The Cabinet Office is planning to develop a new OFFICIAL IT platform for its personnel and shift all of its business information and data from Google Workspaces to Microsoft 365.
It has signed consultancy Capgemini as technical delivery partner for the project on a three-year contract, beginning this month, valued at £11.7 million.
The department has outlined three areas of work to be delivered concurrently: to consolidate the existing CO OFFICIAL IT platform and GDS (Government Digital Service) IT platform into a new IT system; to migrate data from Google to Microsoft systems; and to migrate all personnel, estimated at around 15,000, from a Google to a Microsoft environment.
The latter element marks a significant change in approach for the Cabinet Office, which began to use Google applications in 2015 and signed a new contract with the company as recently as late 2021. But Microsoft has maintained a strong presence in UK government and strengthened in the summer of last year with the release of a collaboration blueprint, developed with the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) in the Cabinet Office and the National Cyber Security Centre to provide a baseline configuration for the use of its applications.
UKAuthority asked the Cabinet Office to explain the reason for the migration. In response, a spokesperson said: “The Cabinet Office is embarking on a broad business transformation programme which will modernise our IT systems, improve interoperability and deliver value for money.
“The new system will reduce our reliance on legacy technology, enable more effective collaboration and improve productivity at the heart of government.”
Supporting migration
The new IT system will be used to support the Google to Microsoft migration, aligning with the latter’s security best practices and recommended information and knowledge architecture.
Capgemini will carry out a discovery into the needs for users, IT operations and support, knowledge and information management and security, and look at architectural issues including those around enabling ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD).
This marks a contrast with the existing CO OFFICIAL IT platform, which has technical controls in place to stop BYOD, although it is possible for users of the GDS system to access it with personal devices.
The delivery partner will run another discovery into the workings of the existing systems, along with a gap analysis of skills and knowledge of the internal IT support and operation, a vendor and component analysis and development of IT use cases of Microsoft 365.
Identification options
It will also assess options for identification platforms other than Microsoft’s Azure AD, with options including multi-factor authentication and passwordless access.
The Cabinet Office has indicated that it expects a number of benefits from the new system, including a more efficient and resilient IT infrastructure, the ability to meet an array of technology demands, and a system that is easy to use and support.
In the long term, it will take in-house responsibility for the running and support of the services.
Cabinet Office response to questions added on 26.4.23
