Chief Information Officer
The procurement phase was known as Project ISAAC (ICT Service Acquisition And Change) and the Framework is known as public sector Flex.
Many public sector bodies have outsourced their ICT (Information and Communications Technology) service to private sector organisations. They typically act in isolation, running procurements which can take a year or more to complete, and which incur considerable expense. The result is numerous, individually–tailored services which fail to share investments, leverage the overall spend, or promote joined-up government.
Following its Transformational Government strategy, the Cabinet Office launched Flex to address these issues, promote efficiency, reduce costs and improve the service experienced by users. Flex will deliver a technology Shared Service with the potential to serve multiple public sector organisations and went live in June 2007, generating immediate saving for the Cabinet Office. More significant financial benefits will come later on, as more organisations opt to join the service, triggering volume discounts on the price of the service.
Flex is a shared service for ICT designed for all public sector organisations. Flex initially provides a desktop shared service through a framework contract and is made up of a core of services, with the option of enabling customers to also buy additional and bespoke services through the framework.
The benefits of public sector Flex are numerous, not least that customers who purchase through the Flex framework avoid the need for lengthy and costly procurement processes and can be assured of a high quality and consistency of service from their supplier.
All of these improvements to back office efficiencies and effectiveness mean that public sector organisations can focus their energies, money and resources on the front line – thus improving services for the citizen and working towards the Transformation Government agenda.
Shared Services are services provided to multiple business units or organisations, but managed by a single entity. They allow organisations to collaborate to reduce waste and inefficiency by reorganising or re–using assets and sharing investments with others.
Currently, most public sector organisations have their own contracts, processes, facilities and management for delivery of ICT services. By organising these more effectively, resources can be freed for reinvestment in other areas.
Fujitsu’s solution was selected through an open competition due to a combination of a high quality service offer and value for money pricing.
Fujitsu has delivered many successful shared services and will bring its experience and lessons learned from these projects to bear to help ensure the success of Flex. These include:
The procurement was run in such a way that any UK public sector organisation can join the shared service without needing to run a separate procurement.
The Cabinet Office has acted as a central purchasing body in establishing a framework agreement under which other public sector bodies may award individual call–off contracts. The OGC recently issued guidance on procurement of shared service, and the Flex procurement was run in full accordance with this advice.
Other organisations are now able to contract directly with Fujitsu for both a common, “core shared service” and also to meet their specific, bespoke ICT requirements.
Those with existing outsourced arrangements should consider Flex when their current contracts expire, while those looking to outsource for the first time can do so immediately. Some of Fujitsu’s existing customers are also considering switching over their contracts to Flex if that represents a better deal.
The Office for National Statistics has been participating in the project with a view to transferring some or all of its ICT services to the new arrangements subject to business case testing and approval.
DIUS has also signed up to the public sector Flex framework and will transform to the Flex service once the Cabinet Office transformation is complete.
Other public sector bodies are also being engaged, and a number are currently considering joining the shared service. Cabinet Office and Fujitsu will work together closely to market the shared service to a wide range public sector organisations.
No. The scope of the original OJEU notice (2006/S 131–140659 dated 13th July 2006) was sufficiently broad and clear as to avoid possible legal issues as take–up increases. The OJEU notice clarified both who would be entitled to use the framework agreement (all UK public sector bodies), and the potential value of contracts let under it (current government IT expenditure of £14bn per year).
In practice, we expect other shared service and single organisation contracts to be let ensuring continued healthy competition in the market for public sector ICT.
The procurement made use of the new Competitive Dialogue procedure, introduced under EU procurement legislation in 2006, and it is thought to be the first ICT outsourcing to be done using this route. The dialogue process allowed the project team to engage in detailed design discussions with prospective suppliers throughout the procurement process and was a key factor in encouraging innovation from bidders.
The services included cover a broad range of IT and communications services likely to be required by a public sector organisation.
Organisations joining Flex will benefit from a “Core Shared Service” intended to offer the best value for money service available to the public sector, as well as a range of optional services. The Core Shared Service comprises a security accredited service delivering modern office productivity applications from a shared data centre facility, through a fully managed infrastructure. Users will have access to ITIL–compliant support accessible through a shared service desk.
A range of optional services will also be available to meet customers’ specific requirements such as voice services, legacy application support, enhanced service levels, ‘Confidential’ level security, bespoke development, consultancy, and transition and transformation services.
Volume discounts of around 25% of the “per user” price are available once the total user population reaches around 10,000.
Further savings will be generated because organisations using Flex will be able to run a faster, more cost effective procurement process. Outsourcing procurements typically take at least a year and can cost a million pounds or more. Flex is expected to cut the time taken and the associated costs by at least a half.
The service has been designed to enable more flexible and mobile working, and will be capable of supporting BlackBerry–style devices. Organisations operating at Restricted level will be able to make use of these services as soon as they join the shared service.
The new service has been designed with the green principles of reduce, reuse, recycle in mind. Economies of scale generated by the provision of IT services in a shared manner will allow more efficient use of assets, including the sharing of infrastructure investments across multiple government departments. So the public sector as a whole will need to buy less IT equipment in order to meet its requirements.
The service will also allow more flexible and home working. This will reduce the need for staff travel, and potentially enable more efficient use of office accommodation.
Users will be equipped with modern, efficient thin–client PCs, which consume a fraction of the energy used by a traditional PC. This factor alone is expected to reduce Cabinet Office’s carbon emissions by some 320 tonnes each year.
When equipment reaches the end of its life, wherever possible we will work with charitable and voluntary sector organisations to redeploy older IT equipment.
If re–use is not possible, Fujitsu will perform disposal of IT equipment in a safe and environmentally friendly manner complying with the European Commission’s WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) directive. These regulations seek to minimise the impact of waste electrical and electronic equipment at the end of its useful life when it needs to be disposed of safely.
Whatever systems are implemented will need to offer the same high level of security as those that are currently in place, as government security accreditation is still a pre–requisite. Fujitsu have significant previous experience of providing secure services to government.
Public sector bodies joining the shared service will be able to choose services with a level of security accreditation appropriate to their needs, up to and including CONFIDENTIAL.
Flex will establish a source of shared ICT infrastructure and services which can be used across government. This platform could be used in the future to support the other shared services initiatives for business support services such as HR, finance etc.
Is there any ambition to extend Flex around business applications and ERP applications? This could be a logical next step. But the first priority for Flex is to establish well the foundations of desktop and infrastructure. That needs to be right before we move into the applications space. The same applies for networks and data centres. Having said that, where a number of customers have a common requirement, we could look at creating another module which would sit in the extra services which can be bought.
Flex will generate significant cash savings for public sector organisations, helping them to release resources to the front line in accordance with the Efficiency Review.
There is room for multiple options of ICT delivery. Each organisation needs its own business case to work out whether public sector Flex is right for them and truly delivers best practice. There are 3.8 million desktops in Government, but Flex itself will never be a 3.8 million solution. There is more than enough space for more than one model to procure IT. But whatever model is chosen needs to be the best in terms of price, components and service. If everyone saves £100 off each desktop, £millions of taxpayers money would be saved, allowing resources to be redirected to the front line, thus improving the citizen experience.
The Cabinet Office has worked hard with Fujitsu to trim the core services down to the basic elements that organisations need to run ICT solutions of a good standard. It may be that feedback received over time means that we look at the core services and re&8211;benchmark them. But we will only consider taking something out of the core set if doing so will not affect the quality of the service.
Flex will not be the only procurement/contracting model. Customers and organisations will keep their freedom to choose, but decision makers must remember their duty to the tax payer and get the best level of service for the right value. Whatever is procured must be the best.
We can be flexible about how we approach existing assets. We are not suggesting that we throw away existing equipment, as that is a waste. The Cabinet Office will not throw away its PCs until they have come to the end of their lives. These PCs will however be converted, so they can be used as thin clients, as per the Flex framework.
The core service is thin client but this can be swapped out for all or a sub–section of users who need fat client or laptop environments even if some applications are actually delivered to those desk tops on a thin client basis.