Fujitsu bags a £4.75 millioncontract, despite its promise not to bid for government work before the Post Office Horizon Inquiry concludes

[SerendipityJane]

I guess this is a "mistake" and they are "deeply sorry"

https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/11/uk_education_department_awards_fujitsu/

Given the length of time it takes to get a government contract, (I have been involved in bidding for them) I suspect the bidding for this started long before the TV show about Mr Bates was aired.

I quite agree. You can't be expected to keep a promise you made if it's too hard can you.

When will people realise this ?

This.

It’s an addition on a contract they already have.

Realistically it’s probably cheaper and most efficient to keep it with them. The alternative would be to stop the project, tender for new suppliers, pay for pick-up time etc.

Not an ideal headline but probably a sensible decision in the circumstances

That's the kind of work that was supposed to be brought in-house with contingent labour to supplement the new digitally-capable civil servants, so whole government services didn't completely lose accountability when they were outsourced to the likes of Capita and Fujitsu. That problem was recognised long before the Post Office scandal reached public ears!

That's the kind of work that was supposed to be brought in-house with contingent labour to supplement the new digitally-capable civil servants, so whole government services didn't completely lose accountability when they were outsourced

The trouble is (as I once pointed out in a leaving interview,) for most IT stuff, they are directly competing with the private sector. I'm a Unix sys admin, and I've done the same job for a government agency as for an investment bank, an international telecoms country and a start-up fibre company. What I do is pretty much the same, I mean, it's changed over the years because tech has changed, but the applications and services on top are where the real differences are. Servers and storage and networks underneath it all tend to be similar. But the government role paid far less than the others. This means they're unlikely to get the best staff, because they can get a lot more money elsewhere - quite possibly doing literally the same thing but for an external company on a contract.