HMRC agency signs £185m deal to tackle legacy tech


The Valuation Office Agency has awarded a contract to IT services firm Cognizant to help support a major transformation programme to modernise systems that are up to three decades old

The HMRC arm’s-length body responsible for providing property valuations for the administration of council tax has awarded a contract worth almost £200m to support the migration of ageing applications to a cloud environment.

On 6 September, the Valuation Office Agency entered into an initial three-year contract with Cognizant. The IT services firm will assist the government body in delivering a programme to address “some of the [VOA’s] systems and applications [that] are nearly 30 years old, out-of-support and end-of-life”, according to a recently published procurement notice.

As part of an initiative that began around the start of the current fiscal year, “cloud applications will start to replace heritage systems and applications” across the VOA. In delivering this migration work, Cognizant has been retained to provide “specialist technical and DevSecOps support to deliver this transformation programme”.

PublicTechnology understands that the modernisation programme will begin by focusing on IT systems and applications that support the agency’s work maintaining the valuations list for almost 27 million residential properties across England and Wales. Cloud transformation work will then proceed to the technology that underpins the administration of business property rates for 2.1 million commercial premises.


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It is understood that the VOA believes that such transformation is necessary to ensure that the organisation can keep up with demand for its valuation services, and to deliver greater efficiency to its operations.

A spokesperson for the agency said: “Following a competitive tendering exercise, a three-year call-off contract has been awarded to provide support as needed to the Valuation Office Agency in updating its core operating systems. These systems play a crucial role in supporting the valuation of all domestic and non-domestic properties, which enables the collection over £60bn in local taxes annually.” 

The deal, which comes with an estimated worth of £185.5m, was awarded via the third lot of the Technology Services 3 framework; this segment, which features 39 suppliers, covers the delivery of ‘Major Services Transformation Programmes’. The Cognizant contract will allow VOA teams working on the agency’s modernisation programme to issue further call-off engagements to support individual objectives, PublicTechnology understands.

In addition to valuing properties for tax purposes, the VOA – which employs 3,800 civil servants and operates as an executive agency of HM Revenue and Customs – provides ministers and senior managers with advice on the value of public sector property and other related matters.

Sam Trendall

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