The Government Applications Store (G-AS)
The Government Applications Store will be an online portal for the sharing and reuse of online business applications, services and components across the public sector. Rather than create bespoke solutions each time a requirement is identified, reuse will become the norm, enabling a substantial reduction in the 10,000+ unique applications used by the Public Sector and anticipated savings of over £500m per year by 2020.
What are the benefits?
- Reduced software licence costs through economies of scale for framework price negotiation, and reuse of surplus licences (TfL have saved 10% of software licensing costs this way)
- Reduced Application Development costs, through reusing application and code chunks already available within government
- Lower application prices driven by pricing transparency, aggregated buying power and improved competition
- Creation of a competitive and cost transparent market place which enables both large players and SMEs to offer their services to government
- Reduced length of procurement cycles, saving both industry and government valuable procurement resources. It is estimated that reducing the buying cycle from 18 to 9 months can translate into a £100m cost reduction per year across all government departments
- Reduced dependency on client side advisors used to support in-house procurement teams
- Improved ability to monitor application usage and gather user feedback
- Reuse government intellectual property across Public Sector
What’s next?
Key milestones are:
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Autumn 2009 – government ICT strategy published.
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By early 2010 – define the initial ‘market entry approach’.
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First half 2010 – deliver prototype G-AS.
Government Applications Store (G-AS) (ICT Strategy) [PDF]
Contact
For further information email apps.store@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk
