DEPARTMENT FOR WORK
AND PENSIONS News Release (ReferenceEMP-095) issued by The
Government News Network on 1 July 2008
A competition for
the contract to provide desktop services across the DWP from 2010
was announced today by the Department's Chief Information
Officer, Joe Harley.
Building on the effective foundations of the current desktop
service, the competition will help drive innovation and further
bring down the Department's IT costs.
Joe Harley said:
"We are reviewing our future plans for our major IT service
contracts as our principal existing contracts expire during
2010-11. We are committed to ensuring that future IT services
continue to be provided in a way which delivers the best service
to the citizen and maximum value for the taxpayer.
"To ensure this, we will be managing a series of
competitions to replace existing contracts progressively by 2015.
These will be conducted in accordance with public procurement
regulations. The first of these is the contract to provide
desktop services across the Department."
The contract will be open to competition and published in the
European Journal.
Notes to editors
1. The timing of these competitions will be determined by the
Department's operational need to sustain and improve services
to citizens, and analysis of market opportunities to deliver
additional value compared with existing arrangements.
2. This may mean that it becomes advantageous to the Department,
given the right terms, to extend elements of some existing
contracts on an interim basis.
3. The existing contract with EDS for one element of these IT
services - Data Centres - has already been extended so the
Department can secure early benefits from modern and reliable data
centre services.
Website http://www.dwp.gov.uk