Yer 'aving a Larf
Back in the day (that'll be 2010 then), I attended a series of 'workshops' with the CTO/strategy team of a very large Gov Dept. there sat about 20 of us, representing the most significant IT Players n the industry. The topic was focused discussion on Cloud enablement strategy for the Dept.
1) the Dept team had no notion of any deployment above IaaS and only the sketchiest view of what that meant
2) over 3/4 of attendees (allegedly a group of experts) had no knowledge of NIST, when asked what should be the applied definition of Cloud
3) my erstwhile colleague, another 'expert', spent the entire time talking about virtualisation in the DC, which...
4) the Dept team were excited about. Bottom line, this group of forward thinkers were looking at Cloud=virtualisation for this Department, in isolation from all Gov areas. Period. Rationale? I refer you to xyz's Post!
As for G-Cloud. Please, don't get me started - I could write a book, probably entitled "The Blind (IT Company), leading The Stupid (Gov Strategists) over the Cliff (of Political Puffery).
I will say this - the majority of senior folks from IT Companies that engage regularly with their Government customers tend to adopt the self-same conservative approach to everything. E.g. If I'd had a £ for every presentation/conversation I gave to those people where the answer was "hmm, interesting but MY Department Customer could never use Cloud, it would contravene security/control/authority/CESG/whatever AND I personally think Cloud is just a fad anyway" I'd have retired! What's most galling is the knowledge that most of those folks are now touts for whatever Cloud-washed inanity their respective IT Company is now flogging to HMG.
Hmm. A book. ;-)