Credit: Steve Parsons/PA

The Home Office has awarded to consultancy Accenture two six-month contracts worth a total of £5m as supplier spending on the department’s new immigration caseworking platform nears £30m.

The rollout of the Atlas system, which was originally due to have been completed by the end of 2019, is designed to digitise and automate a system in which ministers have admitted some data “is only held on paper case files”.

Since April 2019, procurement data shows that the Home Office has awarded a total of eight supplier contracts for activities related to the development of the digital platform.

Specialist firm BJSS won a two-year, £9.89m deal running from March 2019, while in July 2020, PA Consulting was awarded a one-year contract worth £3.5m. Two smaller engagements, worth around £100,000 each, have been won by Atos and People Source Consulting.

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By far the biggest supplier of digital development services is Accenture, which has won four deals worth a cumulative total of nearly £15m.

One of these, worth £4.2m, came into effect yesterday. A further £1m deal comes into effect on Monday. Both contracts run until 30 June 20201. 

In each case, the deal covers the “provision of a Supplier team to provide: continuation of discovery, development and delivery activities for the Immigration Enforcement, Border Force and UK Visa and Immigration business areas within the Atlas programme delivery roadmap”.

The two deals take cumulative spending on suppliers to support the delivery of Atlas to £28.6m.