Environment Agency leads the way to greener IT procurement

The agency wants to come up with the "greenest government IT contract ever"

The Environment Agency has this month entered the final short list phase of a £750m IT outsourcing deal that it plans to use to promote sustainable procurement practices across the government sector.

In an interview with IT Week, the Environment Agency’s newly appointed head of corporate information services, Simon Pitt, said his main objective is to come up with the most environmentally sustainable government IT contract ever, which could then be used as a template for all future public-sector outsourcing procurement deals.

“We are designing the contract with the hope that other government agencies and departments could benefit from it, especially around the area of sustainability – but we still need to define the parameters for this,” Pitt explained. “Possible options range from government bodies and agencies joining this contract, to using the principles from our contract as the foundation for setting up their own contracts with similar terms and conditions. We will discuss these options with the Cabinet Office’s Green IT Working Group and with the three suppliers that we have short-listed.”

Pitt said that negotiations were ahead of schedule and had now entered the detailed dialogue stage. He added that the agency should be able to reveal its final choice of service provider by the end of December.

“If we get the contract right and cascade it throughout the governement sector, it would be a real coup,” he said.

Details of the 10-year deal were first revealed at the close of 2007. It will see around 170 IT-related jobs transfer to the chosen service provider, which will be responsible for the day-to-day running of the Environment Agency’s systems.

“My priority is to ensure that we get the best value possible, that we meet our sustainability goals and that we can offer the adaptable, flexible and agile IT that the Environment Agency, our customers and partners need in the future,” Pitt said.