IT services company Capgemini has signed a £40m deal with the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) to build and host an online directory of children.

The ContactPoint system will hold details of all children in England from birth to age 18 and will allow better communications between those working with children, to help deliver more co-ordinated services.

Capgemini will build the system ready to go live in early 2008 and host it until at least 2014.

ContactPoint will contain only basic identifying information about children and contact details for their parents or carers and for services working with the child or young person.

It will extract the data needed directly from national and local sources, such as the DCSF, NHS, Department for Work and Pensions and Office for National Statistics.

Capgemini says the system will have the highest level of security, adhere to new international standards for information security management systems and conform to relevant government security standards.

Once it goes live, the system will be run from Capgemini’s secure data centre in the UK.

‘ContactPoint is crucial to the successful delivery of the government’s Every Child Matters programme and we are delighted to be entrusted with a project of such importance,’ said Capgemini vice president for education sector, John Cummings.