A consortium lead by the Anglo-French IT services company, Sema Group has been selected as the preferred bidder for a 10-year contract to take the UK’s Home Office into the twenty-first century. Consultancy house Deloitte Consulting and CSL make up the other parts of the coalition.
The contract comes in the wake of Chancellor Gordon Brown’s commitment to IT in this year’s budget. A Home Office spokesperson said that this was all part of that modern government, better government strategy.
The consortium is charged with transferring the ministry’s paperwork onto computerized records, improving business practices and telecommunications. The pay division for the department will be managed by CSL from Liverpool, where the company already has offices. Neither Sema nor the Home Office disclosed the size of the contract, but a Home Office spokesperson said that it was in the low hundred millions of pounds. As to how many Home Office staff will be relocated, the official said it’s probably going to be around 200 or less.
The UK government recently had its fingers burned in another outsourcing deal, a seven-year contract with Siemens Business Services, whose transference of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate’s (IND) filing onto hard disk has been delayed by around eighteen months. The IND moved offices at the same time, creating chaos for thousands of foreign nationals unable to access their visa records. The Home Office is due for building refurbishment in 2000 and 2001. The contract for the work is currently out for bidding.
