Capgemini wins $40m childrens database deal

Capgemini UK has been awarded a six-year, £40m contract to build and host an online directory intended to make it easier for public services employees working with children to co-ordinate services. The project is being funded by the newly created Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF).

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Called ContactPoint, the network will hold records of all children in England from birth until they reach 18. Initially data will come from the DCSF, the NHS Connecting for Health, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Office for National Statistics. Other data sources will be added over time, according to Capgemini.

The DCSF and Capgemini are keen to stress that the system will be audited by independent security experts during its build. The system is expected to go live from early 2008 and Capgemini will host it until 2014.

The resource is part of the government's Every Child Matters: Change for Children initiative, which seeks to co-ordinate social care for the young across England.

In a policy statement published in May 2007 the DCSF said: "ContactPoint will enable practitioners across education, health, social care, youth justice and the voluntary sector to find out who else is working with a child or young person so that they can, where appropriate, work together to deliver better coordinated support, and improve the outcomes and the experience of public services for all children, young people and families."

The data repository will be partitioned into 150 parts, relating to each local authority in England. Any partition can be accessed by any authorised user and data is structured so that children who move between authorities will not fall out of the sytem.

It is expected that the total cost of implementing the system throughout all of the local authorities will cost the government £224m over three years and will involve each of them setting up teams to support data migration, matching and cleansing during roll-out and to promote the resource to its employees.