Civica has launched a dedicated digital division offering consulting and technical expertise - Photo credit: Pexels

The creation of Civica Digital comes after 18 months of strategic acquisitions by the company, including the smaller businesses Asidua, Web Technology Group, IPL and SFW Ltd.

Speaking to PublicTechnology about the decision to create Civica Digital, Story said that the company had decided to break the business into three capabilities – software, digital and supervised outsourcing services – with technology “at the heart of everything we do”.

Civica Digital – whose main market is the public sector – will employee around 900 of Civica’s 4,000 staff, a number that Story said he expected to “grow significantly” over the next 18 months.

Story stressed that Civica’s focus on digital was not new, but that the aim was to highlight the knowledge and expertise the company had to potential clients, and show that digital is “core to what we do”.

“We want to be seen as a significant partner to government,” he said. “I think we've positioned ourselves strongly for that.”

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The move comes as the government is trying to encourage more contracts with smaller companies – pledging to spend £1 in every £3 spent on procurement on SMEs – and cut down on the number of high-value contracts signed with bigger suppliers.

However, Story said that the new division would not take them out of the “middle tier” of suppliers – “we're not a large systems integrator or digital business”. He added that Civica Digital could offer government “a solution that is a lower risk option than the traditional SME” while being small enough to remain responsive.

“We think we can provide that kind of in-between situation that government is looking for,” he said. “We’re big enough to take on some of these bigger transformation programmes but small enough to be seen as part of their team.”

Story added that Civica Digital will still work with the larger competitors as a partner or supplier, as well as continuing to use a number of smaller SMEs as providers.

Work in the digital part of the business will focus on four broad areas for clients, Story said, from a consulting role to help define operating models for transformation programmes to supplementing clients’ technical expertise by putting Civica staff on their projects.

The other two areas are to also offer clients repeatable, proven “slightly out of the box” solutions where Civica owns the intellectual property, or help clients develop more customised products where the client owns the intellectual property.

Story said that these areas had been chosen based on what Civica had seen a focus on in the public sector over the past 18 months.

“A lot of our work is designing the transformation journey that the departments and local government are going through, but in designing it, there has to be the product, the services created,” he said. “There's a reasonable balance between developing the models and then delivering them. I don't think that will change over next 18 months.”