Government secures SAP deal for bulk savings

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The government's procurement arm has signed a bulk software buying framework with SAP that could deliver savings of £45m for the public sector.

The three-year memorandum of understanding with the Office of Government Commerce trading arm, OGCbuying.solutions, came into effect on 1 January, 2007, and will give all government departments and public-sector organisations preferential pricing on SAP software and services.

As part of the agreement, additional discounts will be triggered when the collective government spend on SAP software passes certain levels, as well as the option for public-sector bodies to enter into an enterprise licence deal with further discounts.

With increased use of shared services in mind, the government has also secured an agreement with SAP allowing certain public-sector organisations to transfer licences between government departments.

Derek Rothwell, director of procurement at OGCbuying.solutions, said the savings will be re-invested into front-line public services.

He said in a statement: "It means that we can supply software licences to the public sector at prices which offer real value for money and in a manner that supports the government's 'Transformational Government' agenda."

Whitehall has similar bulk-purchasing agreements with the other major software vendors including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Sun, which contributed to the £412m annual savings achieved by OGCbuying.solutions last year.

Talkback

This amateuristic government and it's impractical civil servants have long proven they are not very sensible in matters finance. So much is spent on projects and initiatives that will "save money" that the cost outweighs any savings. CSA is a classic example that costs the taxpayer many millions more to run than the monies it collects from its customers.
I just wonder what the cost of the Office of Government Commerce trading arm, OGCbuying Solutions, will be to run against the claimed savings.
To me the greatest savings would be to keep older systems, buy no more (prestige symbol) laptops, keep to existing software and reduce the OGCbS to a skeleton.
The government is run by civil servants who would be very unlikely to be successful in the private sector - just our luck to have them on the public payroll.

1000215420 5 March, 2007 19:20
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