£3bn gov't IT contracts up for grabs

Tech contracts worth a total of £3bn are up for grabs at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) as part of plans for servicing and upgrading the organisation's entire infrastructure.

Five IT contracts will be awarded over the next seven years and the DWP has put the first of these contracts, to provide its desktop PC services, out to competition this week.

Other contracts will be awarded for maintaining and upgrading its hosting services, its voice and data networks, application maintenance and support and integration services.

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DWP CIO Joe Harley said in a statement: "We are reviewing our future plans for our major IT service contracts as our principal existing contracts expire during 2010-11. We are committed to ensuring that future IT services continue to be provided in a way which delivers the best service to the citizen and maximum value for the taxpayer."

The DWP has already extended an existing contract with EDS to continue running its data centres.

Further money is expected to be spent on application development by the department.

The announcement comes a week after the Treasury's appointment of Martin Read, former CEO of IT outsourcer Logica, to get the government's £13bn annual IT spend under control.

The public sector procurement body, the Office of Government Commerce, has also recently announced a new version of the free IT model contract to deliver better value-for-money for complex procurements.