As Gordon Brown was delivering his pre-Budget report, Inland Revenue officials were preparing a statement to ditch current IT supplier EDS in favour of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and Fujitsu.
Accountancy Age, 11 Dec 2003
The department officially announced the winner of the Aspire project this morning after a bidding process that lasted 21 months. CGEY and Fujitsu will take over the £3bn, 10 year contract from mid-2004.
While the decision is an understandable one following one of the most disastrous years in memory for the department, changing IT suppliers will be no easy task.
A recent survey carried out by Accountancy Age in conjunction with Sage, found that over a third of accountants believed the Revenue's partnership with EDS should be reviewed. The main reasons given were unreliability and too many errors.
Nick Montagu, chairman of the Inland Revenue, said: 'I am genuinely delighted with the outcome of this competition. The Inland Revenue remains at the forefront of themes that the government wants to pursue - modernising public service, welfare reform and the expansion of e-services. These present huge challenges. We need a technology partner who can help us to meet them.'
The decision comes after a seemingly never-ending campaign by opposition MPs to see heads roll over the tax credits fiasco.
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