UK county councils could be “wasting millions” on IT services they could buy more cheaply through the government’s central digital marketplace, research suggests.

In the 2012-13 financial year, county councils spent nearly £440m in total on IT services, including staffing costs, but just £385,000 of that through the government’s “G-Cloud” framework.

The G-Cloud initiative, launched in 2012, aims to shave £120m a year off the public sector IT bill by encouraging all public sector bodies to buy IT products and services through the government’s CloudStore digital marketplace.

Reported by the BBC. You can read the full story here.

I am a journalist and author. I am a journalist at the UK edition of WIRED magazine. In 2015, my first book Freedom of Information: A Practical Guide for UK Journalists, was published. My second book Reed Hastings: Building Netflix, was published in March 2020. I created FOI Directory in 2012 and have maintained it in my spare time ever since.