Highways Agency seeks £40m central IT system
And a pony
Customer Success Testimonial: Recovery is Everything
The Highways Agency has published two separate pre-tenders, for a centralised database and for data transmission and telecommunications cables.
The deal for a fully integrated and centralised database "to support the agency's strategic road network operations" is worth between £35m to £40m.
According to a notice published in the Official Journal of the European Union (Ojeu) on 19 May 2010, the chosen supplier will provide data processing, database and software related services.
"In order to achieve a solution that gives the flexibility required by the agency, tender documents will be developed that will guide procurement of a solution that is business configurable, highly scalable, available from anywhere in the world over a secure internet connection and commercially and technically sustainable for at least 15 years," the agency said.
The second pre-tender for data transmission and telecommunications cables is worth £18m and includes the supply of optical fibre cables, insulated wire cables and cable broadcasting lines. The deal will be awarded to one supplier and will run for four years.
"The supplier will be required to effectively and efficiently manage a supply chain of subcontractors, manufacturing to precise quality standards providing the above cable types to strict delivery requirements and delivering a high standard of supply chain management expertise against minimum performance standards," the agency said.
"It is anticipated that the Ojeu notice will be published in July 2010," it added.
This article was originally published at Kable.
Kable's GC weekly is a free email newsletter covering the latest news and analysis of public sector technology. To register click here.
COMMENTS
+ 100m more like it!
I'm sure I won't be the first, or the last, to say this will fail terribly and cost 3 times as much as the tender and be totally exposed to the outside world. Why does it have to accessible worldwide, it's the UK agency... or did I miss something....? Why do we want foreign people to have "secure" access to these systems, I can't think of a sensible reason.
Hmmmm
The obvious point is this is a waste of cash.
The more sinister point lurking underneath is wtf do they need £18m worth of optical cables for? This isn't pushing traffic patterns or works data around (which could probably be done cheaper wirelessly anyway), this is probably something evil like full scale number plate recognition, with HD video counting pores on the driver's face. (Maybe I'm just being paranoid after reading that RIPA article)
Or it might be back-door way to fund the Birmingham office moving in to the fancy pants new Cube building...
No thanks
Will our nice new government please consign this one to the bin - hence saving roughly double the given figure.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
What you need to know about cloud backup
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Customer Success Testimonial: Recovery is Everything
