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By Andy McCue, 18 February 2004 17:55

NEWS The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has confirmed it is looking to consolidate three key IT contracts into one big outsourcing 'megadeal' in the first part of a restructuring of the force's IT and communications delivery.

silicon.com exclusively revealed yesterday that the force is looking for a single supplier to take over the bulk of its IT operations in a deal that will be worth "in excess" of £50m a year for up to 13 years.

A spokeswoman for the MPS confirmed to silicon.com that the three contracts affected are:

- the £125m Sema (now Atos Origin) contract signed in 1999 for desktop and network support services for 14,500 desktops;

- the £75m Damovo telephony contract (originally signed with Ericsson) to support the Met's mobile phones, pagers and 30,000 extensions; and

- the £60m, eight-year EDS contract signed in 2000 to run the force's crime reporting system.

The single 'megadeal' will streamline the delivery of core services to the police force, the spokeswoman said.

"Current IT and communications contracts let by the MPS in 1999 overlap in a number of areas and have a mix of direct service delivery and development elements," she said. "One of the key parts of the programme will be to allow much wider competition for IT and communications development work, potentially from framework contracts that will be separately set up later this year."

Asked whether the Met would consider any bids that included an offshore element for any of the services, the spokeswoman said the force is "obliged" to consider it as part of procurement rules but stressed it would have to provide high security guarantees.

"Any offshore sourcing proposals will need to meet a range of security, resilience and financial measures and controls to ensure that the MPS's position as a major public safety organisation is fully protected," she said.