SCC signs secure hosting contract with UK’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)

SCC is the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) new secure Hosting Partner for delivering Universal Credit after signing a two-year partnership.

Birmingham, UK, 26-2-2015 — /EuropaWire/ — It is the first secure hosting contract of this nature that SCC, Europe’s biggest privately-owned IT services business, has been awarded by existing customer DWP.

DWP is responsible for welfare, pensions and child maintenance policy. As the UK’s biggest public service department it administers the State Pension and a range of working age, disability and ill health benefits to over 22 million claimants and customers.

Universal Credit is a welfare benefit launched to replace six means-tested benefits and tax credits: Jobseeker’s Allowance, Housing Benefit, Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, Employment and Support Allowance and Income Support.

The department will maintain intelligence, development and operational support of the application and operating system suite, while SCC, as a G-Cloud partner, provides and supports the infrastructure.

The contact award, in line with the Government’s IT strategy, ensures that the intelligence around Universal Credit is delivered internally, with the underlying infrastructure provided securely and outside one of the traditional Systems Integrators.

SCC will deliver Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Service Desk, secure site-to-site communication multiple Impact Level domains, and appropriate monitoring and Disaster Recovery (DR) capability.

The long-term plan will see SCC integrate the Universal Credit service over the Public Services Network (PSN) with other core DWP applications.

The service is being delivered from SCC’s Sentinel platform.

Sentinel by SCC not only provides faster IT implementation but also keeps data to Government-approved security standards.

It is the most established and cost-effective Cloud solution; the first Pan-Government Accredited platform of its kind, supporting a number of other major public sector organisations, including: Civil Aviation Authority, HM Passport Office, The Highways Agency, North Yorkshire and Humber CSU and Mersey Care NHS Trust.

SCC Head of Central Government Martin Parker said:

“This is a great example of a British company working to fully support the Government’s digital services strategy.

“It is also testament to the continued and growing success of Sentinel by SCC as a secure Cloud platform, and we are delighted that DWP has chosen to work with us in the rollout of this key Government system.”

For more details about Sentinel by SCC or our G-Cloud 6 services, visit scc.com/sentinel.