Dominic Ayres

28 September 2020

G-Cloud 12 Launch Streamlines Public Sector Path to Cloud and Digital Transformation

Today, the twelfth and latest iteration of the G-Cloud procurement framework has gone live.

G-Cloud 12 is the main mechanism by which UK Public Sector organisations can easily procure digital services via the Crown Commercial Service’s Digital Marketplace.

The adoption of cloud in the UK public sector continues to grow - a recent study by the Cloud Industry Forum found that 82 percent of public sector organisations have some form of cloud-based services in use today, having risen from only 38 percent in 2010.

This rapid growth can be attributed to frameworks like G-Cloud reducing the complexity and subsequent lead-time of procurement; and subsequently helping streamline the path to digital transformation.

As a professional services organisation focused on driving genuine, sustainable transformation, Contino has been present on G-Cloud Frameworks since 2016 to serve customers in the public sector. Our engagements with UK public sector organisations have ranged from capability assessments right up to large strategic change projects at central government departments.

In order to keep pace with the rate of innovation and speed to market of cloud service providers, software vendors and professional services organisations, the G-Cloud procurement is updated each year.

With each iteration of the framework, suppliers are able to revise and update their offerings. This year, Contino has added a number of new services to reflect the ever-changing needs of customers in the sector, and as a result of our growing range of capabilities.

Establishing a Modern Data Capability

Maturity Assessments & Building Cloud-Native Data Platforms

Firstly, we have two additional Assessment offerings to reflect the growing interest in the use of data in public sector organisations:

The Maturity Assessment for Data Capability casts a light over organisational abilities to collect, store, manage and use data effectively.
The Maturity Assessment for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence examines the organisation’s readiness to adopt or progress the adoption of Machine Learning.

For those organisations moving forward with their data initiatives, we advocate a short, sharp lighthouse-project approach. These projects are designed so that Contino resources are embedded within customer engineering teams and work towards a defined outcome in a hands-on engineering capacity. The aim is to deliver a business-valuable outcome using optimal tooling, approaches and automation practices. In the context of establishing a modern data capability, this approach is described in our new Building Cloud-Native Data Platforms offering.

Having these capabilities in place will permit organisations to:

Automate complex or repetitive processes
Enable proactive decision making
Better understand customer behaviour
Predict future trends more effectively

Some great examples of these capabilities in action can be found in the case study describing Contino’s work with Transport for New South Wales in Australia; and our recent Webinar - Harvesting the Power of Machine Learning to Minimise Customer Churn

Enabling Remote Working on Public Cloud

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent restrictions on people’s ability to commute or work in offices have severely affected the capability of many organisations to continue their day-to-day activities.

Firstly, ensuring the means for workforces to work effectively from home became an immediate priority for many. While video conferencing services exploded in popularity; the ability to replicate complex working environments remotely has been more challenging.

Contino’s Enabling Remote Working on Public Cloud G-Cloud offering describes how we can help public sector organisations stand up core virtual desktop capability in a scalable and secure way, leveraging either AWS’s Workspaces offering, or Windows VDI.

Virtual Contact Centres with Amazon Connect

Another challenge associated with enabling remote working has been in ensuring that customer interaction is not compromised. A significant challenge for many public sector organisations is maintaining interaction with customers without access to their on-premise contact centres.

Amazon Connect offers a cloud-based contact centre that requires just a laptop, headset and internet connection, permitting organisations to replicate their contact centre capability in the new remote-working context.

The opportunity to adopters, however, goes beyond replication into a new approach to customer interaction. For example, in connecting multiple data sources to build out Cognitive Customer Experience (CX) and allow for proactive interaction capabilities. Contino’s Virtual Contact Centres with Amazon Connect illustrates the approach we’d advocate customers take.

You can read more on both of these topics here:

Building Capability With Specific Cloud Service Providers (CSPs)

Many organisations in both public and private sectors are pursuing a multi-cloud strategy; sometimes for regulatory reasons, and sometimes for the purpose of not engendering dependence on a single provider or skillset within their technical organisation.

Contino maintains strategic partnerships with the three main public cloud service providers; namely AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. As a pure consulting organisation, Contino have no commercial imperative to resell cloud technology and can thus offer objective, unbiased support to help accelerate public sector organisations on their cloud adoption journey.

To that end, we have 3 G-Cloud offerings that may suit:

Cloud Platform Build - AWS Landing Zone
Cloud Platform Build - GCP Foundations
Cloud Platform Build - Secure Azure

Contino’s full suite of G-Cloud offerings are as follows:

Strategic Reviews & Assessments

Readiness or Maturity Assessment
Containerisation Readiness and Assessment
Cloud Optimisation & Healthcheck Assessment
DevSecOps Review for Public Sector Environments
Public Cloud TCO Assessment / Cloud Economics
Maturity Assessment for Machine Learning and AI
Maturity Assessment for Data Capability

Delivery

Establishing and Delivering Cloud Native Programmes
Architecture Definition and Design Service
Service Orchestration, Assurance and Management
Cloud Platform Build - AWS Landing Zone
Cloud Platform Build - GCP Foundations
Cloud Platform Build - Secure Azure
Cloud Operating Model
Establishing a Cloud Centre of Excellence
DevOps Lighthouse Project
Virtual Contact Centres with Amazon Connect
Enabling Remote Working on Public Cloud
Building Cloud-Native Data Platforms

Education and Enablement

Cloud Education/Enablement Workshops

We are also delighted to announce that Contino offerings are also hosted by Cognizant on the G-Cloud12 framework, as we continue to invest in our collaborative efforts in the public sector.

If you are interested in working with Contino, or you have any questions about Contino’s approach, public sector experience, or G-Cloud offerings, please contact dominic.ayres@contino.io.