FSA reviews £20m IT needs

Outsourcing one of the options under consideration by regulator

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is conducting a review of its £20m IT requirements, with outsourcing one of the options under consideration.

In a contract notice published earlier this month, the FSA revealed its IS division is going through a "wide-ranging improvement programme". And as part of this it is looking for "expressions of initial interest" from IT suppliers capable of supplying the financial regulator's IT needs through outsourcing.

But the FSA emphasised that no decision has yet been taken on whether to outsource IT or keep it in-house.

The notice said: "The scope and exact nature of services to be provided through such outsourcing contracts is currently being determined and a range of options will be considered. Equally the services to be retained in-house are being considered."

An FSA spokeswomen told silicon.com: "We have started an internal review of our IS requirements and one of the options is outsourcing but at this stage no decision has been made."

She said the contract notice will help the FSA with fact finding, building its strategy and aiding its cost/benefit analysis. Any decision on outsourcing or keeping IT in-house will be made next year, she said.

The contract note gives some idea of the scale of the outsourcing deal that could be up for grabs if the FSA chooses to go down that route.

The FSA said the services that could be outsourced include infrastructure, such as hosting around 350 servers; hardware support for around 3,200 PCs and laptops; provision of IT and network managed services; application support and maintenance; fixed and mobile telecoms for voice and data; and disaster recovery provision and management.

The regulator said approximately 100 members of staff - both contractors and permanent - are engaged in infrastructure services activity.

The authority said the current cost of the services which could be outsourced is between £15m and £20m.

"Savings are anticipated compared to current cost," it added.

If outsourcing is chosen, the contract is planned to last for five years but could be extended by a further three "subject to continuing satisfactory performance".