In the news: Tony Singleton OBE interviewed by CRN

Our newest team member Tony Singleton OBE was recently interviewed by Tom Wright from CRN, in this interview Tony talks about his time leading G-Cloud and fears for the possibility of ‘framework bloats’.

Tony assumed responsibility for G-Cloud when the framework was just 2 years old, and it is safe to say he didn’t not entirely inherit a success. In 2014 just £33m had been put through the framework, with the average month spend at a low £2.6m. Tony says that this is largely due to the media’s perception of the framework as a marketing gimmick to silence criticism from SME’s. After succeeding the framework and battling the terrible twos, Tony and the rest of the GDS team managed to drive sales to over £1bn.

Despite scepticism from the media and initial low spend, G-Cloud was always championed by government, who Tony says were committed to supporting SME’s and the G-Cloud ethos.

However, whilst riding high on the successes of G-Cloud, Tony is fearful for the future of G-Cloud and other frameworks from suffering ‘bloats’. This is something that Tony will be getting his teeth into at Advice Cloud. As well as helping SME’s and spreading the G-Cloud message, he is looking forward to having the opportunity to work with the public sector to avoid the bloating and adding in of unnecessary clauses. Part of G-Cloud’s charm lies in its simplicity and in the future Tony hopes that frameworks, in the style of G-Cloud will not only be reserved for tech but rolled out across other areas of public sector procurement.

We at Advice Cloud and with the welcome addition of Tony, are hoping to make a positive impact on future framework developments. Let’s avoid those bloats!

Read Tony’s full CRN interview here.