UK pensions department's project to unite government ERP systems comes to £1.9B

The UK's Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is leading a £958.7 million ($1.2 billion) search for a supplier to develop business processes for new ERP and HR systems to bring together four central government departments.

This month, the DWP launched the procurement of the Synergy Business Process Services (BPS), which will see it and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Home Office, and their associated arm's-length bodies transferred to one ERP and HR system with a common set of processes.

In June, the DWP rolled out the procurement for the technology side of the revamp, with up to £934 million ($1.15 billion) on the table to update an ERP system in the cluster of Whitehall departments. With the new business process side of the project up for grabs, the total spending on the new system could nearly reach £1.9 billion ($2.5 billion).

The Synergy program is part of a broader mission across central government departments to consolidate and upgrade their ERP and HR systems into clusters. This mega-project has been heavily criticized for a lack of funding and an insufficient business case.

According to a tender document published earlier this month, the Synergy program encompasses approximately 280,000 employees between the departments and their arm's-length bodies.

The document claims the BPS contract would "deliver modern and innovative value for money services which maximize positive user experience." It adds: "The BPS supplier will also be challenged to continuously evolve, improve, and optimize service delivery over the course of the contract."

The Reg would also like to raise a glass to hope, for it can be a wonderful thing.

Under the plan, the business process services are to be delivered using the Synergy Technology Platform – comprising an ERP solution and systems integration services – which come under a separate procurement.

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"The BPS supplier will be expected to work with the technology provider and systems integrator to develop the design of the BPS solution," the tender document adds.

The departments in question currently rely on different versions of Oracle for their ERP and HR systems.

SSCL, a venture owned by outsourcing firm Sopra Steria, provides the system for the DWP, Defra, and the MoJ. The so-called Single Operating Platform (SOP) is built on Oracle eBusiness Suite 12.2.6, which has recently been migrated from on-prem to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

The Home Office itself completed the move from the old platform to the Oracle Fusion cloud platform – on OCI – in 2021.

In 2020, the departments relying on the SOP were told they would move to a SaaS solution in a snappily named project, SOP2SaaS. The MoJ even got as far as launching a procurement, but that was canceled in 2021 to get in line with the current Shared Services Strategy. ®