UK taxman waves through £168.8m Fujitsu contract because no one else can hold up 30-year-old infrastructure
- Reference: 1602583212
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/10/13/fujitsu_hmrc_contract/
- Source link:
Under the deal, the Japan-based IT services firm is set to continue hosting for 13 HMRC applications on its Virtual Managed Environment (VME) Platform. At the same time, Fujitsu will continue to support the Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight (CHIEF) system beyond the 31 March end point of the current agrement, according to [1]a tender document . Both services are now set to be run by Fujitsu until 2025.
HMRC needs to keep the application platform running for a few more years while the taxman "completes the rollout of its delayed application transition and decommissioning Programme".
At the same time, it needs to carry on supporting the customs system because of similar delays and "uncertainty regarding the impact of the EU Exit final deal on the future, volume and operation of some applications".
Both sides of the deal have intriguing backstories.
CHIEF was first introduced in 1994, when John Major was the UK's prime minister. It was managed by BT until 2010, when it was handed over to Aspire, a joint venture between Capgemini, Fujitsu, and HMRC. HRMC ended Aspire in 2017 and in-sourced the work, although it kept Fujitsu and Capgemini on as contractors until 2022.
HMRC has been preparing to replace CHIEF with an alternative called the Customs Declaration System (CDS) from IBM since 2013. The government and Big Blue were planning to have the new system up and running by January 2019.
In 2018, the NAO said the target date to migrate all traders from CHIEF [2]to CDS in January 2019 was "unlikely" because the platform was only due to be released a month earlier.
The new procurement casts doubt on whether that timetable is being met.
Meanwhile, the VME system has been in place with HMRC for over 30 years and is heavily integrated with legacy applications.
HMRC has been planning to move its applications to the cloud supported by Azure and AWS in a programme that was expected to be [3]complete by 2022 .
Clearly HMRC is also concerned this is not going to plan, although it has not responded to requests for comment on this or the CHIEF programme.
The tender notice justified awarding the multimillion-pound deal to Fujitsu without competition from alternative suppliers because no one else could do it.
"The VME hosting platform is proprietary to Fujitsu and so VME-based services are technically only available from Fujitsu and are not available in the market from alternative third-party service providers," the document said.
The tender also underscored HMRC's dependence on Fujitsu to run the services without failure. "The applications generate substantial taxes and revenue for the UK and a number of key applications are also CNI [critical national infrastructure], which must be wholly reliable. It is therefore imperative that the support of such applications continue to be delivered safely and without interruption."
Last month HMRC said it was opening up its [4]entire £900m annual IT budget to the wider supplier landscape via a new Technology Sourcing Programme . Although no start date was offered for the new programme, Capgemini and Fujitsu supply contacts were both set to end in 2022.
With Fujitsu getting a slice of the pie until 2025, question marks remain over how much will be left for the rest of the market. ®
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[1] https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:460113-2020:TEXT:EN:HTML&src=0
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2018/06/28/hmrc_risks_customs_declaration_service_nao/
[3] https://www.publictechnology.net/articles/news/hmrc-begins-prep-major-cloud-move
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/30/hmrc_900m_it_services_tender/
[5] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: ICL
COBOL will never die.
Re: ICL
But it's programmers may fade away.
Johnny Logan
What's another three years amid project delays and Brexit uncertainty?
Has Johnny Logan reworked the lyrics to first Eurovision winning song?
Re: Johnny Logan
who's getting used to being alone?
What could possibly go wrong?
So you have legacy code and infrastructure from Fujitsu with Capgemini, IBM (attempting) to manage AWS and Azure deployments to the cloud, while of course not trying to pressure HMRC to use IBM cloud?
Why not bring in Capita with Sopra in joint venture for CNI oversight and appoint Dido Harding at CEO to run the whole thing?
Is this anything to do with the online Self Assessment system that refuses to allow you to enter in text fields such eosoteric characters as / + - % £ and newline?
When your data gets shunted over to the mainframe in the obernight batch job, the calculations are still done in an excel spreadsheet.
I'd laugh if I didnt have to use the thing.
For bonus laughs, check out the list of exclusion cases on gov.uk. over a hundred ways that your tax cant be worked out on CESA, and instead needs to be done mmanually.
> Is this anything to do with the online Self Assessment system that refuses to allow you to enter in text fields such eosoteric characters as / + - % £ and newline?
[Checks EBCDIC character set] You're right, not really esoteric. :-)
"awarded Fujitsu a £168.8m contract without competition"
Thank God there are procedures and such to ensure that the Government gets the best deals possible, right ?
Oh, I'm sorry, the Government has decided to bypass the procedures ? How lovely. Just you try bypassing paying your taxes. You'll find the procedures are firmly in place and well respected, I'm sure.
As usual, one rule for them, one rule for us.
VME
Well, that takes me back to my ICL days (before Fujitsu bought them by taking over STC) working on a VME mainframe. I even worked on the CHIEF system when it was run by BT some years ago now. And I remember BT losing the bid for continuing to run CHIEF in 2010. Fortunately (or possibly unfortunately) I was not TUPE'd across to Cap with the project.
They don't make 'em like that any more.
Funny, how old systems which actually work last for ever and cannot be replaced, whereas new procurements are riven with difficulties and over-runs.
Re: VME
I'm sure the difference between old and new systems is that the old systems had vastly less flexibility in development and, as a result, a lot less interference by "know nothings" with "grand ideas", so people took what they were given and liked it, usually because it did the job it was supposed to.
Re: VME
Funny and quite common actually. It comes from a very surprising factor: the main reason those systems have endured 30 years of being patched to death and used for everything is that ... they were initially not replacing any legacy systems.
When you have a reliable workhorse that more or less still works day in and day out (yes, with all the quirks and deficiencies and hand holding of a 30 year old system, but works) you can afford the luxury of delaying the replacement practically forever without no one having to endure the burn out of a complex replacement go live. How many XP boxes are still running today in both critical and non-critical roles? The workarounds (virtualization, network segregation, etc) required to run them with some peace of mind may seem costly, but short term are nothing compared to rolling out new ones.
"Japan-based IT services firm"
The owners may be Japanese based, but Fujitsu still has a hefty complement of ICL staff and technology, and as the government always seems to spec their projects with 30 odd year old technology Fujitsu (ICL) are a natural fit.
ICL
Amazing how the VME systems are still running.
I assume with COBOL.
Memories of working on these in the mid 1970s so they have lasted longer than my IT career.