Capgemini takes over Revenue's IT

Capgemini today takes over responsibility for the Inland Revenue's IT systems under the £3bn Aspire deal, ending outgoing supplier EDS's 10-year relationship.

Since EDS lost the contract in December, the transfer has been watched closely to see how practical it is for long-term outsourcing providers to be replaced.

The six-month transition period focused on transfer of staff, ensuring continuity of service from existing systems and the handover of uncompleted projects.

More than 95 per cent of former EDS employees moved to Capgemini under Tupe legislation to protect employees' rights, and 280 of EDS's 293 sub-contractor deals have so far been passed to the new supplier.

Despite the size and complexity of the transition process, in some areas six months was too long, Capgemini head of Aspire Martin Cook told Computing.

'The thing we focused on, rightly, was as quickly as possible to start talking to individual staff, answering their questions and concentrating on what mattered to them rather than making a big fuss about how brilliant we were,' he said.

'While the full six months was necessary for a lot of the very complicated commercial stuff, that is not interesting to the people concerned and the continuity of service. After three or four months of working with staff there was still two months to go before the formal handover which led to a degree of uncertainty that wasn't necessary.'

There are significant differences between the Aspire contract and its predecessor, says Cook.

'Aspire is a different type of contract so the commercial arrangements were always going to take a certain amount of time and we concentrated on that so it doesn't disrupt the delivery of projects,' he said.

A spokesman for the Revenue said: 'The transition has been a huge task requiring both suppliers and the Inland Revenue to have a key role in developing the ongoing requirements for existing systems whilst maintaining the development of individual projects.

'Good progress has been made throughout the transition and we are confident that there will be a smooth transition of work from EDS to Capgemini as planned.'