Public sector bodies have spent nearly £200m on services via G-Cloud so far, according to the latest Government figures.

And SMBs have netted 57% of the £191.5m total spend on services via the framework, according to the Cabinet Office statistics.

The digital initiative started back in 2012 and aimed to cut public sector IT costs by making it easier for SMBs to bid on contracts, increasing competition and cutting reliance on large enterprises.

Of the latest total spend, £109m went to small and medium companies as the government tries to up its IT procurement from smaller firms to 25% of total expenditure.

Enterprises listed as G-Cloud suppliers benefitted from an £83m spend as of May, while specialist cloud services have proved the most popular type of service, with a peak monthly spend of £24m in March this year.

It was followed by cloud software-as-a-service (SaaS), with a peak spend of £4.42m in March and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), with a peak spend of £2.03m, also in March.

The latest figures were released after Whitehall’s digital expert Tony Singleton had his job title adjusted to refocus on G-Cloud, now becoming ‘Director, G-Cloud and Digital Commercial Programme, Government Digital Service (GDS)’.

Singleton has remained responsible for the framework, but reference to it within his job title disappeared after the initiative became part of the GDS last year.

An overwhelming 80% of the total spend came through central government departments, with just 20% from the wider public sector, after the Cabinet Office admitted it needed to boost awareness of G-Cloud.

While the wider public sector spent £26m via the framework, local councils contributed just £11.4m.

Last week, a body representing local government CIOs hit back at claims county councils were wasting millions of pounds by neglecting G-Cloud, stating the framework was built with central government in mind.

Head of policy at Socitm, Martin Ferguson, told CBR: "From a local government point of view, a lot of services on there are not realistic to help local government with what services it delivers."

A Cabinet Office spokesman pointed out that 92 councils use the framework, while G-Cloud 5 boasts 1,132 cloud suppliers – 133 more than were available on version four.