Cardiff Council has signed a 15-year contract with outsourcer Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a move the local authority claims makes it the first UK council to partner with an Indian-based IT company.

TCS will be tasked with integrating the council’s technology services. It is currently using systems from SAP for HR and finance, an Oracle-based schools system, and a second Oracle system for processing housing benefits and revenues.

The approach will be supported by TCS’s technology platform, Digigov, which has been developed to deliver better IT services to government.

The framework handles workflow and automates business processes, allowing information and knowledge management and helping to provide operational analytics.

Head of ICT at Cardiff council, Alan Thomas, said: "The system will make information better available and will connect our legacy systems, eliminating cross over."

He added: "For example, there is currently overlap with some of our document management systems, meaning data has to be entered twice in some cases. We are looking to get rid of this, which will save us time and money."

Mark Stephens, Cardiff Council's executive member for finance and service, said: "It was clear we needed to be more innovative about how we deliver our services. Bringing a technology partner on board is key to modernising our approach."

The partnership is the first step in a Citizen's Project that the council plans to launch in the coming months.

The project will see the council strike two further partnership deals, one with a social care provider and another in the area of planning and construction. Thomas said: "We considered a succesful technology partnership would underpin other projects and so we established this first."

Neither party was able to disclose the value of the deal.