With the recent launch of the Government App Store, G-Cloud, cloudstore, govstore or whatever it’s actually to be finally branded, a number of commentators have noted that it’s an interesting list for its absentees. Whilst one can’t complain about the list which is lengthy – and Kuan did a good job of translating the spreadsheet into a list – a couple of key government and local government suppliers are absent. I can pick out Northgate and Civica as particularly noticeable.
Probably nearly two years ago I emailed a Northgate director and asked them for their plans in dealing with the ‘cloud’, the only response was that this was being passed along to the director responsible for developments. This is just to emphasise that Northgate and Civica can’t be unaware of G-Cloud and in fact Northgate operate a ‘private cloud‘ and the same applies to Civica, who also have a private cloud service, and as with Northgate aim this at the education sector.
But why aren’t they on the list? Why also aren’t local government services such as revenues & benefits, development management or environmental health being treated to such an approach? Are they such ‘cash cows’ that they’re afraid of losing money? Is the education sector, now so fragmented by central government policy, that it’s an easy picking? I don’t know the answers but I bet the first one in the market with some of these solutions on the CloudStore will gain a lot of interest from hard-pressed local government. Early days, I suppose…
Posted by greatemancipator 
The Great E-mancipator 