01 July 08 – Department announces future IT services contract arrangements
A competition for the contract to provide desktop services across the DWP from 2010 was announced today by the Department’s Chief Information Officer, Joe Harley.
Building on the effective foundations of the current desktop service, the competition will help drive innovation and further bring down the Department’s IT costs.
Joe Harley said:
“We are reviewing our future plans for our major IT service contracts as our principal existing contracts expire during 2010-11. We are committed to ensuring that future IT services continue to be provided in a way which delivers the best service to the citizen and maximum value for the taxpayer.
“To ensure this, we will be managing a series of competitions to replace existing contracts progressively by 2015. These will be conducted in accordance with public procurement regulations. The first of these is the contract to provide desktop services across the Department.”
The contract will be open to competition and published in the European Journal.
Notes to editors
- The timing of these competitions will be determined by the Department’s operational need to sustain and improve services to citizens, and analysis of market opportunities to deliver additional value compared with existing arrangements.
- This may mean that it becomes advantageous to the Department, given the right terms, to extend elements of some existing contracts on an interim basis.
- The existing contract with EDS for one element of these IT services – Data Centres – has already been extended so the Department can secure early benefits from modern and reliable data centre services.
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