HMRC has issued a £20 million tender for consultants to advise it on how to shift away from its Aspire outsourcing arrangement with Capgemini and Fujitsu, which is due to come to an end in 2017.

The government department plans to contract its future IT work out to over 400 smaller IT service providers, with no single supplier receiving a contract worth more than £100 million.

The news was revealed as the tender went out in a recent issue of the Financial Times.

Claims have been made that HMRC’s current approach towards IT has “stifled innovation and flexibility”; it is hoped that this new approach will help HMRC gain more of its own expertise, as many suspect that the department is currently solely reliant on the knowledge of its service providers.

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