UK Ministry of Justice looks to the cloud for ERP implementation

Rumours of the demise of the government cloud service G-Cloud seem to be unfounded. Cloud service provider Savvis has teamed up with Steria and Accenture to develop a new cloud offering for the UK Ministry of Justice (MoJ).

Earlier this year, the National Audit Office criticised the government for not implementing cloud-based projects and ignoring the potential cost savings of G-Cloud. This follows the resignation of government CIO, John Suffolk, reportedly for the lack of support for G-Cloud.

The new MoJ shared services project, which is due to be launched in 2013, builds on the work that Savvis had done for the Home Office in constructing the GWS cloud system. The project is expected to deliver cost savings in the region of £28 million per year.

The MoJ will use platform for its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, which is being designed by Steria and implemented by Accenture. The ERP system will deliver transactional and professional services to more than 80,000 users as part of MoJ’s Common Operating Model for human resources, finance, purchase and payroll systems.

Savvis had a good deal experience on the security limitations demanded said Neil Cresswell, managing director Savvis EMEA. "The relationship with the Home Office had allowed us to build a system that could conform to the government’s own security guidelines. This includes various levels of confidentiality, from Impact Level (IL) zero up IL4 (highly restricted). We offered a system that offered IL2 and IL3 – confidential and restricted – and as that’s been successful, we were talking with the Home Office about a further project that would allow other govt agencies to deploy services in a pay-as-you-go manner."

The Home Office was looking to build on the GWS project and was keen to talk to Savvis said Cresswell. Savvis’s experience with security was a key driver behind the project. “If a government dept needs an application that needs this level of security around it – we can provide that. These could include restrictions such additional firewalls, data not leaving UK shores and security screening of personnel.”

Cresswell could not reveal the technology that the new cloud system would be based on but said that the government had a list of approved, major vendors and the platform would be based around these.

He added that the slow take-up of G Cloud services was not an indication of a lack of interest in cloud. I agree that the adoption hasn’t been massive yet, but my experience is that everyone’s keen to do it. Part of it is the nature of government - in the commercial word, there are lot fewer restrictions.”