Industry news

According to the Policy Exchange think-tank, private and third-sector companies should be supplying job finding services. In its Joined up welfare report, it claims that Jobcentres are not very effective at helping people find work and that just over a third of jobcentres succeeded in getting people into long-term employment.

The report goes on to recommend that jobcentres be restructured so that voluntary and private providers were competing with the employment services, with the other services renamed as ‘Citizen Support’. According to the author Guy Miscampbell, this would ‘make it as easy as possible for individuals, who often have multiple problems, to work with an organisation that is best suited to helping them into work’.

Universal Credit described nationality as ‘like banging your head against a brick wall’

According to results from Standard Chartered Bank, China’s debt to GDP is now 251% - effectively its debt is 2.5 times the size of its economy. This signals a rapid increase over the last 6 years. Although the ratio is higher in the US (260%), UK (277%) and Japan (415%), China’s ratio is very high for an emerging market. Continuation along these lines - slowing growth and increasing debt –is sparking concerns over potential future financial turmoil for the country.

China’s Outsourcing Industry Booms

West Hertfordshire trust has awarded a five year contract to CGI for managing their ICT services and infrastructure. The deal worth approximately £25m will include end user devices, storage capabilities, data management and video conferencing as well as providing fully integrated communications that include local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN) and mobile connectivity.

Accenture replaces CGI for troubled Obamacare site

FinTru, a London-based outsourcing provider for the financial services industry, is set to create 80 jobs in Belfast which will generate £1.9m for the economy.

Government grants worth £840,000 is helping the investment; Invest Northern Ireland offered £480,000 of support for the jobs and £360,000 is being offered through skills development funds.

FinTrU (Financial Transparency Utility) Limited was founded in 2013 by Darragh McCarthy and provides on-shore hosted remediation and outsourcing of skilled, labour intensive and client-facing processes for financial services clients.

Recruitment will start straight away and with all jobs in place by 2016.

South Western create 260 jobs in Co. Cork

East Devon, Exeter and Teignbridge councils are due to decide by the end of July on whether they will jointly own ICT company Strata Service Solutions. If agreed each council will take an equal share of the company which will be staffed by existing ICT staff. Moving to this shared service strategy will allow the councils to retain existing knowledge and experience, reduce costs and reducing risks from running ICT systems that are proving too complex for individual local authorities.

Capita selected as preferred bidder for Wycombe Council

Wipro have won a 10 year deal worth USD 112 million per year from Canadian utilities company ATCO. Wipro will provide total outsourcing solutions to ATCO in Canada and Australia. As a result of the announcement Wipro was trading 2.5 per cent higher at Rs 551.55.

Wipro latest Indian IT provider to announced strong financial results

It’s been confirmed that Capita, the international business process outsourcing and professional services company headquartered in London, will take over the prisoner tagging contract previously held by G4S and Serco. The Ministry of Justice confirmed Capita will manage the six-year contract which is worth £228.8m in a bid to save £20m a year.

There are three other firms delivering on parts of the service; Steatite, Airbus and Telefonica. In a three-year deal worth £23.3m Steatite will develop and manufacture the equipment, Telefonica will supply the network (worth £3.2m) and Airbus will provide satellite-mapping (worth £10.4m).

Shares at capita closed up 0.09 per cent at 1,129p.

Capita selected as preferred bidder for Wycombe Council

DWP have signed a £10m interim contract with Atos only 6 months after buying itself out of the agreement. Atos will provide IT support for 12 months to give DWP enough time to tender for a new hardware provider. Atos was selected as they currently own the physical assets in the current system.

Atos awarded RTE outsourcing contract

IBM is starting to focus more heavily on software and services by exclusively partnering with Apple on selling iphones and ipads loaded with applications. IBM will release more than 100 apps aimed at industry specific issues in retail, healthcare, banking, travel and telco. They will also develop cloud services for iOS Apples mobile operating system. IBM hopes this partnership will contribute half of their total profit by 2015.

IBM wins six-year outsourcing contract

Cloud Industry Forum (CFI) research indicates a lack of in-house skills and experience in managing legacy systems and hardware increases dependence on IT Outsourcing. CIF research found that the skill gap in end user workforce was a deciding factor for 49% of cloud users. CFI research showed there had been a shift towards data information management from the traditional nuts and bolts of IT.

Skills gaps in outsourcing management