The contracts that have been signed for delivery of the National Identity Service which is necessary for the introduction of biometric passports to date are as follows:
Thales UK Ltd.
Thales UK Ltd was awarded a contract in July 2008 for the technology and process for early release of NIS which is worth £18 million. It has been awarded for four years with four successive six month options to extend.
De La Rue
De La Rue was selected in June 2009 as the preferred bidder for the Design and Production of next generation UK passport books which is worth £400 million. The contract was signed on 2 July, and has been awarded for a period of 10 years.
CSC
CSC was awarded a contract in April 2009 for the upgrade of IPS's Application and Enrolment system which is worth £385 million. It has been awarded for a period of 10 years.
IBM
IBM was awarded a contract in May 2009 to operate the biometric data base for passports and to support identity cards which is worth £265 million. It has been awarded for seven years with one three-year option to extend.
In addition, four existing contracts were amended to support the initial rollout of identity cards. These include:
secure mail delivery provider SMS for the passport book to extend delivery services;
Teleperformance to include an option to provide support for the introduction of identity cards;
3M SPSL to include production and personalisation of the identity cards; and
nCipher (now part of Thales) for specialist encryption equipment was amended to adapt this equipment for the rollout to UK nationals.
As spend has been in relation to only one contract and has therefore been with only one supplier, this information is considered to be commercially sensitive.