South Bucks seeks £20m back office deal

The seven year contract will cover a wide range of ICT services including desktop, telephony, network and other infrastructure support as well as finance and payroll services, the council has said. Services outside of ICT also form part of the deal, which is worth between £10m and £20m. The chosen suppliers will be responsible for software implementation, procurement consultancy and computer hardware services. The contract has a three year extension option and is divided into three lots, the first of which is revenue and benefits. South Bucks said the majority of these functions will be outsourced. "The only areas to remain in house will be fraud prevention and detection and those functions where contracting out is not permitted by legislation. The service has been outsourced since 1997 and is currently run using Academy software, with the back office activities carried out off site," the council said. The second lot is for finance and will cover finance and payroll systems, which are currently run by IBS Integra and Midland HR Delphi respectively. The third is for ICT services and will include the areas covered in the council's current outsourced arrangements, which end in July 2011.