Photo credit: Jim Trodel/Flickr.

The G-Cloud, the government's own cloud computing project, is still very much on the agenda despite budget cuts, says government official.

The project, which is aimed at making cost savings for IT departments across government institutions, was delayed following the general election in 2010 amidst mass personnel changes and financial restraints. The G-Cloud is now back up-and-running as parliament attempts to improve the efficiency of its workers while reducing spending on data centres.

Speaking at a Westminster eForum event yesterday, Ministry of Justice official Martin Bellamy said: “Anyone who thought the G-Cloud had gone a bit quiet, or that it's died — well, no it's not, it's alive and kicking.”

The G-Cloud project was invented under Labour in January 2010 and was claimed to be able to save the government £3.2bn of its annual £15bn IT budget. In June of last year, after the coalition had come to power, it was stated that by 2015 up to 80 per cent of government departments could be using the cloud. However, progress in implementing the G-Cloud project has been slow.

Warwickshire County Council is currently piloting Google Apps' Gmail and Google Docs services. The Home Office, meanwhile, is already utilising a private cloud from the supplier Savvis.

The government is now looking to greatly expand its cloud project, the G-Cloud, by using more small and mid-sized businesses to help in the procurement process. Bellamy also said that he is hopeful that these providers will offer more than adequate security measures as local governments and various government departments plan to move more of their data into the public cloud.

Although the G-Cloud is well under way and gaining momentum all the time, there are still likely to be problems when it comes to implementing cloud solutions on a much wider scale.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), for example, as the unenviable task of processing £140bn of tax payments as well as running trade systems for the UK's imports and exports. Finding a cloud provider who can meet the needs of such an organisation in terms of reliability, security and scalability will prove far more testing for those in Westminster.