The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has reduced the shortlist for its multi-million pound Future Firecrest desktop infrastructure project down to the final two bidders.

HP and the SAIC-led Trinity consortium are still in the running for the deal, following the de-selection of Fujitsu.

The contract is expected to be signed by the end of the year and is a key element of the FCO's 'eDiplomacy' IT strategy.

The existing Firecrest system provides a single infrastructure for all 11,000 FCO desktops in 153 countries across the world.

Future Firecrest is the next generation of the existing platform. It will provide more mobile rapid-response systems, including greater availability of video-conferencing facilities to allow global teams to work together regardless of location.

'A major challenge for FCO for the future is the need for more mobile working,' FCO head of IT strategy Nick Westcott told Computing.

The FCO's other major project is Prism - the roll out of enterprise resource planning software to manage its human resources and finance systems. The plan is to bring together the dozen different systems in use into a single system accessible in all FCO locations.