Industry news

Consulting company Accenture PLC was named as one of a handful of firms selected to provide technology services to the U.S. Department of Justice, in a contract valued just over $1 billion.

Orders to be awarded under the contract include IT planning, program support, systems configuration management, user training and the introduction of new technologies. The contract has a six-month base period with six, one-year extension options.

Accenture, which has previously provided similar modernization services to the Justice Department, said the selection confirms its strong relationship with the department.

Accenture has seen increased strength lately. Market share gains have propelled broad revenue growth, helping it in June to raise its guidance for its fiscal year.

CSC has insisted its work on the £11.7 billion Department of Health National Programme for IT (NPfIT) is going "very well", two weeks after ministers were advised by a powerful committee to consider scrapping the programme.

The Public Accounts Committee advised health and Cabinet Office ministers to seriously reconsider the programme, and said it was so disappointed with CSC's work that it was possible the supplier was no longer fit for any government work. CSC has only delivered its main patient records system to three large trusts in nine years, and representatives have been unable to guarantee it would deliver the systems to all trusts by the current 2015 deadline.

"We are performing very well on it," CSC chief executive Mike Laphen told investors in a reference to the programme, as the company reported first-quarter net income up 28 percent to $183 million. "We think we have an outstanding product here."

New All-Party Group to Help Government Save Money through Smarter Outsourcing and Shared Services

A new All-Party Group, chaired by Bob Blackman MP, will investigate how the public sector can save money by becoming a savvier consumer of outsourcing and shared services. The Outsourcing and Shared Services Group aims to improve dialogue and understanding between industry representatives and politicians, as well as bring increased transparency to the industry. A meeting to collect evidence will take place on August 23rd 2011, in Central London.

Blackman, Conservative MP for Harrow East and former Leader of Brent Council, commented: “The outsourcing of services represents an opportunity to reduce costs and, at the same time, improve the quality of service provided to the public. As more organisations look to benefit from outsourcing and sharing services, it is vital to learn from past experiences: what had worked and what has not. The All-Party Group is an unrivalled opportunity to build upon these experiences, ensuring shared learning is incorporated into future outsourcing proposals. We are keen to learn from those experienced in outsourcing, on all sides of the relationship – buyers, suppliers and officials.”

The National Outsourcing Association’s role in the group is to provide best practice from projects that have been delivered on-time and resulted in achieving their objectives - i.e. improved services or cost savings. It will also give examples of projects that have not worked, and present the lessons learned.

Martyn Hart, Chairman of The National Outsourcing Association, welcomed the establishment of the group. “This is a wonderful opportunity for our members to contribute meaningfully to the debate. It gives them chance to showcase their best practice examples and success stories, helping the public sector investigate how to outsource smarter.”

Unionised HP staff working on the Department for Work and Pensions Adam 2 contract began industrial action last week over proposals to offshore their jobs to India amid government pressure on IT suppliers to cut costs.

Support staff from India set to take over some of the functions next year are due to arrive in Britain as part of the knowledge transfer before they replace the 200 HP workers from the north-east who will be hit by the shifting work practices.

Within the HR community the case for outsourcing certain elements of the function to external specialists is well made and well understood. By doing so, the argument goes, HR can get access to ‘best in class’ expertise and experience and free itself up to focus on the role of business partner, working closely with commercial management to shape and implement strategies that will deliver tangible financial results. But when it comes to making the case to those in the boardroom or round the partnership table, the response is all too often cynicism, procrastination or a simple ‘no’.

The problem seems to lie in the fact that HR seems preoccupied with process and someone else’s best practice. The need instead is for pragmatic and simple yet highly commercial solutions which can be debated and sponsored at the very top.

The only effective way to align the people agenda with an organisation’s commercial strategy is to get business leaders to consider the internal and external talent context of business decisions in real time. This requires a shift in our strategy models and in HR’s orientation.

“My research suggests that many companies don’t actually have a real people strategy,” says Gyan Nagpal, the former head of talent in APAC for Deutsche Bank and now a talent strategy coach. “What they have instead is a list of initiatives which react to a specific issue or try and solve a problem, often when it’s too late anyway.”

“We find that in large organisations operating globally, major commercial decisions are made impacting distant theatres with little thought about how the talent can be found to implement them.”

Nagpal, who will be delivering a lecture on the theme at the Ochre House Symposium at Wentworth on 14th September, cites the rush into the burgeoning markets of China as a classic example of this. “Everyone wants a piece of the Chinese success story, but few have worked out where the managerial talent is going to come from to deliver it. There are simply not enough indigenous professionals with the expected skills and experience to go round.”

“Corporate boards are increasingly waking up to the need to discuss this early in the planning process and are looking to HR; both for greater involvement and depth of insight” says Nagpal. “To be successful at the partnership table, now more than ever, HR needs to present its case in a more structured and well-researched way.”

HP Enterprise Services has announced a new service to help enterprises and governments gain control of multivendor service environments, improving overall IT performance and quality while optimizing costs.

Most large enterprises combine services and technologies from multiple providers to deliver services to their end users. These multivendor delivery models challenge IT leadership to ensure efficient workflow, timely problem resolution and adequate service-level performance. The inability to effectively integrate service delivery in these multivendor delivery models can lead to poor IT performance and higher costs.

By improving supplier management and the handoffs between suppliers and internal delivery teams, the new HP Multi-Supplier Integration (MSI) Service helps chief information officers (CIOs) improve overall IT performance and manage multivendor environment complexities while keeping costs in check.

With HP as the single service integration and management layer, clients can focus their efforts on innovation and process improvement. As a single point of contact, the HP MSI Service drives effective supplier collaboration, rapid problem resolution and workflow process improvements. In the event of a service interruption, the MSI Service provides comprehensive diagnostics, accountability and timely restoration of services.

“Clients are embracing hybrid delivery models that increase complexity with traditional and new ‘as a service’ offerings from multiple suppliers,” said Rhonda Vetere, vice president, Enterprise Service Management, HP Enterprise Services. “The HP MSI Service provides the tools, processes and personnel to effectively manage multi-supplier delivery and the governance to drive continuous service quality improvement.”

Horizon Power, has penned a three-year contract with Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand to provide end-to-end ICT infrastructure support.

The company is focused on generating, procuring, distributing and retailing electricity in the state’s regional areas, with about 42,500 customers spread over an area of approximately 2.3 million square kilometres.

Under the deal, Fujitsu will provide end-to-end infrastructure support in WA, for staff and contractors across the state including service desk; change, problem, asset and configuration management; server, storage, database and network support; capacity management; support for e-mail and Citrix applications; VoIP telephone system support; end-user device support, both remote and desk-side; meeting room technologies; applications packaging; service delivery management and reporting.

Horizon Power general manager knowledge and technology, James Deacon, said he was looking for an outsourcing partner who understood the company’s IT requirements and could support its delivery of assets to the community.

“The successful partner needed to have a proven service delivery capability and the ability to leverage processes and expertise from a national and global pool of resources, from a local base, allowing Horizon Power to provide greater efficiencies at all of our sites.” According to Deacon, throughout the selection process, Fujitsu indicated its ability to deliver and meet the requirements and a willingness to partner with Horizon Power in the area of Aboriginal employment in WA, across various fields of work.

The Government Procurement Service has taken a new step towards the full implementation of the Public Services Network (PSN) with the first procurement notice for related services.

It has published a tender notice for telecommunications connectivity services. These will then facilitate the procurement of networks and infrastructure compliant with the PSN, which in turn will enable public services to make full use of the network.

It is a significant step forward in the roll out of the PSN, which is being built as a 'network of networks' to support collaborative working in public services. The services covered by the framework will be available to all parts of government, the health service, voluntary organisations and private sector bodies that work on behalf of the public sector.

Support services group Interserve said it is working hard to clear up the mess caused by the riots and looting in London and other parts of the country.

Chief executive Adrian Ringrose praised the work of staff, who he said are helping with boarding up, replacing windows and providing extra security.

The group provides cleaning and shop-fitting services for many of the UK's high street names, including betting chain William Hill, pharmacy group Boots, Homebase, Sainsbury's and HSBC, many of which have seen shops and branches targeted over the past week.

It also works for Croydon and Ealing councils, two of the London boroughs most badly affected by the unrest as well as providing back-office support for the Metropolitan Police.

Martyn Hart took part in a live Guardian online debate on Thursday 11th August. How far can the public sector go in offshoring IT services overseas?

Offshoring has jumped back onto the government ICT agenda recently but the debate was concern whether there is any real benefit in shipping provision overseas.

There are those who say offshoring services as part of delivering back office functions and IT support has been happening for some time, and it's gaining respectability as government strains to save on a large scale. The question is, how far should public sector go in outsourcing IT services overseas?

To read all comments on the debate:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/government-computing-network/2011/aug/05/online-debate-offshoring-public-sector-ict