Deloitte among bidders for £5bn MoD contract

Link: MoD accounts qualified for sixth straight year (

Deloitte Consulting is part of the Lockheed Martin consortium, which alongside Atlas and RadII will fight it out for the £5bn deal. Previously, the MoD was considering four bids, including one from IBM.

The Atlas consortium includes EDS, which has recently been dumped by the Inland Revenue as its IT partner, while the RadII consortium includes Cap Gemini Ernst & Young which will replace EDS as the Revenue’s IT partner in July 2004.

The final winner will be responsible for overseeing all of the MoD’s IT infrastructure, including the management of existing contracts, such as the personnel system operated by the Armed Forces Personnel Administration Agency.

The remaining consortia are:

• Atlas – EDS, Fujitsu, Cogent, General Dynamics, LogicaCMG
• Lockheed Martin – Lockheed Martin, Deloitte Consulting, HP, Qinetic, SAIC, Unisys
• RaDII – CSC, BT, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Thales e-security

The consortia remaining all expressed their delight at having got through to the final stages.

‘Atlas is confident it has the ability to deliver a technical solution that provides a ‘seamless interface’ to theatre, battlegroup and tactical communications nets,’ Graham Lay, head of defense at EDS UK.

Gary Mellor, CEO of the Radii consortium, commented: ‘We have worked hard to develop a flexible partnering framework which is focused on delivering tangible benefits to the MOD.’

The ultimate winner will be responsible for providing a service to 300,000 users across 2,000 worldwide locations. It will cover permanent military sites, airfield as well as battlefields, submarines and field operations.

The programme has three stages – to take on existing systems, to manage an intermediate ‘convergent’ stage, and to deliver the full, integrated defence information infrastructure by 2008.

The contract is due to be signed towards the end of next year and start in early 2005.