£66m ICT services contract focuses on reducing council’s carbon footprint
Fujitsu has been awarded preferred bidder status by The Highland Council for a new Information Communication and Technology (ICT) services contract of five years with an option to extend for a further two years.
Under the new £66m contract Fujitsu will manage the ICT estate for The Highland Council, including additional scope for curriculum ICT to schools across the Highlands. The new partnership will invest in transformation and modernisation of the council’s ICT infrastructure, systems and services. It includes projects on customer relationship management and the provision of unified communications across the council. The new contract will achieve annual efficiency savings for The Highland Council of 2.5% per annum.
According to Fujitsu, the transformation programme will support and enable improvements in council services and better mobile working. The new ICT systems and infrastructure will be energy-efficient resulting in energy cost savings, a lower carbon footprint, and even higher ICT service levels for the council and its ICT users. In addition, the new contract is expected to achieve annual efficiency savings of 2.5% per annum for the council.
Reportedly, Fujitsu has developed a new offering for the council that will deliver infrastructure services, applications portfolio management, thick and thin client desktop technology based on Windows 7 and an improved service management environment.
Councillor Carolyn Wilson, chairman of The Highland Council Resources Committee, said: “This new contract will offer the council and all the staff a number of interesting opportunities for new, improved and flexible ways of working in the future and allow significant investment in new ICT systems and infrastructure for both corporate and school curriculum ICT.
“It will deliver significant efficiency savings – £6.76m over the next five years – and cut the carbon footprint of the council through reduced carbon emissions and energy consumption.”
