Home Office tied into £330m Oracle ERP deal

The Home Office is locked into a 330 million Oracle ERP contract, which is hampering efforts to cut back office IT costs.

The government department cannot dump Oracle's E-Business Suite until January 2016, after the previous Labour government signed a seven-year deal for it back in 2009, according to a Freedom of Information request.

It means the department has no choice but to continue paying Oracle, despite having ERP services provided by French outsourcer Steria, which signed a deal in October to extend its Cabinet Office ERP provision to the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice.

IT Pro has asked the department to outline whether any services are being duplicated by Oracle and Steria.

Oracle's E-Business Suite currently has 29,518 users in the Home Office, which still plans to upgrade to version R12.1 in July 2015 with the help of Fujitsu.

The software includes a wealth of ERP applications, but the Steria deal sees the French outsourcer provide finance, procurement and HR IT services to the Home Office.

The Oracle contract lock-in comes as the Government guided by the Government Digital Service (GDS) tries to save money by reducing its reliance on big IT suppliers, sharing services as much as possible.

Steria originally had an ERP contract with the MoJ, signed in 2011, until the MoJ realised it was a duplicate of an existing ERP deal between Steria and the Cabinet Office, called Shared Services Connected Limited (SSCL).

The MoJ scrapped its own Steria contract, admitted to writing off 58 million in costs thanks to the mistake, and had the SSCL deal extended to include the MoJ and Home Office.

IT Pro is awaiting comment from the Home Office.