Computacenter loses £25m Cumbria IT outsourcing deal

Cumbria county council has decided not to outsource its ICT to Computacenter after the two organisations failed to finalise the terms of a proposed services contract. The deal would have delivered a datacentre, service management and integration services, plus a managed enterprise network service for Cumbria and wholesale broadband services, which would be sold to business and residential consumers, as well as other public sector organisations. In January the council named IT infrastructure services provider Computacenter as its preferred bidder for the £25m five-year deal. The company was due to have begun the taken over from Cumbria's existing supplier, Agilisys, at the end of March. However, the contract will not be finalised and Agilisys will carry on running Cumbria's IT in the short term, the council said. "Unfortunately, following extensive discussions with Computacenter, it has not proved possible for the two parties to conclude the finalisation of the proposed contract," it said in a statement. "We are therefore putting in place interim arrangements with Agilisys to ensure service continuity from 1 April." There will be no disruption to either public-facing services or to the council's staff, the council added, and cumbria is now assessing "a number of options" for the longer-term service delivery of its technology services. Computacenter was originally selected by the council from a shortlist of BT, Cable and Wireless, Commendium, CSC and Fujitsu. Chris Price, director of public sector and service integratino at Computacenter, said: "We can't discuss the specifics of contract negotiations, however, we can confirm that we haven't been able to agree terms that were agreeable to both parties." Computacenter public sector business includes a hardware contract with the Department for Work and Pensions, and deals with Inverclyde, South Lanarkshire, Staffordshire and Leeds councils and the Greater London Authority. This article is published by Guardian Professional. For weekly updates on news, debate and best practice on public sector IT, join the Guardian Government Computing network here.