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Print articleAccording to the Cabinet Office, the new deal has been structured to promote efficiency, reduce costs and environmental impact, and improve the service experienced by users. In the new ?8m contract, the Cabinet Office hopes to save ?2.5m per year and over 300 tonnes of carbon emissions compared to its existing contract.
Public sector Flex, as the new service is branded, establishes the potential to deliver a 'shared service' to multiple public sector organisations bringing a real prospect of both significant cost reductions through common infrastructure and more effective collaboration and reuse of systems. Discussions are already underway with interested public sector bodies, including the Office of National Statistics.
Fujitsu's solution was selected through an open competition and made use of the new Competitive Dialogue procedure, introduced under EU procurement legislation in 2006, the first major ICT outsourcing to be completed using this route in the UK.
Government Chief Information Officer John Suffolk said:
?The new Cabinet Office ICT deal is win-win-win, for staff, for taxpayers and the environment.?
The green ICT principles embedded in the contract will impact staff and the environment in several ways. For example, the service will allow more flexible and home working reducing travel and enabling more efficient use of office accommodation. Users will be equipped with modern, efficient thin-client devices (or dumb-terminals), which consume a fraction of the energy used by a traditional PC.
The chatter on the internet last week was about a new government initiative called Green-Shift. Under this initiative, greater use of dumb-terminals would mean that fewer power-hungry desktop PCs would be needed. To the user there would be no difference in look or performance, they would continue to use their office programs as usual, but in reality these programs would be on another more energy efficent computer.
Because the dumb terminals would not need to be running large office programs they do not need to be powerful machines, and because programs do not need to be distributed on lots of computers around the office, it is much cheaper for the organisation to run.
From a flexibility and security point of view this way of working is a real plus for the Cabinet Office. Because the programs and the files are not in the computer on the desk, the worker can access their files and programs from any computer in the network, as if they were at their desk. They will even be able to work from home, as if they were in the office, but without the risk of files being accessed if they 'lose' the computer.
The use of dumb-terminals alone, the Cabinet Office hopes, is expected to reduce Cabinet Office's carbon emissions by over 300 tonnes each year.
