Nursing and midwifery council signs £5.2m contract with BSG

BSG will provide network services and software support

BSG lands £5.3m contract with regulator

The UK’s nursing and midwifery regulator the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has signed a five-year contract with computer software company Business Systems Group (BSG) to provide network services.

The contract is worth up to £5.2m and will see the company managing and hosting NMC’s core IT infrastructure across two datacentres.

The company will manage and host the NMC’s servers and networks, disaster recovery, systems monitoring, technical design and ongoing consultation. BSG will also provide database and operating system support and manage NMC’s Microsoft Exchange email, Citrix desktops and Cisco CallManager telephony.

The software specialist will also host NMC’s OpenAccounts financial management system provided by BSG’s sister company COA Solutions, and provide the NMC test and development environments as new applications come online. NMC’s current in-house IT staff will be moved across to work for BSG.

This will see the NMC’s IT infrastructure and systems being outsourced for the first time and the regulator said it hopes to benefit from better value for money, enhanced service delivery, greater IT innovation, access to a large pool of IT skills and increased security.

The contract was signed following a six-month tendering process, which saw BSG selected as the sole IT supplier.

Under the terms of the contract, BSG is required to ensure 99.9 per cent service availability and timely incident management.