MoD IT contract to be monitored weekly

10 Nov 05
Ministry of Defence officials have imposed strict weekly assessments on an IT consortium delivering a crucial £4bn contract, after concerns were raised about one company's past performance.

11 November 2005

Ministry of Defence officials have imposed strict weekly assessments on an IT consortium delivering a crucial £4bn contract, after concerns were raised about one company's past performance.

Armed forces minister Adam Ingram told Parliament that he had 'imposed a rigorous performance regime' on the Atlas consortium responsible for the MoD's Defence Information Infrastructure (Future) contract.

The DII initiative will merge the disparate information sources used by 340,000 MoD staff and link 70,000 computers to help improve Britain's military capabilities.

Earlier this year, MPs raised concerns about Atlas's selection as preferred bidder for the contract, after it emerged that the group was led by the US-based IT firm Electronic Data Systems.

EDS has been linked with several problematic Whitehall IT projects, such as the flawed £465m system at the Child Support Agency. Last November, the company was responsible for the government's largest IT failure, when an attempt to upgrade software at the Department for Work and Pensions crashed 80,000 terminals.

Ingram announced on November 3 that after consultation with other EDS partners, including the DWP, Revenue & Customs and the Passport Agency, the winning bid would be monitored closely to ensure that the contract specifications were met.

He indicated that financial penalties could be applied if Atlas failed to meet its target. 'The delivery partner's overall progress and performance will be monitored on a weekly basis against a range of key performance indicators, and actual service delivery measured against targets and used as the basis for payment,' he said.

Regular scrutiny of large contracts and contractors is not unusual, but one senior Whitehall source told Public Finance that weekly performance analyses were 'far from the norm'.

However, a spokeswoman for EDS said: 'There is complete clarity and alignment between the MoD and the Atlas consortium around what is to be delivered, and when, under the DII contract.

'The performance regime was agreed between Atlas and the MoD before contract signature and we remain completely content with the structures in place.'

An MoD spokesman said that the assessment regime reflected the increasingly sophisticated approach the department takes towards complex contracts. 'It's horses for courses. We simply impose the sort of scrutiny framework that ministers deem necessary for a particular project, to ensure that the contract is met and that taxpayers get value for money.'

PFnov2005

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