Wiltshire County Council has outsourced the management of its IT infrastructure to services provider Steria in a £12m five year contract.

Steria will take over the running of the council's IT infrastructure at the beginning of October from supplier Sungard Vivista.

It will manage systems used by 3,500 council workers, 900 of which are based at County Hall in Trowbridge, the others at 200 other sites across Witshire.

'This contract will provide the flexible framework we need to deliver improved services and facilitate the change necessary to meet our ambitions and corporate goals as a Council,' said Jane Scott, leader of Wiltshire County Council.

Introducing a new infrastructure and improving part technology are part of a more business change process taking place across the authority at the moment.

Tim Gregory, head of IT at Wiltshire said: 'We are enabling major changes across the authority, and we wanted to be able to try and drive that change by providing technical facilities and a good IT service to ensure that we can make the changes in HR practices and Financial management that we need to make.'

The new infrastructure will enable more employees to work remotely.

Forming part of the ‘Ways of Working’ initiative, the Council plans to have more home-based and mobile staff working over the next two years.

What do you think? Email us at: feedback@computing.co.uk