Barnsley Council has begun work on the first of a series
of business transformation projects that it plans to fund from
back-office efficiencies created by an outsourcing
deal.
The South Yorkshire council is implementing a Hyperwave content
management system in a project that will cost between £2m and £3m
over 12 months.
The project is being paid for out of the annual £7.2m that
Barnsley pays to joint venture company TCL, which is co-owned by
the metropolitan borough council and French systems integrator Bull
Information Systems.
Barnsley signed a £72m, 10-year contract with TCL in July. Under
the deal, TCL manages all of the council’s IT services including
its desktops, server estate and applications, and is paid a flat
rate of £7.2m a year.
However, the cost of providing IT services in the contract is
expected to drop to £5.8m over time, and the extra money is being
used to supply the council with a series of transformational
projects.
Barnsley’s assistant chief executive Ken Rutt, who has
responsibility for IT, said, “We have identified three broad phases
for the content management system: implementation in the post room,
introducing a corporate document management system, and enabling
collaborative working.”
Council officers said they decided to set up a shared services
centre to run the business transformation projects, rather than
award the contract to another council, because they wanted to keep
IT jobs in Barnsley. Some 106 jobs have been outsourced to TCL, and
Bull is contractually committed to hiring a further 86 local people
over the life of the contract.
Rutt said, “The last thing we wanted to do was take 106 jobs out
of the local economy and send them to another council.”
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