Thursday 2nd August, 2012

Six London local authorities have signed a four-year contract with Capgemini UK plc.

The contract is expected to generate cost savings by phasing out older, outdated IT systems, securing economies of scale, eliminating unnecessary paperwork and streamlining processes in areas such as finance, procurement, HR and payroll.

The six councils aim to use the cost savings generated to protect services to the public. The councils involved in the plan are Lambeth, Lewisham, Barking & Dagenham, Brent, Croydon and Havering, which have a combined population of 1.6 million.

Mike Suarez, Executive Director for Finance and Resources for Lambeth Council, who led on the procurement of Capgemini, said: ‘All councils share common support functions - like HR, finance and procurement - but we have our own ways of doing them. If we can use the same system, we will streamline our processes and save money without cutting services. But this is also about improving how we do business with our suppliers and enable our staff to do things more quickly and efficiently. Managers will have access to budgets in real time and not need to complete endless paperwork for the simplest of tasks – making real savings for the tax payer.’

The project is believed to be the most ambitious IT programme ever undertaken in the UK local government sector and is predicted to set the pattern for other initiatives across the UK and in other parts of the public sector.

The Capgemini t-Gov transformation methodology involves standardisation on the latest Oracle R12 Enterprise Resource Planning suite of software and was developed in collaboration with Oracle.

The new systems are scheduled to go live in July 2013, and will be managed by Capgemini for an initial period of a further three years.