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Media Releases
2010

18 January
2010

Shepherd and Wedderburn advises Skills Development Scotland on Public Sector Shared Services Initiative

In one of Scotland’s most significant public sector shared information services and technology initiatives in the last year, leading UK law firm Shepherd and Wedderburn has advised Skills Development Scotland (SDS) on the £40 million contract for the transfer of services to a managed service provider for SDS and Scottish Enterprise (SE).

Skills Development Scotland and Scottish Enterprise have awarded the contract, potentially over five years, to the international information technology (IT) services company Atos Origin to provide IT services to a combined staff of 2400 people.

The contract will contribute to the Scottish Government’s drive for shared services and is expected to offer efficiencies to the tune of £20m over the next five years.

From April 2010, Atos Origin will provide IT services across 113 sites for SDS and SE. The services will include service desk, desktop support, applications development and management, networks management as well as data centre, security services and transformation services. In addition, all critical business systems will be transferred and run from Atos Origin's Scottish data centre, and teams from both SDS and SE will transfer to Atos Origin to join its existing 700 Scottish workforce.

Graeme Moffett of the Media and Technology Group at Shepherd and Wedderburn led the firm’s 10-strong team on the project. He said: “This is one of the key public sector shared services initiatives of the year in Scotland and the successful and timely delivery of this project is testament to the team’s dedication and expertise in this field.”

Damien Yeates, chief executive of Skills Development Scotland, said: “This new model not only provides major operational benefits for our staff and customers but also significant savings in public expenditure.  It also provides the platform we need to support us to deliver our stated goals.

“We believe this is a great example of collaborative working in the public sector to deliver higher value services at the best value.”


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