Birmingham City Centre gardens are located in the heart of the UK's second city Credit: Elliott Brown/CC BY-SA 2.0

Birmingham City Council is starting work on a project to decouple itself from incumbent supplier Capita and become its own systems integrator.

The council is part of the way through the rollout of a five-year ICT strategy, plan which began in 2016. The strategy is, ultimately, intended to help Birmingham become “a technology-enabled council of the future”. 

Part of this process will involve the authority taking steps to better use data and digital platforms in service design and delivery. 

Alongside is a project to dissolve its long-standing Service Birmingham joint venture with Capita and, eventually, eventually take responsibility for IT and digital services back in house, “with the council becoming the system/service integrator by 2021”.

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“This change programme is a major undertaking and will be the biggest transformation of IT and digital services in the local government sector, delivering savings and significant changes to operational services,” the authority added. “We now want to engage directly with the external market for all IT projects and services, with the implementation of a new multi-vendor model. This provides flexibility to deliver a future IT and digital service operating model that can flex as the wider council transforms.”

To kick off the move towards a diversified IT provider landscape, the authority is holding a supplier-engagement event on Friday 11 May at the Innovation Birmingham facility. The event will see procurement and technology executives from the council discuss the authority’s technology strategy and goals for the coming years.