Government Scraps PRISE IT Project

The UK government has scrapped an IT programme that was set to be worth up to £37m without offering an explanation.

Procurement of Replacement IT Service Environment (PRISE) was intended to replace an existing contract held by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) as it began to move towards a tower model.

“The contracting authority is intending to move from a single supplier model to a tower based model which allows for the provision of IT services from Service Towers being managed by the Service Integration and Management (SIAM) operating model,” the original invitation to tender said.

The legacy contract expires at the end of this month, at which, PRISE was supposed to take over, but a notice has now revealed this will not occur.

The contract was supposed to cover the provision of technology, including software, telecoms, printing, repair and maintenance, security, networks and hardware.

It was hoped that PRISE would help open up the ONS to a wider range of suppliers and was expected to run for an initial three years with the option to extend for another two years.

The contract was valued between £13m and £37m for this duration.

“The ONS would like to inform the market of the cancellation of the PRISE Lots One, Two and Three,” the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) cancellation document says.

“The ONS is currently working with the Government Digital Service (GDS), Crown Commercial Service (CCS) and the Cabinet office to determine next steps,” it adds.

Government Condemns Tower Model

A posting on the Government Technology blog recently revealed that Whitehall does not promote nor condone the tower model for public sector IT projects.

It is unclear whether this has affected the ONS’ decision to pull the PRISE contract that depends on this particular model.

© 24N.biz