UK taxman discovers low code doesn't mean low cost with £657M awards

The UK tax collector has awarded three contracts worth up to £657 million for low-code software development and support, dispelling any notion that empowering users with tech skills would necessarily mean low cost. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), which collected £938.8 billion in tax during the latest reported financial year, has awarded French consultancy and outsourcer Atos a contract for "specialist low-code leadership services." These will include "programme oversight, supplier management, governance, assurance and delivery support for HMRC's low-code technology estate," according to a recent procurement notice. The £78.2 million deal is Lot 3 of HMRC's low-code procurement and was awarded through Lot 4a, the multi-product configuration section of the Digital and Legacy Application Services (DALAS) framework. It has an initial three-year term, with two optional one-year extensions. The DALAS framework lot includes support for low-code technologies such as Pega, ServiceNow, Microsoft Dynamics, and Power Platform. Lot 4a was originally estimated to be worth £700 million. A later award notice assigned a combined estimated value of £2.8 billion to the second phase of DALAS, which comprised framework Lots 1, 4a, and 4b. Cognizant and Indian tech services company Coforge also secured places on DALAS Lot 4a and have now won the other two work packages under HMRC's low-code call-off. Cognizant's Lot 1 deal is worth £360 million and has the same initial term and extension options as the Atos contract. Cognizant is expected to provide "specialist low-code build, configuration, DevOps and live service management services for HMRC's low-code technology estate," including the "design, development, testing, deployment, operation and continuous improvement of low-code products and services." Coforge is expected to provide the same services under the £219 million Lot 2 contract. Legacy systems are a perennial problem for HMRC. Last year, the National Audit Office, a spending watchdog, said: "Remediating legacy systems is taking HMRC longer than it had expected and is costing more. HMRC has one of the largest and most complex IT estates in the UK, and it faces a significant challenge to modernise its IT infrastructure to keep pace with changing technology." With HMRC's legacy problems proving stubborn and expensive, the government initially valued the wider DALAS framework at up to £4.5 billion. ®