IBM secures DWP contract worth up to £2.1m for 6 months of cloud services

The UK's Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has awarded IBM a statement for unreality services worthy up to £2.13 cardinal ($2.67 million) for conscionable six months.

The woody began astatine nan opening of April, though a public procurement notice was only published successful nan past week.

It said nan contract, which is group to tally until 30 September 2022, will beryllium worthy up to £2.127m (c $2.67 million). It engages IBM via nan G-Cloud 12 Framework Agreement (RM1557.12).

The statement grant announcement said that IBM would supply "service for a development, enhancement and migration programme of activity crossed aggregate merchandise areas to trim our reliance connected practice systems and supply an improved, performance, information and accessible offering to our consuming partners some internally wrong DWP and externally to different Government departments."

The DWP and Crown Commercial Services, which manages cross-government model agreements, were contacted for further details.

The DWP's request to reside consequence successful its bequest property was underscored successful January erstwhile a study from Parliament's Public Accounts Committee said nan section should see arsenic a "matter of urgency" whether location are "cost-effective ways to upgrade its IT systems and heighten its administrative processes to guarantee nan value and timeliness of guidance accusation and trim nan consequence of repeated errors."

The study noted "a State Pension costs strategy that is not fresh for purpose." According to MPs, "effective measures to mitigate against nan system's intrinsic vulnerability to correction constitutes a basal power nonaccomplishment successful a captious portion of nan Department's responsibilities."

"The underlying IT strategy that it relies connected to negociate millions of pensioner records dates backmost to 1988 and is heavy manual," the study said.

It follows a September study from UK nationalist spending watchdog nan National Audit Office (NAO) which recovered that a bequest ICL-era mainframe was 1 of nan causes down nan nonaccomplishment to salary much than £1bn successful authorities pensions.

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At nan clip of the NAO report, a DWP spokesperson said: "We are afloat committed to ensuring nan humanities errors that person been made by successive governments are corrected, and arsenic this study acknowledges, we're dedicating important resources to doing so. Anyone impacted will beryllium contacted by america to guarantee they person each that they are owed.

"Since we became alert of this issue, we person introduced caller value power processes and improved training to thief guarantee this does not hap again."

Last twelvemonth Big Blue won a £25.25m DWP contract to support nan authorities ministry's ageing exertion property up and moving without extracurricular competition.

The woody extended an exertion deployment services contract, which initially included support for nan £2bn push to build nan government's arguable Universal Credit system.

IBM was contracted onto nan ADEP model successful 2011 to thief support aliases build 60 applications including a customer accusation system, assets management, fraud referral, and involution guidance for an first 7 years successful a woody worthy betwixt £50 cardinal and £75 million. The current statement extension is group to extremity connected 22 September 2024.

It is unclear whether nan latest woody and nan ADEP woody are linked. We asked IBM to comment. ®