BT said that it has been was awarded a three-year contract extension with The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), worth a minimum of £237m, to provide voice, data network and contact centre offerings to the UK government department.
Under the new contract extension, BT will continue to provide converged IP local and wide-area networks, IP telephony and a range of conferencing services including video conferencing to a range of units including Jobcentre Plus, the Pensions, Disability and Carers Service, Northern Ireland Social Security Agency and the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission.
BT has already delivered 118,000 IP telephony ports, 203,000 local area network connections, and 1,140 wide area network circuits across 1,140 DWP locations. It will continue to build and maintain the DWP’s contact centre infrastructure.
In addition, BT, which has already rolled out nearly 22,000 seats for the department’s virtual contact centre, plans to take the count to 30,000 in 2010.
BT said that it is working with the DWP to ensure that the network integrated communications and network services programme closely meets the UK government’s Public Sector Network (PSN) vision.
Sir Leigh Lewis, permanent secretary for the DWP, said: “Our relationship with BT has already played a major role in modernising the Department’s operations, enabling us to become even more customer focused and meet our customers’ ever more complex communications needs.
“The extension of our contract with BT will ensure that we are able to further improve our service to our customers, reduce costs and move closer to our objective of meeting Public Sector Network programme requirements.
