Late last week Norfolk County Council (NCC) announced that it had awarded HP a £26m, five-year, contract (Digital Norfolk Ambition) to provide desktop, data centre and collaboration infrastructure enabling better ways of working across Norfolk. As highlighted in the PublicSectorViews report, UK public sector SITS market trends & forecasts 2013; integral to the contract is the delivery of a “Norfolk Information Centre” to integrate information from across the council, its partners and public sources for better decision making.
The partnership between Norfolk County Council and HP is interesting from a number of perspectives. It puts 'big data' at its heart and picks up on the economic and social value that big data can drive. Commercially, it is innovatively structured to draw on expertise from large tech companies, SMEs, and academia, as well as the wider community. And it has the potential to be a launching platform for HP into the local government IT services market, We have spoken extensively to both Norfolk County Council CIO Tom Baker and HP Enterprise Services Director of Strategy, Civil Government, James Johns, and will have much more for TechMarketView subscribers on UKHotviewsExtra.