Small businesses in the technology sector will be able to bid to win millions of pounds of business through a major government procurement framework.

G-Cloud gives central government, local councils, NHS Trusts and other public sector bodies a way to buy cloud-based services, such as web hosting from a single, central website.

Oliver Dowden MP, minister for implementation, announced that a new version of the G-Cloud procurement framework will open for bids in April, allowing new companies to join the framework – after delivering £1.4bn of spend to small businesses since its inception.

The decision to release a new version of the framework will support new companies, including small businesses, to supply to government, while also giving current suppliers the opportunity to update their service offer and pricing.

Companies will be able to bid to join the framework from April and it's expected to go live in June. The current version of the framework has 2,856 suppliers, over 90 per cent of which are SMEs.  

To find out more, see the Digital Marketplace.