Britain’s Inland Revenue is conducting exploratory talks with five major computing companies on possibly handing over its data processing operations under a facilities management contract. Those firms involved are IBM Corp, ICL Plc, Electronic Data Systems Corp’s SD-Scicon, Computer Sciences Corp and Digital Equipment Corp. Reuter suggests that the Chicago-based Andersen Consulting branch of Arthur Andersen & Co has been approached too. However, no-one was prepared to give details, saying discussions were at too embryonic a stage to justify comment. The Inland Revenue did concede though that it was exploring the feasiblity of a contractual partnership with one or possibly two major private sector computing organisations. All this talk of outsourcing is the up-shot of the so-called market-testing initiative announced in a recent government White Paper. The initiative is to be implemented across all government departments. Although no decisions have been reached at this stage, the Inland Revenue did emphasise that an agreement would only take place on a value for money basis for the highest quality service. It has written to its 2,800 staff already, explaining that it is seeking external advice on whether its UKP250m-a-year computer services operations can be made more compet itive. If running of the Inland Revenue systems is to pass to the private sector, a whole string of Health, Social Security, Defence administration and financial compu ter installations will likely be close behind, promising a big boost to the UK computer services sector.
