MoJ hands £125m end-user computing deal to Atos

Contract was redrafted last year, even after four suppliers had prepared bids

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has awarded a £125m IT deal which sparked controversy last summer to French IT giant Atos.

The FITS (Future ICT) End-user Computing Services deal will see Atos supply the ministry with a range of mobile devices, scanners, cameras and IT services across all of its 2,300 sites, including prisons, courts and tribunal and probation services centre.

FITS is designed to change the way ICT services are delivered across the MoJ from the current end-to-end contracts by line of business to an MoJ-wide "service tower" model.

The original FITS contract was initially expected to be worth £300m, but last summer Lockheed Martin was awarded a £125m deal as part of the initiative.

As CRN exclusively reported last summer, the MoJ postponed the contract, even though four firms - Atos, HP, Computacenter and Fujistu - had coughed up millions preparing their bids.

In the recently published contract award notice, it stated that Atos faced one other bidder for the deal.

The firm was awarded the deal mainly based on service requirements, with transition, scenario days and legal, finance and commercial considerations also taken into account.