The Cabinet Office has said it is “reviewing options” on its plan to migrate to a new OFFICIAL IT platform after terminating a contract with Microsoft as delivery partner.
The department has published a notice saying the termination has taken place – almost two years before the original end date – under the £9 million contract’s terms and conditions after a discovery phase.
This covers the development of a new platform for data and documents at the OFFICIAL level of security classification under the Falcon Programme.
In April of last year an £11.7 million contract was agreed with Capgemini as technical delivery partner with one responsibility being to carry out a discovery into the needs of users for the new platform.
It is understood that Microsoft completed a proof of concept to validate a framework design for the new system, which has now been approved, and submitted recommendations and reports to support the business case for further migration and feed into the Falcon knowledge base.
Planned pause
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: "The programme always contained a planned pause after the discovery phase, in order for us to submit the full business case and fully embed all work and learnings to inform our progress.
"Following the successful completion of the discovery phase of our Falcon Programme, we are reviewing options to deliver the migration workstream.”
Capgemini has retained its role as technical partner in the programme, which also involves a migration of data and business information from Google Workspaces to Microsoft 365 – the plan for which is understood to remain in place.
