There was some bad news for the UK SITS sector on the announcement of the Department for Work and Pension’s list of suppliers for its ‘Work Programme’, aimed at helping people off benefits and back into the job market.
Among the 40 contracts being let across 18 regions in the UK, only two have gone to a SITS supplier, albeit support services giant Serco, which secured deals in the West Midlands and South Yorkshire. This will come as a particularly big disappointment to Atos Origin, which had made it on to seven preferred supplier lots, but failed to make it as one of the eventual 16 private sector prime contractors. There are also two voluntary sector prime contractors, and a further 289 voluntary subcontractors – so perhaps we really are seeing the ‘big society’ in action.
Winning one of these contracts is a big deal. Over the course of the next seven years, the total value of spend is likely to be between £3bn and £5bn. And public sector opportunities like this don’t come around often these days. We understand that as much as 30% of the work related to finding people employment was IT-related, for instance through the use of recruitment and HR systems. So the lack of success for the SITS industry, makes us wonder whether IT services players were invited to bid more as stalking horses than serious contenders.
The big winners are names that most of us in the SITS sector won’t have heard of, such as “social purpose company” A4E (with five contracts), and employment and training company Avanta Enterprise (three contracts). However one or two have some interesting SITS connections that may come as a surprise.
Public-private joint venture Ingeus UK comes out on top over all with six contracts in the North West, East Midlands, West London, East of England, Scotland and West Yorkshire regions. Ingeus is a 50:50 JV between professional services firm Deloitte and Australian welfare-to-work provider Ingeus Group, whose stated raison d’etre is to “help as many unemployed people as possible into jobs that last”. Deloitte came on board in November 2010 to help Ingeus bid for seven contracts (the most allowed by one supplier), and to bring along its experience in ‘large scale programmes’ and ‘supply chain management’. Working Links, a “public, private and voluntary company” which secured three contracts, is another with SITS backing from Capgemini as one of two private sector investors (the other being recruitment firm Manpower). Capgemini has held a stake in Working Links since acquiring Ernst & Young Consulting many moons ago.
It is unclear how Deloitte and Capgemini will benefit from their involvement in these ventures, other than through their association with such a high profile, ‘big society’ experiment. But at least they have achieved something for their hard work. Atos, on the other hand, hasn’t been quite so lucky.