MPs demand answers on Fujitsu's inclusion in lucrative frameworks
MPs on the Business and Trade Select Committee have written to the secretary of state demanding answers over Fujitsu's inclusion in government procurement frameworks worth over £50bn, despite its self-imposed ban on bidding for new public sector contracts following the Post Office scandal. The frameworks include G-Cloud 15, Technology Services 4, Transport Technology, and Digital Outcomes and Specialists 7, which could allow Fujitsu to compete for work with new government customers. The committee chair, Liam Byrne, has asked for clarification on how Fujitsu's participation aligns with its moratorium and whether it has provided assurances it won't use the frameworks to gain new customers.
Given Fujitsu’s moratorium on bidding for work with new government customers, please could you clarify: whether Fujitsu’s appointment to these frameworks enables it to bid for work from public sector bodies that are not already customers?
- tene80i
What I never understand with these enormous projects is what proportion is consultancy waste/profit, and what proportion is "genuinely, this is a very large software project".
IT projects that cost billions are incomprehensible to me, outside of frontier work that the AI companies or FAAANG might do. Is the problem really that hard? Assuming building in-house capability is off the table, is there no space in the market for a good software consultancy? Or are they just outcompeted for getting the contract?
- KaiserPro
The problem for the UK is the Fujitsu owns the last vestiges of the UK IT scene.
ICT/ICL and a bunch of other were all bought out by them in the early 90s.
But also there are two other issues:
1) there aren't many companies that are able to bid on that scale
2) if you remove fujitsu then you're handing it to either crapita or atos. who are also shite.
The solution to this is develop decent in-house architecture team who are able to drive specs and keep an eye on developments.
But
That requires three further things:
1) long term vision, with enough run way/agency to affect change
2) enough money to pay and keep decent people
3) the ability to terminate contracts when they get into shit. This is policitically challenging because contract termination == the current minister is shite in news term. "FLAGSHIP PROGRAMME SCRAPPED BECAUSE OF POOR PERFORMANCE, here is why $government is bad with lots of input from people with agendas that haven't properly been vetted because the journalist isn't a specialist (or its not a news site)"
- sam_lowry_
A little known but amusing fact:
Fujitsu (well, ICL, the UK company that was bought by Fujitsu and then became the UK branch of Fujitsu) is still the supplier of Microsoft software to the European institutions through a long-standing framework contract with DIGIT.
Why EU could not buy from Microsoft directly to spare the embarrassment is beyond my comprehension.