Barclays

Vendors: Getronics to provide desktop and application management services; Accenture for application development; Intelenet Global Services for business processing outsourcing services; Siemens Business Services to supply retail banking bank office processing; BT to provide network services.  

Project Leader: Dominic Trotta, CIO. 

Budget: Approximately £778 million. 

Project Summary: In 2002, Barclays was widely expected to Outsource its IT infrastructure to IBM Global Services in a deal estimated to be worth more than £100 million per year, but changed its mind and decided to go for medium-sized deals with different suppliers.

It signed up EDS in a £214 million, seven year deal in June 2003 to undertake desktop management, followed a year later by a £400 million, six-year-long contract with Accenture.

In February this year Barclays also extended its five-year agreement, worth £45 million, with Siemens Business Services for another two years. At the same time, Barclays consolidated multiple former network contracts with BT into a single seven-year deal worth £500 million. 

Current Status: Barclays plans to ship 10,800 jobs from the West to low-cost countries as part of a restructuring that would follow its planned acquisition of ABN AMRO. Barclays' $91 billion offer to buy ABN AMRO is intended to create annual savings of $4.75 billion by 2010. Part of those savings would be achieved through lower labour costs. Barclays says it will also cut outright 12,800 staff positions if its plan is approved by ABN AMRO shareholders.

ABN AMRO in 2005 handed a chunk of its IT operations, along with 3,200 tech jobs, to five Vendors under more than $2 billion worth of contracts. The Vendors include US-based IBM and Accenture as well as Indian outsourcers Tata Consultancy Services, Patni Computer Systems and Infosys Technologies.

BBC

Vendors: Siemens Business Services, IT; Xansa, finance and accounting; Capita, HR.  

Project Leader: John Varney, chief technology officer; Stephen Dando, director of BBC People.  

Budget: £2 billion over 10 years for BBC Technology; £130 million over 10 years for BBC People; £8.5 million for finance. 

Project Summary: In October, 2004, the BBC signed a 10-year deal with Siemens Business Services to provide it with IT services, but as part of the contract the vendor also purchased its BBC Technology arm, which it renamed Siemens Business Services Media Holdings. The BBC hopes to save £30 million over the life of the contract.

In July 2005, BBC People, the broadcaster’s HR department, issued a request for proposal for outsourcing suppliers in the Official Journal of the European Union and published a long-list of contenders in September. These were Accenture, Capita, Convergys, Excellerate HRO, Hewitt, IBM, Northgate and Xchanging. 

Current Status: The BBC has selected Capita as the supplier to Whitehaven Cumbria, the first area in the UK to make the digital switchover in October.

Capita was selected from a shortlist of four companies (BT, Capita, EAGA and Vertex), all of whom are eligible to continue to bid for the national contract to deliver the Help Scheme for the roll-out across the rest of the UK between 2008 and 2012. This contract will run for 10 months from June 2007 and will cost approximately £1 million.

Support services will be offered to those who are 75 and over, the severely disabled, and those who are registered partially sighted and blind. These include a Help Centre located in Whitehaven to provide easy access to information for eligible customers as well as support with any queries and concerns; the necessary equipment to convert one television set to digital and support with installation, where required; and follow up support, where required, once switchover has taken place.

The procurement process for selecting the supplier to deliver the UK-wide Help Scheme is ongoing, with the contract expected to be awarded towards the end of 2007. The process of digital switchover will take place between 2008 and 2012, TV region by TV region.

NHS

Vendors: NHS Connecting for Health, a government agency, is overseeing activities from a range of suppliers, including Accenture, the Capital Care Alliance headed by BT, CSC and the Fujitsu Alliance.

Project Leader: Richard Granger, director general for NHS IT. 

Budget: In dispute.

Project Summary: The aim of the NHS National Programme for Information Technology, run by NHS Connecting for Health, is to provide health professionals with access to health records for England’s 50 million citizens.

The project comprises four key elements – an electronic care records service; an electronic booking system; an electronic transmission of prescriptions service; and the underlying IT infrastructure to support both local and national systems.

The scheme was originally expected to cost £3.2 billion and take three years, but has now been expanded to 10 years and been budgeted to cost nearly twice the original figure. Department of Health officials have estimated that the final bill may come to between £18.6 million and £31 billion, however. 

Current Status: "Less whining!" – that’s what NHS IT boss Richard Granger wants to see from the massed ranks of those who are criticising the lack of progress in the £12.4 billion National Programme for IT (NPfIT).

"The programme gets continuously knocked,” complained Granger. “I don't think that will stop probably for another five years, and then the obituary on the programme will be 'Well why was it so difficult? Why didn't it get done more quickly?' and maybe the answer to that is: if there'd been a bit less whining and more support, it might have done."

That said, Granger has assured MPs that the core Lorenzo information-exchange system will be available to hospitals next year. He insisted that troubled supplier iSoft's code is now largely completed and near a state of readiness for production.

But Professor John Feehally, president of the Renal Association, said leaders of NPfIT must "come down from the mountain top" and communicate with clinicians. He complained of "appalling lack of clinical involvement from the beginning" and an assumption that doctors know nothing about IT, when they have been using computers for 20 years.” The result is systems which don’t support patient care, and a lack of focus on clinical systems and the sharing of information.

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, formerly the Inland Revenue

Vendors: Cap Gemini Ernst & Young heads a consortium that runs all of HMRC’s IT systems. The consortium also includes Fujitsu Services, which runs the organisation’s core datacentre services and desktop systems, and BT, which operates its voice support services. SCC provides IT, telecommunications and audiovisual equipment, and services such as catalogue management.

Project Leader: Steve Lamey, CIO. 

Budget: Aspire: £3 billion over 10 years; Customs and Excise: £929 million over 10 years

Project Summary: In December 2003, the Inland Revenue awarded its 10-year Aspire contract, which has an eight-year extension option, to a consortium led by Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. In the process, it replaced EDS and Accenture.

Since then there has been the merger between the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise to create Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC). This means integrating both departments’ systems under a three-year plan.

Current Status: The total cost of HM Revenue & Customs' 10-year ASPIRE IT outsourcing contract has more than doubled since the contract was awarded in 2004, according to a Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report.

The original bid from the Capgemini Ernst & Young consortium was £2.83 billion, based on the department's 2003 estimate of its needs. The department's current forecast for the 10- year contract has risen to £8.5 billion. "Before concluding the deal, the department should have evaluated bids against a range of demands for IT services," the PAC report suggested.

The Revenue spent £11.9 million on consultants, but did not evaluate their performance and quality of advice. “As a general principle, departments should evaluate the performance of consultants and lessons learned from their use, not only for their own benefit but for that of other departments," the PAC concluded.

That said, according to the report, Capgemini’s performance on the contract has been satisfactory so far and is improving. It is achieving more than 90 percent of its 500 performance targets. If margins remain at the current level of 10-13 percent Capgemini’s profit on the contract as a whole could be £1.1 billion compared to the £300 million initially envisaged. While overall profits are rising, the margins have not reached the thresholds which would trigger a profit-sharing agreement with the client.

Ministry of Defence

Vendors: EDS heads the ATLAS consortium, which is supplying all of the MoD’s IT services for its Defence Information Infrastructure (Future) project. BT Global Services is providing e-learning-based training and education services. 

Project Leader: Lieutenant General Anthony Palmer, Deputy Chief of Defence Staff (Personnel). 

Budget: £4 billion over 10 years for the Future project and £21 million over 10 years for the e-learning deal.

Project Summary: In March 2005, EDS won a contract with the MoD as head of a consortium including Fujitsu Services, General Dynamics, EADS and LogicaCMG. The partners are developing a single integrated IT infrastructure to improve communications between civil servants, the Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. Work is underway on the first stage of the Defence Information Infrastructure programme (DII. The initial focus is on the Navy and this portion is due to be delivered in early 2007.

Current Status: While work continues on the DiiF implementation, there are still other technology projects underway at the MoD. For example, a £100 Joint Personnel Administration (JPA next-generation human resources (HR) system is being rolled out to the army’s 140,000 personnel. JPA is a self-service system providing military staff with secure online access to HR functions include 40 separate functions, all of which were previously done on paper, such as posting details, expenses and pay statements, It is expected to save more than £100m per year in administration costs.

The RAF went live on JPA in March last year, followed by the Royal Navy in November. The army rollout is expected to be complete by July. “Self-service HR in a static environment is quite easy, but in an environment with lots of military personnel moving around between barracks, training and theatre we have to ensure accessible infrastructure provision enables them to continuously access their details,” said MoD chief information officer John Taylor.

Elsewhere the MoD Medical Services department has signed an £80 million deal with supplier LogicaCMG to develop an electronic health and dental record system for service personnel. Under the Defence Medical Information Capability Programme (DmicP) complete records will be available in peace-time sites from the end of next year and across deployed locations including ships and field hospitals from 2008.

Boots

Vendors: IBM manages Boots’ IT infrastructure, including its datacentre, in-store systems, data and telecoms networks; Xansa provides application development, support and maintenance services, and also looks after the firm’s Advantage Card service.

Project Leader: Paul Bateman, group operations director. 

Budget: £826 million over 10 years. 

Project Summary: In October, 2002, Boots signed a deal with IBM, valued at £710 million over 10 years, to take over the management of its IT infrastructure, develop wireless and mobile systems for in-store staff and introduce new point-of-sale systems and kiosks. At the time, the contract was expected to save the chemist chain more than £150 million in maintenance and development costs and 400 Boots’ staff transferred to IBM.

That same year, Boots also took on Xansa to undertake applications development, support and maintenance in a seven-year deal worth £90 million. In September 2005, however, it extended the contract by two years to 2011 and asked the vendor to take responsibility for its Advantage Card service in a business-process outsourcing arrangement. 

Current Status: After completing technology renewal projects ahead of schedule, Boots intends to renegotiate its contract with IBM.

The vendor has upgraded in-store tills, introduced chip-and-pin systems, implemented SAP financials, human resources and merchandising applications and introduced RFID technology at 125 of its busiest stores so that staff can improve the monitoring of stock levels.

But this means that the focus of the deal will now be on maintenance and so it has become necessary to rework the original contract.