Industry news

About £10m has been saved in four years by finding cheaper contracts for Leicestershire County Council services on the internet, the authority claimed.

The leader of the county council said by awarding its contracts to the lowest bidder via an e-auction website it had saved £9.6m of taxpayers money.

Councillor David Parsons said money would be reinvested in services for children and vulnerable adults.

The Conservative-led council is aiming to cut £79m in the next four years.

"We've achieved this by really looking at our suppliers, looking at improved contracts and taking part in things like e-auctions, where the contract is decided but then there's an e-auction between competitors as to what they can supply the contract for," Mr Parsons said.

The CBI says there are several ways the Government could improve access to capital.

The CBI employers' group has urged the government to do more to help the "forgotten army" of medium-sized businesses.

New measures should include improving access to finance, especially in the bond markets.

The govenrment has tendered for its £60M G-Cloud Contract.

The tender states: Government Procurement Service as the Contracting Authority is putting in place a Pan Government Collaborative Framework Agreement for use by UK public sector bodies identified at VI.3 of the relevant OJEU Contract Notice (and any future successors to these organisations), which include Central Government Departments and their Arm’s Length Bodies and Agencies, Non-Departmental Public Bodies, NHS bodies, Local Authorities and devolved administrations.

The above Public Sector Bodies have a need for a compliant Procurement Vehicle to access Cloud Computing Services.

Government Procurement Service reserves the right for an electronic auction to be held by Public Sector bodies during further competition among the parties to the Framework Agreement(s).

The requirement is divided into Lots. The Lots are as follows:

Lot 1 - Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Lot 2 - Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Lot 3 - Software as a Service (SaaS)

Lot 4 - Specialist Cloud Services

Services company Enterprise is the first choice for a £210 million contract to provide waste and recycling collections for the City of Edinburgh council.

The council will meet next week (October 27) to endorse the decision to choose Enterprise as preferred bidder for the city’s seven-year environmental services contract, which also covers street cleaning and grounds maintenance.

The new contract is set to spell an end to the recycling box system currently used by householders in EdinburghUnder the contract, which would replace the council’s existing in-house service, Enterprise has committed to increase the city’s recycling rate to over 60% by 2018. It also plans to introduce a new single-container commingled recycling service for households, replacing the council’s current source-separated service which uses two boxes.

Genpact Limited, a global leader in business process and technology management, today announced the opening of its Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) global delivery center. The 80-seat modern center set up in Dubai as a licensed partner of Dubai Outsource Zone (DOZ) will provide business process services such as claims processing, customer service, collections, treasury operations, finance and accounting, analytics and risk-related services for clients in the Middle East and North Africa.

“We are delighted to begin operations in Dubai and hope to grow this center into a 500-person center in the next three years,” said Tiger Tyagarajan, President and CEO, Genpact, speaking at the opening. “Not only will the center deliver business impact through our uniquely scientific Smart Enterprise Processes (SEPSM) framework, it will also help our clients make smarter business decisions through our Smart Decision Services comprising analytics and research, reengineering and risk management.”

Oracle has announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Endeca Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of unstructured data management, web commerce and business intelligence solutions.

A privately-held company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Endeca provides powerful and highly intuitive products that help companies analyze unstructured data, gain better business intelligence, and deliver a superior customer experience.

The combination of Oracle and Endeca is extremely compelling in this changing data environment,” said Thomas Kurian, Executive Vice President, Oracle Development. “Together, we will provide best-in-class technology to manage structured and unstructured data together; business intelligence tools to analyze structured and unstructured data together; and a broad suite of packaged applications which extends the value of unstructured data into ERP, Supply Chain, CRM, EPM, Web Commerce, and specialized applications. This technology will also allow us to integrate more comprehensive unstructured data management into Oracle’s engineered systems.”

Tata Consultancy Services, a leading IT services, consulting and business solutions organization, has announced that CUA, Australia’s largest customer-owned financial institution, has selected TCS BaNCS Online Banking Platform to revitalize and transform its online banking system.

The selection of TCS to deliver CUA’s online banking platform follows the announcement made earlier this year that TCS and its BaNCS banking platform would be delivering CUA’s new core banking system. The online banking transformation program is expected to be delivered over the next two years.

Chris Whitehead, Chief Executive Officer, CUA, said, “Following the selection of TCS to implement our core banking system, we also reviewed TCS BaNCS online banking platform and determined it would meet the needs of both our business and our customers for the long-term.

"The benefit of having one partner delivering an integrated technology solution also brings obvious advantages. Enhancing the experience our customers have with our brand and ensuring consistency across all channels is a business priority that is fundamental to our growth strategy. As part of the transformation program, our online banking customers will have access to mobile banking applications and a more streamlined, easy-to-use and visually appealing service with improved functionality and capability.”

Francis Maude has launched a detailed plan for the implementation of the Government’s new ICT Strategy which is projected to deliver around £1.4bn of savings within the next 4 years and help deliver better public services digitally.

The Strategic Implementation plan sets out how the vision in the ICT strategy will be translated into real outcomes. This will make a real difference for:

•citizens – by delivering better public services digitally

•government departments – by directly supporting them to live within their budget settlements by improving the efficiency and quality of our ICT

•businesses – by creating a fairer, open and competitive government ICT marketplace that removes barriers to SME participation and supports innovative and agile ICT solutions.

Francis Maude said: “Government ICT drives the delivery of public services, from government web services for the submission of tax returns to enabling our armed forces to operate in Afghanistan. This government is committed to delivering a better service to the taxpayer on government ICT projects.

Today’s Strategic Implementation Plan sets out how we will do this. It gives a detailed breakdown of how the reforms this government is making to ICT projects are going to be delivered. In August we announced that we had already saved the public purse £300 million by applying greater scrutiny to our ICT expenditure. And now we are going even further and save even more money, while delivering higher standards for government ICT.”

The implementation of a project to create a centre to streamline back-office functions for the seven research councils has so far not been good value for money and there is a risk that the councils may not recover their investment. When finally operational 15 months late, the Centre was delivering services across the five functions planned but some services, particularly finance, are not yet where they need to be.

The aim of the Shared Service Centre was to share services, such as finance, HR and procurement, in order to make savings. By the end of March 2011 the project was £51 million over budget. The councils have not monitored benefits effectively, resulting in a lack of clarity about the savings delivered. However, the available evidence indicates that to date the project has underachieved against total expected savings by at least £73 million. And it is likely to take two years longer than planned before the project recovers its set up costs.

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said today:

"This is yet another example of a project embarked upon without the necessary planning. Once it did start to go wrong, proper governance or intervention from the Department should have rectified the problems, but this did not happen until a great deal of taxpayers’ money had been spent.

"The Department, the research councils and the Shared Service Centre now need to get performance up to where it needs to be. Any plans for expanding the range of clients served by the Centre must be based on a thorough and realistic assessment of value for money."

The European Commission is set to propose investing almost €9.2bn (£8bn) in a massive rollout of super-fast broadband infrastructure and services across the European Union.

The plan is partly aimed at stimulating further investment in rural broadband.

“Here in Europe we face several problems in deploying broadband, with insufficient investment, problems in accessing capital, and a weak business case for rollout in less populated areas,” said Neelie Kroes, vice president for the EC’s digital agenda initiative. “This is potentially a serious barrier to growth.”

It is hoped the initiative will also help to create a single market for digital public services.