G-Cloud director Denise McDonagh on driving government cloud computing uptake

The government's G-Cloud service is a striking example of the power of cloud computing to transform the use of IT, whether in the public or private sector.

The service may not have been live for long but already departments are taking advantage of its benefits and purchasing services from the store to help cut costs and improve deployment times.

The service was setup by government IT veteran Chris Chant, now retired, with his replacement confirmed in April as Home Office IT chief Denise McDonagh, who will operate in both roles concurrently.

V3 spoke with McDonagh in an exclusive interview at the Civil Service Live event in London on Wednesday, where she revealed plans are afoot to allow government workers to rate the cloud computing services they buy from the CloudStore.

Beyond this, McDonagh spoke widely about her plans for the G-Cloud, confirming that she is looking into the possibility of allowing suppliers to be added to the framework on an ongoing basis.

McDonagh noted, though, that there is a lot of work involved in managing the framework in this way and that it is a challenge the team is working to address.

Eleanor Stewart, G-Cloud programme engagement manager, also told V3 that adding suppliers every month would be tough because there are so many applications to process.

"One of the big challenges is the volume [of applications] we get," she said.

In response, V3 asked McDonagh whether her team of eight workers on the G-Cloud programme, some of whom are part time, is too small to deal with the task ahead.

Not only is there the new rating service and next framework to think about, but also the need to engage with suppliers and government buyers to push G-Cloud services take-up, and to deal with challenges raised by both suppliers and buyers around the areas of service integration and data.

McDonagh admitted her team was stretched but was coy on adding anything else. She argued the G-Cloud team was not tasked with responsibility of driving the whole of the public sector to a cloud-first policy.

"The programme is to act as an enabler [to cloud services] and to give the departments the information they need. It's about that communication process," said McDonagh.