Oxford City Council Begins IT Transformation

Jan 12, 2015

Oxford City Council has issued a tender as the beginning of its ICT overhaul ahead of an existing agreement expiring in April 2016.

Currently, Oxford City has an agreement in place with Oxfordshire County Council as its ICT delivery partner.

When this ends, the City Council is opting for a seven-lot tender in a bid to find new arrangements that will meet technology needs.

The tender document reveals the contract has an expected value of £5m-£13m, will run for an initial five year period and will have the option to extend for five 12-month periods.

Those wishing to bid for the contract will be able to bid across the entire seven lots, which include:

Datacentre hosting services
Server and storage capacity
Server technical support
Database administration
Network security infrastructure and support
IT service management tools
IT service desk operations.

Other Organisations Could Use Tender

Although Oxford City Council is leading the tendering process, other local authorities may be able to procure services within the lots.

These include Oxfordshire County Council, West Oxfordshire District Council, Cotswold District Council, Cheltenham Borough Council and Forest of Dean District Council.

However, with the exception of Oxford City, those wishing to obtain services from a contract supplier will be required to negotiate individual agreements.

“Oxford City Council is seeking a maximum of seven organisations to provide a range of ICT infrastructure services as set out below from April 2016,” claims the tender document.

“Organisations can tender for a single lot of any combination of lots.

“The council currently has all its ICT infrastructure provided by Oxfordshire County Council under a partnership agreement which will come to an end on 31.06.2016.

“The successful organisations will therefore be required to be able to manage the transition of the services they are awarded with working with both the City and County Council during 2015/16,” it adds.