The Ministry of Justice has signed a multimillion-pound contract covering the supply of almost 18,000 PCs to prisons throughout England and Wales.

The newly launched Prison Technology Transformation Programme (PTTP) aims to provide updated computing devices for use by staff at institutions around the country, as well as workers at the office locations of HM Prison and Probation. 

To support these upgrades, the MoJ has signed a contract with IT supplier CDW. The deal, which came into effect on 24 November, covers the supply of a minimum of 4,000 Dell desktop devices over the coming weeks, including keyboards and mice, as well as configuration services and three years of onsite support. A total of 250 monitors are also included in the order.

Depending on the supplier’s capacity to do so, the ministry has specified a “desirable” target of “up to a total of 17,800 [desktop] units IF this volume can be delivered before 31 March 2022 to a bonded warehouse agreed location”.

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If CDW can supply some – but not all – of this additional requirement beyond the 4,000 minimum, the MoJ has indicated that it “will consider the supply of a reduced ‘desirable’ volume… [but] this is entirely at the discretion” of the ministry.

If it can fulfil the entirety of the requirement for 17,800 machines, the deal will be worth £11.8m to the IT reseller, which is headquartered in Illinois and turns over almost $19bn a year.

In addition to upgrading the staff computing estate, the PTTP scheme also intends to help institutions “safely move… onto cloud-based platforms” and migrate away from legacy systems first rolled out up to 20 years ago as part of the Quantum Project to overhaul prison IT.

Other aims of the transformation initiative including an ambition to “standardise IT applications, such as ensuring everyone has Microsoft Teams to make work more efficient and collaborative for all staff… [and] improve the IT service desk, ensuring staff get the technical support they need to use new IT services”.