Government awards £1.84bn public sector contracts
Winners include a mix of tech giants and local suppliers
The Crown Commercial Service (CCS), the commercial division of the UK Cabinet Office, has awarded a contract worth up to £1.84 billion to a variety of large tech firms.
The new arrangement, which covers vertical application solutions applicable to local authorities, will remain effective until 6th September 2025, with the possibility of an 18 month extension.
The agreement will replace the existing Data and Application Solutions framework, due to expire in May.
The CCS began the procurement process in January 2022, intending to procure software solutions and vertical applications from potential suppliers.
The new arrangement will be used by central government departments as well as other UK public sector bodies, such as local authorities, devolved administrations and health, education, police and fire & rescue organisations.
"This commercial agreement will be the vehicle for all who require software that was developed to meet the needs of their particular industry, as well as the associated essential hardware and professional services required to deliver the relevant software solution, in one procurement," said the CCS.
Framework agreements establish pre-negotiated terms and prices with suppliers, but they do not ensure the amount of work they will secure.
The 81 successful suppliers [Excel download] include major firms like Accenture, Atos, Capita, IBM, Palantir and Softcat, as well as smaller companies like Mobile Worker Plus, Tisski and Zipporah.
The framework is divided into five lots.
The first lot (37 suppliers) is intended for business applications. It will encompass solutions related to revenues and benefits, payment processing & cash receipt, and civil enforcement.
Lot 2 (32 suppliers) is exclusively dedicated to Education, Community Health, and Social Care Solutions. It includes learning applications and platforms, academic scheduling and management solutions, social care solutions, and enterprise health solutions.
Lot 3 (29 suppliers) is focused on Housing, Environmental, and Planning Solutions. It will encompass software solutions related to planning, building control, local land changes, regulatory services, licensing, property or housing management, geographic information systems (GIS), and waste management.
Lot 4 (nine suppliers), Citizen Services, covers museums, libraries, and sports and recreation centres. It may also cover registrar systems, democratic and citizen engagement systems, and burials and crematoria solutions.
Lot 5, dubbed Bluelight Solutions, will include systems likely to be used by the police or intelligence services. That may include surveillance and reconnaissance; investigation, intelligence, forensics, case and custody applications; emergency response and crisis management; command and control, integrated command and control systems; fraud detection; recording and audio-visual; digital asset management and data analytics.
This is not the only large-scale IT procurement the CCS is working on.
In September 2021, the agency declared a procurement framework for big data storage and analytics projects worth up to £2 billion over a four-year period.
That procurement process began in April 2022 and will continue until April 2026.
In March 2022, the government released a tender for cloud services in a framework agreement that has the potential to be worth up to £5 billion.