Further to our comment on Civica’s results on Monday (see Civica outperforms the market in 2012), we can now confirm that it has secured an outsourced revenue and benefits contract with Forest of Dean District Council, building on the partnership it formed with Gloucester City Council in October 2011 (see here). Forest of Dean, which already uses Civica’s software, plans to save £100k+ p.a. through the deal. This is a great example of a district council joining forces with a neighbour and its private sector partner to share services. It’s also a good strategic win for Civica, which is hoping to persuade more of its local government software clients to follow suit by outsourcing specialist services such as revenue and benefits to it in a bid to cut costs.
Civica has also been selected as preferred provider for the Lambeth Learning Futures contract, a managed ICT service for Lambeth Schools. According to Lambeth’s press release it was Civica’s ‘transparent value for money approach’ and track record in education that swung it for them. Civica was a supplier to the previous government’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme, which was cancelled in 2010 (see Counting the costs of BSF cuts), but it’s succeeded in replacing most lost BSF revenue with wins at new Academies and Free Schools. Yesterday’s news of a fresh £1bn of investment in school building by the coalition government can only be good news for the supplier and others in the English schools ICT market, notably RM, Capita and Northgate. But it still pales in comparison to the scale of the erstwhile BSF programme, which would have seen £45bn+ of investment in school building (see our recent UK Education SITS Market Trends and Forecasts report for more background if you’re a PublicSectorViews subscriber).