£110m slashed off government IT and telecoms bill

Central buying frameworks and the introduction of electronic auctions have helped save over £110m of taxpayers' money on government IT and telecoms in the last year.

The 2003/2004 annual report of OGCbuying.solutions – the trading arm of the government's procurement watchdog the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) - shows savings of £87m in IT and £24m in telecoms.

IT purchases through the central government approved GCat list of suppliers increased by 64 per cent to £657m – yielding savings for the public purse of £87m, according to the report.

A range of framework agreements for electronic reverse auctions were also introduced for software, hardware, internet, managed services and maintenance contracts.

One example cited is that of the NHS, which ran an auction for 65,000 pieces of IT equipment between eight GCat suppliers. The catalogue price would have been £39m but the auction forced the price down to £25m.

In the telecoms sector, GTM is the largest government mobile telephony and messaging contract in Europe, with more than 1,000 customer organisations and 500,000 connections delivering annual savings of £24m.

OGCbuying.solutions also launched the government secure intranet service in partnership with Energis during the year.

Hugh Barrett, CEO of OGCbuying.solutions, said in a statement that the savings will benefit front-line services. "Put simply, as we are more successful as an organisation, more hospitals and schools can be built, waiting lists can be further reduced and more equipment provided for our emergency services."