Department for Education

DFE approach to IT & Digital Services

The Department for Education (DfE) (www.education.gov.uk) is a Ministerial Department responsible for Education and Children’s Services in England. It works to achieve a highly-educated society in which opportunity is equal for children and young people, no matter what their background or family circumstances.

The Situation

The Government agenda challenged the DfE to develop a new approach to IT, moving from one size fits all IT model, to more granular, service and cloud based architecture.  This uses multiple smaller suppliers of commodity and specialist services. 

The main goal was to drive a Business Transformation using Digital provision, keeping an eye on legacy applications and infrastructure. DfE have numerous sites where IT and Digital teams are co-located. 

One of the biggest obstacles to the Transformation was the reliance on legacy procurement frameworks and the lack of flexibility around their on-boarding processes. DfE had to face the reluctance of contractors to work with existing managed service providers for varying reasons.

DfE’s requirements looked for suppliers to demonstrate capability and innovation through their technology and commercial proposals in a way that was new to how they had previously worked.

The Solution

Accessing ‘Resource as a Service’ was the solution provided by Russam GMS. DfE did not want to bring contractors in for long-term tasks, but rather specify work packages and use as needed.

The services we have been able to deliver successfully are:

  • ‘Flexible Resource’ Model
  • ‘Professional Services Tower’ Model

A key focus was on the Digital Agenda and Architecture as a Service across technical, business and enterprise areas. More specifically, the key work packages provided the following services:

  •  IT Strategy
  • Business Analysis
  • Project Management
  • Programme Management
  • Development (including but not limited to SQL, SharePoint)
  • Architecture (including Enterprise, Technical, Data, Infrastructure, Solutions, Information, Cyber etc.)
  • PSO
  • Service Management / Service Delivery
  • Software Support
  • Cloud Consultancy

Outcomes

  • Proven cost saving against consultancies.
  • Supply of over 120 Work Packages in the past three and a half years, representing 5,000 hours of P3MO, IT and Technical Specialists per annum. 

“Russam facilitated easy access to teams of external project and IT expertise, accurately and rapidly. They hit the mark every time on a wide range of critical business transformation work packages. This occasionally involved 48 hours’ turnaround on niche skill requirements, they always stepped up to the plate when required. Their lean delivery model ensured I received exceptional value for money without compromising on the quality of service provision.”

Rachel Murphy (CTO – Department for Education)

Contact us

Call us on 0207 099 2222 or email [email protected]

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