Skills Development Scotland Taps Atos Origin

28 December 2009

Two major public agencies have combined to award a five-year contract, worth £40 million, to Atos Origin. This move will contribute to the Scottish Government’s drive for shared services and deliver efficiencies to the tune of £20 million over the next five years.

From April 2010, Atos Origin will provide IT services to a combined staff of 2400 people across 113 sites for Skills Development Scotland - a non-departmental public body responsible for helping people of all ages discover their skills and develop their careers – and Scottish Enterprise - Scotland's main economic, enterprise, innovation and investment agency.

Atos Origin will provide a full range of IT services including service desk, desktop support, applications development and management, networks management as well as data centre, security services and transformation services. All critical business systems will be transferred and run from its highly resilient Scottish data centre. Teams from both Skills Development Scotland and Scottish Enterprise will transfer to Atos Origin to join its existing 700 strong Scottish workforce.

Damien Yeates, Chief Executive of Skills Development Scotland, said: “This new model not only provides major operational benefits for our staff and customers but also significant savings in public expenditure. It also provides the platform we need to support us to deliver our stated corporate goals. “We believe this is a great example of collaborative working in the public sector to deliver higher value services at the best value.”

Lena Wilson, Chief Executive of Scottish Enterprise, said: “Like other parts of the public sector, Scottish Enterprise is committed to looking at innovative ways to reduce costs and maintain the delivery of its services. Working collaboratively with other public sector partners will be critical in helping us achieve that and this piece of work is a great example of what can be delivered. We have worked hard to make sure employee terms and conditions are protected. Our primary concern now is to ensure a smooth transition for all staff affected.”

John McCormick, CIO, at Skills Development Scotland said, "As well as providing Skills Development Scotland with its own fully-integrated IT service for the first time, it will also deliver access to experience, skills and market knowledge of a leading international IT provider which would be difficult to secure given public finance pressures. Both Skills Development Scotland and Scottish Enterprise also believe it will improve ways of working and performance, and establishing an IT platform that will provide high quality services to staff and customers."

Steve Langmead, Vice President - Scotland, Atos Origin said: "We are delighted to have been awarded the contract to provide shared IT services to both Skills Development Scotland and Scottish Enterprise. Securing these prestigious organisations as customers demonstrates the value that Atos Origin will bring to the Scottish public sector and underlines our commitment to Scotland.

“At Atos Origin we place great importance on establishing strong and effective partnerships that successfully deliver for everyone involved. Through this contract we will reduce the cost of the IT service whilst greatly improving the benefits realised by the use of technology to develop the business environment in Scotland and to help people of all ages discover their skills and progress their careers.”