Next Treasury tower contracts go to Centerprise and NTT Data UK

The HM Treasury has awarded its second and third SME supplier contracts to Centerprise International and NTT Data UK.

Centerprise International will provide the department with printing devices, software, and support services, while NTT Data UK - a subsidiary of the large Japanese technology company with 60,000 employees – will provide core ICT services including mail and system integration.

These contracts are the latest to be awarded as part of the Treasury’s ICT 2015 programme, the first also going to Hampshire-based services provider Centerprise in April. The four-year media and wireless contract was understood to be worth around £2.5m, which would also see the supplier providing WAN/PSN service accredited to level 3 security standards.

The contracts came from an open competition run by the department to find multiple new companies to replace its single ICT provider contract, which ends in January 2015. The ICT 2015 Programme involves a new IT services model designed to make it easier for smaller IT suppliers to win government business, thereby reducing the hold of the “oligopoly” of large system integrators that dominate Whitehall IT.

Huw Stephens, HM Treasury’s ICT 2015 programme director said: “These new partnerships mean HM Treasury’s ICT services will become more flexible, more responsive and more competitive in line with the government’s vision for ICT. We will now be working closely with all of our suppliers to ensure that delivery is achieved in a smooth and collaborative manner.”

Last summer, the Treasury became one of the first Whitehall departments to move away from existing single-supplier outsourcing mega-deals.

Its new IT services model will be based on five “service towers”, operating under an over-arching managed IT services function. Three out of the five towers now have contracted suppliers, including core IT services, printing services and media and wireless.

The three-year contract with NTT Data UK will supply services to the Treasury’s largest tower, core ICT services, in its new service tower operating model.

The other government department, which has moved to the tower-model approach, is the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

Its tower model approach has allowed DECC to break down its IT contract into as many component parts as possible, and find different specialist companies – mainly sourced from G-Cloud - to supply the various technologies.

Those towers include PSN, hosting, user devices, office productivity, line of business support, printed and electronic records, and document management (EDRM) to enable DECC to become more collaborative, unified and joined up.

The model is more complex and requires more in-house resources compared to its legacy Fujitsu outsourcing contract, but DECC claims it will see net savings on IT costs of 15-20% year on year.