DWP Begins IT Transformation

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has begun to roll out its transformational IT programme with a stronger focus on the government’s SME commitment.

It claims that its IT transformation will address the reliance on costly, inflexible legacy systems and move towards an approach more in line with the government’s “digital by default” agenda.

DWP also says it aims to increase the number of smaller providers it users, as well as providing better alignment to its business needs.

The Department says it intends to do this via a “service tower-based model” that will separate its IT into component parts, allowing more room for competition for services, it claims.

The plans are outlined in the DWP Revised Action Plan – May 2014, which explains the first tower that the Department will be delivering is security.

“The commercial strategy for the new security contracts is to deliver value for money, an innovative, agile approach, with trust providers to the public sector who offer a flexible adaptive solution to meet DWP needs,” says the strategy document.

It adds that the Department is intending to spend £2.225m on security contracts this month, while striving to achieve a 25% share for SMEs in future contracts and using G-Cloud as a primary procurement framework.

Moving Towards “Digital By Default”

The other towers will provide networks, hosting, tooling and transitional service which will all be overseen by a single service integration and management (SIAM) integrator.

The “service tower” model it has chosen to adopt has been used by other Departments in the past, including the Treasury and the Department for Energy and Climate Change.

DWP often comes under fire for its handling of IT projects – recently, the Universal Credit scheme fared so badly in a Major Projects Authority (MPA) report that it received the newly created classification of “reset.”

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