Defence Information Infrastructure

The UK Ministry of Defence is about to sign what is thought to be the largest IT contract in Europe - a ten year contract addressing the needs of nearly a third of a million users at 2,000 locations. This involves a major development programme over the first three years, building and installing a single system to replace a diverse set of legacy systems, due to be fully operational by the end of 2008. This is to be followed by a seven year support programme.

MOD link

DII is not the largest public sector IT programme in the UK. The NPfIT is considerably larger, but is split into several procurement contracts. But DII is the largest public sector IT programme to be assigned in a single contract.

The MOD currently spends around £600m a year on IT. The development programme is supposed to cut this bill by 20%. 2000 civil servant jobs will be shifted to the successful bidder.

At present, there are two rival consortia in the frame:

Consortium	Leader	Led
"Atlas"	EDS	Fujitsu, General Dynamics
"Radii"	CSC	BT, Thales

The winner will be announced in February 2005.