DWP extends HP contract without call for competition (UPDATED)

DWP says it had to extend HP's contract because of 'technical reasons'

The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) has extended HP's contract to manage the department's hosting infrastructure service, known as Standard Services Business Allocation - SSBA - without a call for competition.

The services under the Accord contract had been due to expire this month, but DWP has moved swiftly to sign HP up to a three-year extension, stating that it had "technical reasons" for why the public contract may be awarded only to one particular economic operator.

Some of the "technical reasons" to not switch to another vendor were: an unacceptable level of delivery risk and because many of the assets are not available to be purchased on the market on a like-for-like basis any longer.

In addition, DWP also said that the end-to-end service is fragmented between several tower contracts, and in some cases, the technical parameters within the systems, are very intricate, meaning that no other provider "would be able to legitimately provide the service".

TechMarketView's Georgina O'Toole said it was "a perfect illustration of the difficulties major departments like DWP have in moving away from existing arrangements of supporting large and complex legacy systems".

In the public notice, DWP said that "it is imperative that the administration of welfare state benefits and payments are maintained without disruption. Such payments are a critical part of the contracting authority's duties and the supporting IT infrastructure is designated as critical national infrastructure".

DWP stated that the contract extension would allow it to "minimise any unacceptable risks of service transition and delivery failure that could prevent the contracting authority complying with its statutory duties whilst allowing the contracting authority to make exit arrangements".

It added that it is actively taking steps to conduct new competitive procurements for the managed hosting infrastructure services. It intends to move its entire IT infrastructure from the existing suppliers' data centres to Crown Hosting Data Centres or alternative appropriate cloud-based services under the G-Cloud framework.

"To preserve the business continuity and integrity of the welfare state the contracting authority is required to transition its IT infrastructure gradually," DWP claims.

Update:

In a statement sent to Computing, a DWP spokesperson said: "We are in the process of extending this contract for three years for the purpose of transition and exit."