Ministry of Justice signs shared services deal with Accenture

The Ministry of Justice has signed a five-year, £22 million shared services contract with Accenture.

It follows a recent report from the National Audit Office that said that the government needs to have more standard systems and processes in order to improve its financial management.

The Ministry of Justice was named as an example of a department with  multiple financial systems with “incomplete” financial reports that affected the government’s ability to monitor its budget.

Under the contract, Accenture will implement a solution covering human resources, finance, payroll and procurement operations across the Ministry of Justice network of more than 80,000 employees. The network includes the Ministry of Justice Head Office, Her Majesty’s Prison Service and Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service.

As well as being systems integrator, Accenture will also operate and maintain the Shared Services IT Service Desk during the contract.

Meanwhile, Steria will provide Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application development, while Savvis will deliver the Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform.

According to Accenture, the shared services platform is expected to help the Ministry of Justice reduce its ERP costs by a significant amount.

“Accenture will help the Ministry of Justice to deliver savings of £28 million a year by 2014 across its entire business network,” said Mark Lyons, Accenture’s UK and Ireland managing director for health and public service.

Last October, the government announced a six percent reduction in the Ministry of Justice’s budget in its Comprehensive Spending Review.