We learn today that another piece of the DWP’s ADEP (application deployment) jigsaw has been put into place (see DWP extends relationship with HP). Having missed out at the final hurdle on Lots 3 (Business Facilitating Systems) and 5 (Business Prototyping) – see DWP awards to IBM and Capgemini – Accenture has announced that it has landed the last ‘Lot’ within the ADEP 'tower' procurement.
The company reports that it has been awarded a contract by the department for up to seven years to deliver application development and maintenance services for its customer-facing systems (Lot 1). This will include delivery of elements of the IT solution for Universal Credit. The contract is valued at between £50 million and £70 million per annum depending on the level of demand from DWP. Accenture will partner with Atos to deliver the services and has highlighted Atos’ capabilities in delivering secure online citizen self-service applications.
As Accenture points out, it has a “longstanding relationship with DWP”. Most notably, it has been the main supplier on a couple of major development projects: the department’s Pensions Transformation Project (implementing a one-stop call centre service) and its Customer Information System (designed to give civil servants a ‘whole person view’ of the personal details of claimants and other citizens). This time will be slightly different; suppliers on the Universal Credit Programme are being incentivised to use agile methodologies in order to meet the tight delivery deadline. However, as we highlight in our latest research report – UK Government ICT strategy: the ‘what’ to the ‘what ifs’ – the ability of ‘agile’ to deliver successful results on a major development project has yet to be proven. All eyes will be on this one...