The Home Office is based at Marsham Street, London - Photo credit: Steve Cadman, CC BY 2.0

The Home Office is creating a new integrated system for its back-office processes, covering enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management and human capital management.

The system, to be called Metis - which in ancient Greek means a quality that combines wisdom and cunning - will replace the department’s ERP system and business intelligence tool, as well as its separate payroll solution.

The transfer to a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service model will require the use of modern best practice processes and “significant associated business change”, the department said.

“Cloud-based SaaS solutions cannot be customised as the previous generation of applications could,” the contract notice said. “Key to achieving benefits will be effective adoption of the new processes.”

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In addition, the department noted that it would be a “pathfinder for government in cloud-based services”, and that the configuration of the new system would need to support shared civil service outcomes.

“The implementation is part of, and has dependencies with, the overall government roadmap for shared services,” the Home Office said.

The department said that all staff and functional areas are in scope for change, which includes Home Office HR and finance specialists, around 29,000 end users - such as operational and overseas staff - and the business processing outsource provider based in Newport.

The contract, which is valued at £2m, will begin on 25 June 2017 and is due to end on 31 December 2018.

The Home Office said it would begin a G-Cloud procurement process on three related lots: for a systems integrator, which will act as a prime supplier and have overarching responsibility for the programme; for a technical supplier to oversee functional configuration; and for a technical supplier to be responsible for integration.

The department added that a further service management lot is expected, but there are no procurement actions expected for that in the near to medium term.