South Bucks awards comprehensive £11m outsourcing deal

South Bucks council has awarded a contract worth £11m for back office services including ICT to Steria and Northgate. According to a notice published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 31 May, the suppliers will deliver a wide range of services including accounting services, software implementation and maintenance as well as hardware and consultancy. Revenue and benefits also form part of the seven year deal, covering the billing, collection and recovery of council tax and benefits. South Bucks has outsourced a number of its services since 1997, and the new contract will be based on the council's current outsourced arrangements, which are due to end in July 2011. This will largely cover desktop computing, network, telephony and other infrastructure support, with the addition of other functionality such as disaster recovery, according to the notice. This article is published by Guardian Professional. For updates on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.