Department signs a potential five-year deal for support and replacement work for key systems including its platforms for tax services and data insights – as well as the departing Government Gateway

HM Revenue and Customs has signed a near-£250m deal with Capgemini to support the department’s key tax platform – which houses almost 1,000 discrete services, including more than 100 applications used by citizens.

The deal – which follows three other £100m-plus digital engagements announced last week – came into effect on 13 May. The new agreement covers the provision of “run and change professional services” related to some of the department’s major digital platforms and services.

This includes the Multi-Channel Digital Tax Platform (MDTP), which was first created in 2015 and is home to a growing range of services that support HMRC’s ongoing implementation of the Making Tax Digital regime. The MDTP system reportedly contains more than 900 separate services, including about 130 public-facing online tools.

Also addressed by the Capgemini contract is support for the department’s Customer Insight Platform. This system collates data on millions of customer interactions and transactions – information which is then uses to provide insights to various units across the department to support decision making, particularly in the context of anti-fraud operations.

Currently in scope of the Capgemini deal is Government Gateway – the online account infrastructure that, since its launch 23 years ago, has registered more than 50 million people as users. While it remains in use at HMRC for the time being, the tax agency has already begun the process of migrating to the new government-wide One Login system. This switchover began earlier this year with a small selection of both new and existing Government Gateway users being moved onto One Login. The plan is to conduct the rest of the migration process incrementally, and grow the number of people using the new system gradually over time.

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Capgemini will provide support and upgrade work for these three platforms – and more – over an initial term of three years. While the terms of the contract set out that no spend is guaranteed during this time, HMRC forecasts that the deal will be worth up to £135.5m – plus a potential additional £110m if the agreement is extended to its full potential lifespan of five years. This would take overall spending as high as £245.5m.

The deal was awarded via the third lot of HMRC’s recently finalised DALAS framework: a £3bn buying vehicle dedicated to supporting legacy and digital service upgrades over the coming years. According to commercial documents, the third lot of the arrangement covers “application and integration run services… [including] managing, augmenting and supporting: new or existing custom applications or BDApps; new or existing enterprise applications; packaged software applications; [and] new or existing middleware, including APIs, API platforms and ESBs”.

The three deals awarded last week were all tendered via a subsection of the DALAS framework’s second lot, covering “digital, integration and programme application Services… [including user-centred design; integration of software lifecycle from apps dev through release and IT Ops; [and] process, workflow, forms and application development, deployment and live support”.

Those three engagements, which are collectively worth up to £541.6m, were awarded to Accenture, IBM, and Netcompany. The three firms will, respectively, support HMRC’s digital work in the areas of: borders and trade services; customer strategy and design; and customer support services.