Fujitsu makes light of spending cuts impact

Integrator claims £300m deal with DWP is likely to be safe from government cutbacks

Penny pinching: The government wants to shave £95m off public sector IT costs this year

Fujitsu says its £300m desktop transformation deal with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is unlikely to be affected by the government’s savings drive.

Work on the six-year contract, which was awarded in February, is due to begin in September and will see Fujitsu assume responsibility for the management and transformation of 140,000 DWP desktops across 1,000 offices in the UK.

It was announced last month that government ICT projects would be subject to scrutiny by the recently formed Efficiency and Reform Group.

Ravi Vitankar, chief technical officer at Fujitsu, said the project, hailed by the vendor as the “single biggest desktop and thin-client outsource deal in the UK” was unlikely to be affected.

“The project will reduce the cost of desktop management by 20 per cent, which in turn will save taxpayers’ money,” he added.

Fujitsu will work with EMC, Microsoft, Citrix and user virtualisation specialist AppSense on the project.