OCA Summary of UK Government ICT Strategy

The UK Government has published a new ICT strategy for the public sector aimed at simplifying and standardising ICT across the public sector to enable interoperability and data sharing while providing flexibility and efficient services that will deliver savings of over £3.2 billion per year.

The aims of the ICT strategy are to be met through fourteen delivery strands straddling three thematic areas: common infrastructure, common standards and common capabilities, namely:

1.         Public Sector Network strategy to deliver converged voice and data communications across the public sector

2.         Government-Cloud (G-Cloud) through the establishment of a private cloud in the first instance

3.         Data Centre Rationalisation to reduce the number of data centres from hundreds to 10-12

4.         Government application store (G-AS) to enable re-use rather than re-design of existing services

5.         Shared services concept to enable enterprise resource planning delivered through G-Cloud

6.         Desktop services – adoption of common models and designs

7.         Architecture and standards which are secure, interoperable and common

8.         Open Source, open standards and re-use – to increase flexibility and facilitate switching of suppliers

9.         Greening government ICT to achieve carbon-neutral ICT by 2012

10.     Information security and assurance to match risk appetite to risk exposure

11.     Professionalising IT enabled change – increasing in-house skills to lower spend on consultants and contractors

12.     Reliable project delivery – through greater programme accountability and intervention by CIO and OGC

13.     Supply management – improved government-supplier relationships through collaborative procurement

14.     International alignment with EU agreements, etc.

Implementation of the strategy will be overseen by the CIO Council, which brings together CIOs from across all parts of the public sector and is chaired by John Suffolk, the Government CIO.

Click here to read a summary of the strategy.

UK Government ICT Strategy Homepage

CJEU Ruling - UK Procurement Rules on Challenging Decisions are Illegal

C-406/08 - Uniplex (UK) Ltd v NHS Business Services Authority

The UK procurement rules requiring challenges to be brought “promptly and in any event within three months from the date when grounds for bringing proceedings first arose unless the Court considers that there is good reason for extending period within which proceedings may be brought” are incompatible with the EU Directive 89/665. In response to the questions referred to it by the High Court, the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU), held that the time cannot start running from the date of breach of the applicable public procurement provisions, but rather should start from the date on which the tenderer knew, or ought to have known, of that infringement.  In addition, the term "promptly" is too vague and based on the discretion of the judge. Despite the fact that this ruling was looking at provisions under the old regime, it is still applicable to the Remedies Directive which came into effect on 20 December 2009.

The full text of the judgment and Opinion of the Advocate-General can be found here.

Court rules in BSkyB v EDS

The High Court has ruled in the BSkyB v EDS case that EDS’ behaviour in offering Sky implementation timescales without reasonable basis for doing so involved a fraudulent misrepresentation and that EDS was also liable for negligent misrepresentation and breach of contract.

EDS had been contracted to build a £48 million customer relationship management system which Sky ended up having to build itself at a cost of £265 million.

It is debateable whether the finding will trigger an overhaul of existing sales processes – as some had anticipated – given the Court’s focus upon the conduct of one of EDS’ employees who had “demonstrated an outstanding ability to be dishonest” rather than upon any systemic failure on EDS’ part. However, the judgment, which stretches to 500 pages, stands as a caution to those involved in procurement.

Click here to read the judgment.

Click here to read a summary of the ruling.

Office of Government Commerce (OGC) Claims £196.7m in ICT savings

The Office of Government Commerce has reported record savings from the collaborative procurement of ICT.

The OGC's annual statement, published on 15 December 2009, says that electronic tools such as e-auctions, e-marketplaces and the automatic capturing of management information have played a role.

The OGC Contracts Database, which provides a central register of about 400 pan-government collaborative deals is continuing to grow, according to the report, and averages 10,000 hits a month. In addition, an online communication and networking platform for the government procurement community is now live, and the OGC has collated data for more than 4,000 procurement professionals across Whitehall.

Click here to read the Channel Register article.

OCA's Comments on Version 2.3 of the Model ICT Agreement

The OCA applauds the work that has gone into Version 2.3 of the UK Office of Government Commerce's Model ICT Agreement. However, further to its White Paper on OGC contract terms, there are a number of places, where OCA is seeking changes to the position. These are the subject of comments recently submitted by the OCA to the OGC.

OCA's comments on version 2.3 of the Model ICT Agreement include the following:

1)        Deemed due diligence should be described as bad practice.

2)        Implementation Planning and delivery require both parties to collaborate.

3)        Services definition and the issues of technology change, the obligation to competitively tender when there is a new requirement, and avoid technology lock in: OCA considers that interoperability should be a mandatory requirement in tenders to ensure both forward and backward compatibility between different generations of technology and thereby to ensure technology neutrality, avoid technology dependency and facilitate applications being provided over many different technology platforms.

4)        Scope of service is interrelated with the reliability of, (and liability arising from) the technical solution. In the event of anticipated high failure rates or risk levels likely to run at high level for a given solution, the scope of service, specification and baseline technical solution may need to be re-examined.

5)        Financial distress: the withholding of payment or termination rights may push the supplier into insolvency, are counter-productive, and should be deleted.

6)        Bid costs: OCA believes in a level playing field and consideration should be given to bid costs being borne by the Authority from a particular point of the down-selection. This would be fairer to all concerned and reinforce the importance of making a speedy decision in the final stages of the procedure.

7)        Deviation from the Model Agreement: OCA wishes to discuss with OGC the prospect of including an escalation process where unreasonable deviation from, or alteration of OGC standards are required by government departments.

8)        Miscellaneous comments on the agreement and schedules

Download the full paper here.