Defra publishes outsourcing shortlist

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has announced a shortlist of bidders for its controversial IT outsourcing programme.

Accenture, IBM and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young will compete to run Defra's IT systems in a contract worth £85m a year.

The contract is likely to run for 10 years, but provision exists to extend this to 17 years. The preferred bidder will be announced in spring 2004, with the contract due to start around June.

The decision to outsource the IT systems has been questioned in some quarters.

Earlier this year, Labour MP David Taylor, formerly IT manager at Leicester County Council, criticised the rush to outsource the running of IT systems.

"I regret the lack of an IT strategy other than to sell off IT and throw Defra to the mercies of the private sector," he said at the time.

But according to Defra, the number of change programmes it wants to undertake in the coming years makes it impractical to keep IT services in-house.

"The day-to-day running of the IT systems was not the issue. We needed to get the skills to underpin a major change programme, and felt this was a better option," said Nick Cobban, a spokesman at Defra.

Consultation with staff and unions is already taking place, with a "few hundred" staff expected to transfer to the successful bidder under Tupe regulations.