The Department of Health has awarded a £100m-plus, seven-year-plus
IT services outsourcing contract to Computer Sciences (CSC).
CSC will provide telephony, videoconferencing, desktop support and
help desk support for the DoH's 5,000 staff.
It beat off competition from SchlumbergerSema and Fujitsu, which,
as ICL, won the original outsourcing contract in 1996.
The deal, which has yet to be formally signed, was subject to the
Office of Government Commerce's gateway review procedure. It marks
a breakthrough for CSC, which had no central government IT
outsourcing contracts in the UK, although it is the IT provider to
the state-owned British Nuclear Fuels.
In a separate deal, SchlumbergerSema has signed a nine-year
contract to provide IT services to the Government's Vehicle
Inspectorate.
The core IS2003 contract is valued at £78m, but this is set to
increase as further as new projects are identified.
"Nigel Shenton, vehicle inspectorate partnership assurance and
commercial manager said payments to SchlumbergerSema would be
"linked closely to achievement of the Vehicle Inspectorate key
business performance indicators".
This approach, he said, "sets this contract apart from the usual
run-of-the-mill IT services or partnership contract."
SchlumbergerSema will provide business and technical consulting,
systems integration and managed services, including business
practice improvements, knowledge management and wireless mobile
services for the Vehicle Inspectorate staff.