Swansea settles on Capgemini for 10-year outsourcing

Swansea Council has named Capgemini as its partner for IT services over the next 10 years.

The announcement ends months of speculation over the future of the Service@Swansea programme, with ITNet having been in the fray to pick up the contract - now finally valued at £99m with an additional £2m per year in IT spend over the decade - and in-house IT staff striking because of transfer terms being negotiated in any deal.

In a release put out late on Thursday, Swansea councillor Mary Jones said the programme, the biggest of its type in Wales, heralds a new era for the authority, and will mean better access to services for citizens. The deal has been backed by the council's ICT Evaluation Group.

Jeff Baker, Unison's regional officer, said the trade union gave the deal "a cautious welcome" but the wrangling which has dogged the deal is far from over.

Baker told silicon.com while Unison's evaluators had a "clear preference" for Capgemini, staffing issues still had to be resolved. He added that while Swansea Council had made the decision to outsource its IT to Capgemini, the question of whether the council staff would be transferred, seconded or remain in-house had yet to be answered.

Meetings between Unison and Capgemini's director of personnel will take place next week, with strike action not ruled out if the terms and conditions and method of employee transfer are not satisfactory to the union.

The move towards outsourcing has been rumbling on most of this year, with disquiet among staff revealed by silicon.com as far back as March over plans to outsource desktop, application and other infrastructure support as well as CRM and some systems integration.

Unison spoke out against the way the council had gone about seeking to outsource, leading to a strike ballot and eventual walk out in the summer.

Since that time allegations have been made by both in-house IT staff and Swansea Council. The National Outsourcing Association commented, conciliation service Acas stepped in and Swansea ended up a focal point for the future of outsourcing decisions within local government in the UK.

The actual contract between Swansea and Capgemini is expected to be signed in April.