The information that follows pertains to the central Department and does not cover Executive agencies, other arm’s length bodies or NHS Connecting for Health. A de minimis of £100,000 per annum has been applied.
Since June 2002 the Department has spent a total of £88.42 million with Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), its information technology (IT) service provider through the information management services agreement. This has included the annual support charges and the cost of the transformation programme. It has also included expenditure, which CSC administer on behalf of the Department, for example BT costs for the wide area network and business ports, and audio conferencing and mobile telephone costs. The remainder of the costs over the five years have been apportioned to project work in support of the integrity and resilience of the infrastructure. These two areas are listed as follows as project and pass through charges. Details of other IT spend, corporate software, telecommunications, the finance system and the web content management system and external hosting are shown in the table.
£ million 2002-03 CSC annual support charge 7.65 CSC project and pass through charges 12.88 Corporate software (including maintenance) 0.795 Telecommunications 2.76 BT external hosting 0.306 2003-04 CSC annual support charge 8.85 CSC transformation charge 12.6 CSC project and pass through charges 18.32 Corporate software (including maintenance) 0.52 Telecommunications 4.35 BT external hosting 0.5 2004-05 CSC annual support charge 8.77 CSC project and pass through charges 20.06 Finance systems project 5.6 Corporate software (including maintenance) 1.073 Telecommunications 4.13 BT external hosting 0.374 2005-06 CSC annual support charge 7.47 CSC project and pass through charges 21.82 Corporate software (including maintenance) 1.075 Telecommunications 3.67 BT external hosting 0.3 2006-07 (Projected costs) CSC annual support charge 7.6 CSC project and pass through charges 121 Corporate software (including maintenance) 1.07 Web content management service 25.11 Telecommunications 3.67 BT external hosting 0.3 1 £2.72 million invoiced so far. 2 This contract has just been let and the estimated costs cover the next five years.
The sponsor of major IT projects would always be a member of the senior civil service with several years of experience in dealing with such projects and with IT suppliers. As project sponsor his or her responsibility would be to draw together project boards and project teams of civil servants and/or consultants with both project management and procurement qualifications, for example PRINCE2 practitioners and members of the Institute of Purchasing and Supply. Procurements and implementation of projects are undertaken in line with Office of Government Commerce best practice and European Union procedures as required.