It’s all change at Cumbria County Council. In August 2010 (see Capita’s time at Cumbria CC comes to an end), we wrote about the Council’s decision to move away from a large outsourced contract for a range of business services. Now, we learn that the Council has chosen a new ICT provider. Computacenter has been named as the Preferred Bidder for a five year contract to deliver ICT services to the Council when the existing contract comes to an end on 31st March 2012.
Notably, incumbent supplier, Agilisys, which has been the Council’s ICT supplier since 2005, was absent from the shortlist announced in June 2011. The ICT contract procurement was made up of two Lots. The first for the provision of ICT services to the council (worth c£60 million) and the second for the support of a county-wide initiative to provide public sector networks across Cumbria and superfast broadband across the County (also worth c£60m). The shortlisted bidders for Lot 1 were BT Global Services, Commendium, Computacenter, Fujitsu and TCS, i.e. players with a strong suit in infrastructure and/or communication services. Shortlisted Lot 2 suppliers were BT Global Services, Cable & Wireless, Commendium and CSC.
The Council’s press release it states “all credit has to go to the current supplier (Agilisys) who has served us well over the last five years and who have made a significant contribution to the council’s improvement journey”. It strikes us that the Council was looking for a very different type of supplier at re-tender in order to support the next phase of its ICT strategy. The next phase of Cumbria’s ICT strategy has a heavy focus on transforming the Council’s use of technology in order to support, for example, smart working, greening its ICT and self service enablement. It also needs to deliver its ICT with less resource.
Computacenter will benefit to the tune of £10 million in the first year of the contract (2012/13). That will give a significant boost to Computacenter’s UK public sector SITS revenues, which we estimate stood at about £90 million in 2011.