Goverment works toward a framework for IT solutions

martin237 | February 6, 2012 | 0 Comments

http://www.cio.co.uk/news/3335263/government-sets-up-48bn-it-hardware-framework/

The Government Procurement Service has announced its plans to create a £4.8 billion framework contract for IT hardware and solutions.

The framework is intended for use across government, including central government, local government, UK public sector bodies and NHS bodies.

Under the two-year contract, the government expects to sign up suppliers to provide a range of hardware and solutions, including desktop devices, laptop devices, tablet devices, printer devices, server and storage hardware and services and other ICT related equipment.

Managing and delivering an IT infrastructure across government agencies, locations and lines of business or budgets and requirements is always going to be a challenge. It will be interesting to read about these plans and see where savings and service improvements can be made, ideally we want to be going for the following set of principles:

Commodity in terms of hardware, using industry standard components and solutions to enable automation
Common platforms, middleware and standards, a move towards standard tools and technologies to achieve common goals
Data frameworks and common application design standards for the easy exchange of information between systems and applications, XML, database etc
Support and rules of engagement – virtual desktop, renew and refresh rather than long term ownership to avoid the ‘dependent on’ Windows XP type scenarios.