider on G-Cloud can be tricky. Choosing the right software can make a huge difference in the day-to-day lives of employees. Andy Price offers a few guidelines for public sector offices looking to maximise the returns on their jump to the cloud. Richard McIntosh, meanwhile, offers a five-step guide to managing the most important procurement concerns.

Government tech on the move:

Cloud tools aren't just about improving services on a local scale. Louis Columbus makes the case that cloud technologies will fundamentally change the defence industry, as cost pressures increase and mobile becomes more important than ever.

Digital by default:

Wondering where your train is? Check out this mesmerizing map of the location of every train on the London Underground. The map provides predictions for the next 30 minutes, based on data released by Transport for London.

Transforming your organisation:

If all this change sound daunting -- maybe your organization needs Chief Transformation Officer to manage it all, writes Daniel Burrus.  "That means the CTO's role will shift from aligning technology to applying technology to accelerate business strategy, from communicating technology plans to the executive team to integrating a transformation imperative and applying the process to all executive-level planning," he writes.

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