by CIO Staff

Accenture Awards CSC $3.7B in U.K. Health IT Contracts

News
Sep 28, 20062 mins
Outsourcing

Accenture has walked away from two contracts to deliver regional IT systems and services to the U.K. National Health Service (NHS). An alliance led by Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) will take over the contracts, the companies announced Thursday. CSC already has contracts to deliver services in two other regions.

CSC valued the two Accenture contracts at up to 1.97 billion pounds (US$3.73 billion) over nine years.

In March, Accenture said it had made a pretax provision of $450 million to cover losses it expected to make on the two local service provider contracts, to implement and service regional IT systems in the Northeast and East of England.

Under the nationwide Connecting for Health program to modernize NHS IT systems, CSC already has contracts to deliver services in two regions, the Northwest of England and in the West Midlands.

Under an agreement between Accenture, CSC and the NHS, Accenture has until Jan. 8 to transfer its responsibilities to CSC.

Accenture and CSC had both turned to the same supplier, iSoft Group, for the software necessary for the project.

In January, iSoft said it would deliver the software late, and in June restated financial results because of questions over the way it booked revenue before delivering products.

On Thursday, iSoft said it will remain the preferred supplier for the Northeast and East regions, and that it had settled outstanding disputes with Accenture.

-Peter Sayer, IDG News Service (Paris Bureau)

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