PRIVATISATION OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN THE MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

Motion Text

That this House expresses its concern at the proposals of the Defence Information Initiative to award the bulk of a £1 billion contract for the provision of IT support and infrastructure in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) without going through a full competitive tendering process or consideration of an in-house bid; notes that the major company within the ATLAS consortium is EDS, a company with a long history of failure in delivering public sector IT projects; believes that as the current MoD contract involves battlefield deployed and secret military IT systems any failure with these systems could have a devastating effect on UK military operations; and therefore calls on the Secretary of State to ensure that the rest of the contract specifically dealing with IT support is subject to a full risk analysis and full competitive tendering process, including consideration of an in-house option.