Second time lucky? But departments still lack funding to complete strategy, watchdog says
UK government has put £934 million ($1.15 million) on the table to update an ERP system in a cluster of Whitehall departments, a mega-project that was heavily criticized over lack of funding and business case.
The Department for Work and Pensions has launched a competition for an ERP refresh package worth an estimated £933.7 million. The 12-year contract includes both software and systems integration services as part of a „bundled procurement.“
The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Home Office (HO), and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) will also make use of the procurement in what has been a stop-start refresh of the departments Oracle finance and HR systems, in a move expected to support around 250,000 employees.
Earlier this month, the Parliamentary spending watchdog said the government had yet to identify funding for the programme beyond 2024–25 and that it did not have a proper business case.
In a procurement notice published late last week, DWP said the „Synergy Programme“ would „ensure the delivery of a best in class, Value for Money, shared human resources and finance service which meet the needs of service users.“
The tender is designed to „procure and adopt a cloud-based service leveraging the capabilities offered by a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) ERP platform and associated technologies“ as well as a systems integration service „to enable the transition (and support business change) to the SaaS ERP platform and associated technologies.
