Georgina O'Toole, TechMarketView LLP, 29 July 2015

The CGI team will be getting ready to celebrate next Monday. The City of Edinburgh Council is set to approve CGI as its preferred bidder for a new transformational ICT contract worth £186m over seven years. According to the Council, an additional £46m of services will be delivered “at no extra cost”. The Council expects to save a minimum of £45m over the contract term. This will contribute to its targeted £107m reduction in costs over the next five years. The contract forms part of the next phase of the Council’s ICT & Digital (ICT&D) Transformation Programme, which is focused on channel shift or in the words of the council “digital by desire”. There is potential for the contract to be used by over 50 other public sector organisations.

BT has been Edinburgh’s main IT services partner, under a £150m Smart City Partnership, since 2001. Having been extended, the deal is due to expire at the end of March 2016. Early in the competition for the replacement contract, BT was one of eight companies shortlisted. The others were CGI, Agilisys, Atos, Capita, HP, Lockheed Martin, and Serco.

The contract will have been hard fought; there are very few substantial contracts up for grabs in local government currently. We understand that Agilisys withdrew from the competition early on and subsequently decided to partner CGI. CGI, with Agilisys, was up against Capita at the final hurdle. Partners will be important on the deal; CGI has committed to 25% of the contract value going to SMEs, supporting the local economy. Moreover, it will create 221 new jobs and 60 modern apprenticeships in the city. The contract will be a big boost to CGI’s business in local government; it currently has a tiny revenue footprint. From that perspective, the partnership with Agilisys made perfect sense, allowing CGI to combine Agilisys’ significant local government and channel shift experience with its major ICT transformation programme experience. We’re sure we will hear more detail after Monday.

Full Article is at http://www.techmarketview.com/ukhotviews/archive/2015/07/29/cgi-beats-capita-to-edinburgh-deal