The Metropolitan Police Service has selected the Cubit
consortium, led by Capgemini, as its preferred bidder for a £350m,
seven-year IT services contract.
The Cubit consortium also includes Unisys and BT.
The metAgility consortium, led by EDS, which lost out to Cubit,
has been retained as a "reserve bidder".
The contract will consolidate a £125m, five-year desktop support
and networks management contract let to Sema, now Atos Origin, in
1999 and a £75m telephony contract originally let to Ericsson and
now run by Damovo, also in 1999. It addition, it includes a £60m,
eight-year contract signed with EDS in 2000 to run the Met's crime
reporting system.
Cubit and the police service will now thrash out the final
details of the contract before it is presented to the Metropolitan
Police Authority in November for final approval.
Once the deal is approved, Cubit is expected to start providing
IT services to the Met from next summer. Until then, the Met's
current suppliers will continue to provide their services.
Ailsa Beaton, the Met's director of information, said, "Through
this contract we aim to increase the quality of ICT service for all
Metropolitan Police Service staff, set customer-focused service
levels and provide greater visibility of the quality of
service."
Beaton added that the Met wanted to achieve strategic benefits
through streamlined contract management, improved management
reporting of service and cost data, and by having service costs
benchmarked against market rates to ensure they remain competitive
over the life of the contract.
John O'Brien, an analyst with Ovum, said, "This is more about
consolidating contracts and simplifying IT procurement. "Capgemini
is now in control of the majority of IT at the MetÉ it should
reduce its project management costs."
* The Police Information Technology Organisation has awarded a
four-and-a-half-year contract to provide and manage a replacement
UK National Police Portal System to QinetiQ. The UK National Police
Portal System was launched in 2002. It has been developed and
managed under contract by BT. This contract is due to end in March
2006.