Government’s largest department has signed off two thirds of a trio of engagements forming part of an ongoing major project to deliver the organisation’s next generation of end user services
The Ministry of Justice has picked suppliers for two contracts collectively worth in excess of £70m and covering the delivery of devices and support to over 100,000 users in the coming years – as well as the possible resale of machines being taken out of service.
The larger of the two agreements, valued at up to £50m, is a “hardware sourcing strategic contract” awarded to US-headquartered IT provider CDW. This engagement came into effect on 15 November and runs for an initial term of 12 months, plus a potential extension of one further year.
During this time period, the tech firm will be responsible for the “provision of new and replacement end user devices and related ancillaries for the support of the MoJ estate”, according to newly published commercial documents.
Alongside this engagement for the machines themselves, another major IT reseller – UK-based Computacenter – has been awarded a “hardware support services” deal worth up to £22.5m over a four-year term and optional 12-month extension.
The contract is intended to address the ministry’s need for technical support for both computers and accessories. The deal also offers the opportunity to recoup some money for the public purse via the refurbishment and resale of former government machines.
According to the terms of the contract, Computacenter will provide the MoJ and its arm’s-length bodies with “delivery, maintenance, repair and operational… services for end-user devices and related peripherals and ancillaries, [as well as] decommissioning, secure disposal and generation of income for the buyer from the resale of redundant buyer assets, [and] technical support services”.
The engagement came into effect on 19 November and about £4.5m is expected to be spent during the first year. The contract stipulates that all forecast spending “does not account for any spend… from the buyer reinvesting income generated by the supplier from the resale of assets”.
Related content
- MoJ and HMRC sign £8m security deals
- MoJ cyber strategy sets plan to appoint security SRO for all IT systems and create unified staff identity system
- Prison transformation: MoJ agrees £12m deal for 18,000 PCs
The two contracts, which are collectively worth up to £72.5m to the chosen providers, represent two thirds of a trio of major deals being awarded by the department in relation to the end user computing strand of the MoJ’s ongoing Evolve programme of digital transformation.
According to government major projects documents, the objective of the initiative is to “ensure the continuation of critical end user compute services (EUCS) used by MoJ staff every day, and implement an EUCS future state model, which is crucial to achieving the strategic objective of a single technology ecosystem to all 110,000 MoJ users by 2025”.
This figure includes staff across the ministry and users across the wider justice system, including the MoJ’s array of ALBs – chiefly HM Courts and Tribunals Service and HM Prison and Prison Service – which account for the vast majority of the department’s overall headcount.
The Evolve EUCS project has three core workstreams, the first of which is focused on conducting the three procurement exercises. This includes the hardware sourcing and support engagements awarded to CDW and Computacenter, as well as a third deal dedicated to “EUCS platform and legacy services”.
Alongside these commercial procedures, the project also covers “EUCS insourcing to bring certain capabilities in-house”, as well as a third strand migrating civil servants from services previously delivered via contracts awarded via the ministry’s previous Future IT Sourcing programme.
Delivery of the Evolve end user project is slated to conclude by 30 April 2025, following a near-four-year programme of work costing an estimated total of £340m. As of the most recent set of government major project data the programme was awarded a top delivery confidence rating of green, indicating that assessors are highly confident it will be completed on time and within budget.
