Professional services firm to provide GDS with supplementary technical and project-management staff

Credit: Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay 

The Government Digital Service has picked Deloitte as the core commercial partner to support the delivery of the new government-wide login system for citizen services.

First unveiled in September 2020, the goal of the One Login project is to create a single unified system to replace an existing patchwork of almost 200 separate accounts and 44 different sign-in methods currently in use across departments. The programme of work also includes the development of a GOV.UK app to allow citizens to access a comprehensive range of hundreds of services delivered by scores of government agencies.

A “feature-complete” version of the new login system is expected to enter public testing any day now. 

As the system is further iterated – and implemented across government – over the coming months, GDS will be supported by Deloitte.

Newly published procurement information reveals that the consultancy giant has won a two-year contract that came into effect on 24 March. Once VAT is included, the deal will be worth almost £11m to the London-headquartered outfit.

Related content

• Minister on plan for government digital tools that ‘serve users proactively – rather than reactively’
• GDS floats two £2m contracts to progress single sign-on plans
• Government says ‘lack of mandate’ contributed to muted Verify uptake

According to a contract notice, published in November, GDS was “seeking a delivery partner to work with the One Login… programme to provide whole or partial multi-disciplined digital delivery teams to work on outcomes that support the wider programme delivery”.

Alongside this delivery support, Deloitte will also be asked with helping the digital agency in “building sustainable in-house capability to further extend and run services” once the two-year deal has concluded.

Commercial documents reveal that the professional services firm will supply staff across 18 specified job roles: content and service designers; technical leaders; product, delivery and site reliability managers; front-end and back-end developers; data, technical and security architects; quality assurance specialists; cloud infrastructure engineers; business and performance analysts; and tech writers.

The contract is the largest of four deals awarded by GDS to suppliers to support the One Login programme. The second largest – worth £4.8m plus VAT, and also won by Deloitte – covered the development of an identity-verification app to accompany the single sign-on system.

The other two contracts respectively addressed ‘technical outcomes’ and ‘product outcomes’. Each of these deals is worth about £2m; both were won by Leeds-based consultancy Hippo Digital.