§ Mr. SayeedTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will list information technology contracts in his352W Department with a value of above £20 million in each of the last 10 years; what the inception date for each system was; when it became fully functional; when it became fully debugged; and what the cost of over-runs has been. [146200]
§ Mr. BoatengHM Treasury has never had an information technology contract above £20 million.
HM Customs and Excise has let two IT Contracts in excess of £20 million in the past 10 years. An outsourcing contract was signed on 25 August 1999 with Fujitsu C&E Services Ltd., for the provision of IT and telephony infrastructure services. Because this was a services contract, there was no debugging. The Transfer of Undertaking was achieved to target without any overrun. A second contract was awarded to BT/ Syntegra in 1989 for the provision of the CHIEF (Customs Handling of Import and Export freight) service. The contract was extended to January 2007 to recognise new strategic business requirements and allow sufficient time for the CIPR (Customs Information Processing Requirement) procurement process. To date, there have been no cost overruns.
The Inland Revenue has three IT contracts whose budgets exceed £20 million. First, it has a strategic contract with EDS, which commenced on 1 July 1994. This contract covers all IT services for Inland Revenue systems, their enhancement, day to day maintenance and new systems development. It is not a fixed price contract. Major systems are delivered within their own individual internal budgets, and the contract with EDS has supported the development and delivery of these systems since 1994.
The contract was extended to January 2007 to recognise new strategic business requirements and allow sufficient time for the CIPR (Customs Information Processing Requirement) procurement process. To date, there have been no cost overruns. The Inland Revenue has three IT contracts whose budgets exceed £20 million. First, it has a strategic contract with EDS, which commenced on 1 July 1994. This contract covers all IT services for Inland Revenue systems, their enhancement, day to day maintenance and new systems development. It is not a fixed price contract. Major systems are delivered within their own individual internal budgets, and the contract with EDS has supported the development and delivery of these systems since 1994.
In 1998 the Inland Revenue inherited a contract from the Department of Social Security for the provision of the NIRS2 Services run by Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting). The system went live in July 1998 and has been stable since April 2000. The NIRS2 service was provided under a PEI contract which has since been adjusted to allow for the unprecedented level of change required of the system by new legislation. There were some well documented delays in introducing the N IR S system, involving extra development costs, paid for by Andersen Consulting. The Inland Revenue has also incurred business recovery costs, enabling the introduction of more modern and automated business processes.
The E-IROS contract was awarded to Computacenter in June 2000 for the provision of desktop hardware, software and related services. This is not a fixed price 353W contract and consequently the value of the contract depends on the annual demand for desktop services. It has, however, exceeded £20 million in each of the last four years.