Accenture leans back, receives £86m Met Police contract

The Metropolitan Police has inked a £86m deal with Accenture to manage its applications, the latest contract award in the force's plan to shave £200m from its IT budget over the next three years by carving up its existing Capgemini contract.

The deal will last for five years, with the option of a three year extension. The award, seen by The Register, will result in 113 existing Capgemini staff being "in scope" for transfer to Accenture. The majority of the work will be carried out in Newcastle, with a consultation process to decide where the incumbent employees end up.

According to the notice, Accenture beat HCL, IBM, Lockheed Martin and Unisys to win the deal.

Last month the Met handed £250m in contracts to CSC for its end user computing and hosting towers, with the network tower has yet to be awarded. French outsourcer Atos is to integrate the various IT components as part of its Total Technology Programme Infrastructure strategy.

Currently 80 per cent of its investment in technology supports legacy systems; with the force running 750 separate systems.

Under its plan the force will select common software components for its core policing applications. It also intends to create an MPS Apps Store, for constables to access publicly available applications.

A separate £216m contract to outsource the Met's back office IT to Steria's shared services centre, will see hundreds of back office IT roles made redundant the Met said last year.

Overall the Met expects to slash the number of its in-house staff from 800 to 100.

However, the approach of breaking contracts up into towers and outsourcing to multiple large suppliers is not yet proven, with the Ministry of Justice having reportedly hit major problems with a move to this model.

The Cabinet Office has also said this structure is no longer government policy.

Speaking to The Register last month, deputy commissioner of the Met Police, Craig Mackey, acknowledged that the force's IT strategy of outsourcing its back office IT and dividing contracts into chunks via its tower model is "not without risk." ®