Auditing heavyweight will help health-service agency use innovative ideas to meet organisational objectives

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NHS Digital has chosen KPMG to be its “innovation partner” in the field of cybersecurity, and awarded the auditing firm a two-year contract worth £4m.

During the 2020 fiscal year, NHS Digital’s Data Security Centre established a Cyber Security Innovation Factory (CSIF). The unit is intended to provide the technology agency with “a standardised way of testing solutions to user-defined problems in a controlled manner, therefore de-risking future delivery of projects”.

Having “already successfully supported delivery of a number of improvements and services” related to NHS Digital’s cyber capabilities, the CISF sought a “strategic and fully independent innovation partner” to help take its work forward for the coming two years.

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Bidding for the contract took place between 29 March and 12 April and newly published procurement information reveals that KPMG was chosen and appointed to a 24-month deal that commenced on 14 June.

The professional services outfit will be expected to help the Data Security Centre (DSC) “drive… disruptive innovation as it shifts to a more sustainable and innovative operating model”.

“The DSC needs to effectively and efficiently capture innovative ideas from across the sector and prioritise these against overall strategic priorities,” the contract notice said. “Stakeholders within organisations, national and local, need to align resources, budgets, technology initiatives with overall business strategy. This requires consistent and disruptive innovation. In addition, the DSC requires continued improvement and business change to support its own maturity and expansion, in order to ensure it successfully serves the health and care estate in alignment with the DSC’s ambition to become an MSSP (managed security services provider) for the sector.”

NHS Digital expects KPMG to help support it in meeting key challenges such as increasing its internal skills, and designing services and programmes that can support innovation “in a repeatable and standardised manner”.