The department has entered into its third deal with IT supplier CDW in the space of less than three months, collectively representing spending on staff devices of more than £40m

The Department for Work and Pensions has signed a multimillion-pound contract to equip thousands of its staff with “lightweight laptops”.

On Tuesday of next week, the department will enter into an initial 12-month engagement with IT reseller CDW. By the end of the first month of the agreement, the supplier is required to provide the DWP with an initial tranche of 3,000 – valued at about £2m, including VAT.

According to a newly published commercial notice, after these units have been delivered, the engagement provides “non-committed headroom for future drawdowns” of additional product.

The text of the contract itself outlines that the DWP anticipates spending up to £5m in total. Based on the £1,004-per-device cost of the first 3,000 lightweight laptops, this would equate to an additional 1,980 units.

Related content

• DWP buys £16m of laptops to support homeworking
• DWP embarks on ‘ambitious journey’ to ensure trauma-informed services
• DWP research warns digital welfare services ‘may lead to more inequality’

The document specifies that CDW will be expected to deliver all products within four weeks of an order being placed by the department.

“Delivery will be to UK address specified by the buyer at point of order,” the contract adds. “Where the buyer orders storage as well, this may initially be to a supplier-provisioned storage facility. Where the supplier has been storing the devices, the buyer will separately notify the supplier where and when it requires the devices delivered to when it no longer requires them to be stored, giving at least one weeks’ notice, and the supplier will deliver the specified quantity of devices to the specified location on the required date. For the avoidance of doubt, the buyer may request delivery of the devices in multiple batches.”

This latest contract is the third multimillion-pound deal for the supply of laptops that the DWP has awarded to CDW in a matter of weeks. In late November, the department signed a four-month contract worth about £3.5m. This was followed in January by a potential two-year engagement worth £32m.