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By Andy McCue, 23 July 2004 11:10

NEWS A trade union has raised concerns over the final bids for Bradford Council's £100m IT outsourcing project, claiming best value has not been demonstrated and that projected savings will not be achieved.

The council's 135 IT staff previously voted for strike action over transfer terms to the private sector - the decision to outsource was action was averted at the eleventh hour when agreement was reached between management and the Unison public sector trade union.

Atos KPMG and IBM/ITNet are both in the running for the 10-year Bradford-i project to overhaul the council's IT infrastructure and the preferred bidder is expected to be announced shortly.

But Unison has raised fresh concerns over the viability of the outsourcing project after examining the details of the bids when sitting on the council's steering group.

"Both bids require substantial savings to be achieved from business process re-engineering and there is precious little evidence within the public sector that such efficiency savings are ever realised in full," said a Unison representative said.

Unison has also questioned why no in-house bid has been prepared in order to measure the value of the private sector bids. The Unison representative said: "As far as Unison is concerned this is not a done deal and we will take measures to ensure the security of all our members affected through any partnership or business process re-engineering."

A spokeswoman for Bradford Council told silicon.com that Unison's comments are "premature and unhelpful" at this stage of the bidding process.

"The council does not wish to discuss any matters of potential commercial negotiation through the media and is surprised that Unison should consider that it is either sensible or appropriate to do so," she said. "However, we hope that Unison will now return to its previously stated commitment to work with the council to achieve a successful outcome to the Bradford-i project."