The Register®

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/26/cornwall_outsourcing_deal_put/

Cornwall chokes on £300m local gov deal with IT kingpins

CSC doesn't like the smell of the pasty, BT eyes loot

By Anna Leach

Posted in Government, 26th October 2012 11:15 GMT

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Cornwall Council has stalled a £300m ten-year deal to outsource its call centres and other IT systems to the private sector.

The county's councillors voted 93-0, with seven abstentions, to put the brakes on the contract [1], snubbing BT and CSC which had each put in bids for the huge cash pot. The move came after 6,000 people signed a petition against the deal.

The council's chief executive was then urged by councillors to investigate other ways of providing IT and tech support, such as setting up an employee-led mutual organisation or sharing services with the local NHS. A full council meeting will later analyse all the options before taking the project further.

CSC and BT had promised to shave £5m off the yearly cost of maintaining those services. According to Cornish councillor Andrew Wallis, who sat in on a confidential council briefing on the IT project, CSC pulled out [2] earlier this month, but BT said it will leave its offer on the table until March 2013.

The driving force behind the deal - Conservative councillor Alec Robertson - is another casualty of the controversial plans: he was council leader until a vote of no confidence [3] dethroned him last week.

The projects covered by the contract [4] include: document management, websites and contact centres, and an integrated internal helpdesk.

According to Cllr Wallis [5], the decade-long deal would transfer 750 council staff and 250 health workers to BT. The telco had promised to create 1,043 jobs in the first four years. ®