update The Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) has confirmed that its AU$140 million contract for outsourced desktop services will go to Unisys.
Negotiations for the four-year deal began in earnest last October when Unisys was named preferred tenderer for a range of end-user computing services. Other vendors who pitched for the contract at the time included CSC, IBM and Getronics.
Under the terms of the contract, the services Unisys will be responsible for include desktop operations, business support services, applications support and Internet and e-mail security.
The deal is the second that DIMA has signed with Unisys in the last seven months. In September Unisys was awarded a contract for the provision of biometric solutions and services for DIMA's Border Control initiative. Unisys' offerings include the use of facial recognition and fingerprint scanning technology to authenticate refugees' identity.
DIMA is not the only government department to give the nod to Unisys this week. Yesterday, the Department of Defence said it will negotiate with Unisys on outsourcing regional IT service delivery for 460 Defence bases and sites. Defence said it expected to complete negotiations with Unisys for the five year contract by August. Should the negotiations be successful, implementation could begin late this year.
