Home Office to review Sprint ii

The Home Office is to review the controversial Sprint ii procurement framework once the newly created police ICT company is up and running next spring, reports The Register . This follows the announcement earlier this week by Theresa May, the home secretary, of the creation of a new company to lead police ICT procurement. She told the Association of Chief Police Officers that the current methods of buying ICT were "confused, fragmented and expensive". On being asked of the implications for Sprint ii, a Home Office spokesman said: "The Sprint ii framework will continue as is for the time being. This will be reviewed once the company is up and running". In March the government, on advice from the National Policing Improvement Agency, mandated police purchasing heads in England and Wales to buy low-end IT kit via Sprint ii as opposed to Buying Solutions' Commodity IT Hardware and Software (CITHS) deal. This prompted complaints from for CITHS suppliers that they would lose business and that, as SCC was the only supplier on Sprint ii, it would not be competitive. A number of CITHS suppliers contacted by The Register expressed the hope that the Sprint ii ruling would be overturned and an open bidding process would resume. This article is published by Guardian Professional. For weekly updates of news, debate and best practice on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.