back to article Central UK govt awards £12M+ contract to leave Google Workspace for Microsoft 365

The UK's Cabinet Office is to migrate away from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 — in line with the rest of central government — in a move set to cost up to £15 million in third-party project support alone. French IT service giant Capgemini has been awarded a deal worth between £12 million and £15 million ($14.8-$18.6 million …

  1. 3arn0wl

    Pulic money : public code

    That money would've been better spent on Nextcloud, as the German government are doing. :(

    1. Tom Chiverton 1 Silver badge

      Re: Pulic money : public code

      You could do a lot with 1k per user !

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Pulic money : public code

      Well yes but then no Teams for for the Cabinet Office. Somebody obviously thought why should they not suffer like the rest of us?

    3. The BigYin

      Re: Pulic money : public code

      Came in here to say the exact same thing.

      Utter madness that our tax money is being shuffled into the pockets of private companies like this when we could "own" the code.

      1. ICL1900-G3 Silver badge

        Re: Pulic money : public code

        Spot on. There is no 'government money', they're spending it on our behalf - and, as usual, not very wisely.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Really?

    Love to see the business case for this.

    The £15M a small subset of the actual cost migration.

    What’s the benefit? O365 isn’t radically better.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: O365 isn’t radically better.

      Au contraire...

      O365 is radically WORSE

      1. Paradroid

        Re: O365 isn’t radically better.

        I'd upvote you twice if I could. Google is of course not perfect but Workspace is incredibly streamlined and easy to manage. In comparison the Office admin portal or whatever it's called this week is a total joke.

        This move is classic rule of one thinking where the only thing that matters is having one system. To hell with user satisfaction and productivity.

        As a side note the reason I moved from O365 to Workspace is because Microsoft decided to throw up a fake default browser popup in their Android Outlook client to try and trick users into installing Edge. Theres a way to respectfully cross-promote products and that is not it.

        1. Captain Scarlet
          Coat

          Re: O365 isn’t radically better.

          I know this from experience, people want Outlook whether there are better tools there are not, because they tend to be management and thats what they are used to screw everyone else.

    2. druck Silver badge

      Re: Really?

      The business case is the millions spent on lobbying by Microsoft.

    3. This post has been deleted by its author

  3. xyz Silver badge

    Make a sentence from...

    Burn, crash and

  4. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    Frying Pan.... meet fire

    Given the reliability this year of Orifice 365... I have to wonder just how big a brown envelope you can get these days.

    1. Captain Scarlet
      Trollface

      Re: Frying Pan.... meet fire

      Come on, you know the drill. Office 363 (I think there have been 2 outages this year)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Frying Pan.... meet fire

      Nah, that's why they have the limited circulation BIG bank notes.

      "Excuse me, Sir, we cannot accept those banknotes"

      "I work for the government."

      "Ah, my mistake, have a seat. Coffee? Cigar? Just how much would you like to deposit?"

      There's a reason every single government allows a tax haven here and there: self interest..

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why are we still giving contracts

    To Foreign Companies?

    We should not be exporting money to EU companies.

    1. nijam Silver badge

      Re: Why are we still giving contracts

      > We should not be exporting money to EU companies.

      That's why they're switching from one American cloud to another (possibly worse) American cloud, obviously.

    2. v13

      Re: Why are we still giving contracts

      Calm there, Farage. Both are US companies.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Why are we still giving contracts

        I assumed sarcasm.... I didn't think for one minute an insane mail reader could be here.

      2. HeresPablo

        Re: Why are we still giving contracts

        Don't think? their was anything "Farage"-y (faragey is my new favourite word) about that comment as second generation immigrant in this country working in IT, I feel this country doesn't build or export enough and we need sure up as many jobs as possible within these shores.

        Sending contracts like this abroad as government sends a bad message to business.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why are we still giving contracts

      Not sure if this is sarcasm, but hey, this is that amazing sovereignty thing we gained.

      We are now free to pay a French company to migrate our stuff from an American company to another American company.

      Of course, we could have done that before brexit, but then it would be because the EU made us do it, or something.

      Now we are free to do just what we were free to do before, but by making us poorer, more restricted, and insular in the process!

      1. ICL1900-G3 Silver badge

        Re: Why are we still giving contracts

        And there are still some tw@s who think it's all going swimmingly.

  6. snowpages
    WTF?

    Patching!

    "allowing the IT infrastructure teams to focus on high-value high-complexity tasks, instead of commodity services such as patching"

    They were patching Google?

  7. Furious Reg reader John

    Yet another example of civil service incompetence. Move away from a system that is pretty much self-contained and go to one that requires layers upon layers of additional systems adding to it to get to the same level as you had with the other provider. I'm sure it won't take very long for the cost to jump to £30M, and then not much longer to go to £60M.

    1. Robert 22

      That is a feature.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      one that requires layers upon layers of additional systems

      Now imagine you know you will get a cut from the revenue that is extracted by each layer from the government (read: the tax payer) when you are faced with the decision to do this, and keep in mind you're a government minister so you don't need to apply any ethics. And when you're bored in the government you can get a fat position in the absorber of all that loot.

      Now guess again which way that decision will go: leave in place or replace?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    As a snivel servant I got on well enough with a golf ball typewriter and a fax machine. In my old age I've progressed to LibreOffice, e-mail and a scanner. I still can't get any sense out of government departments.

  9. VoiceOfTruth

    Checking the tarot cards for likely outcomes

    Capgemini gets the job of

    1. Screwing it up.

    2. Taking much longer than expected.

    3. Needing more money due to reasons 1 and 2 above.

    4. Doing it right.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Checking the tarot cards for likely outcomes

      Admit it. You just threw in option 4 for balance didn't you. Not going to happen.

    2. gryphon
      FAIL

      Re: Checking the tarot cards for likely outcomes

      Let's look at the probabilities.

      1. 100%

      2. 100%

      3. 100%

      4. 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% - possibly a bit overgenerous but I'm try to be even handed.

      But as others have said.

      Approx. £1000 per user seems VERY excessive even if they are charging out all their consultants at the usual £1000 per day.

      Oh, wait a sec, forgot the 50 project managers at £1500 a day, 30 programme managers at £2000 per day, 20 senior senior technical architects at £2500 a day.

      Damn, forgot the uplift since they'll all have to be SC or above so that adds another 30% per day.

      Actual staff doing the work - 6 grads and probably an embittered BOFH who will all spend 5 hours a day in project planning meetings with all of the above when things keep slipping to the right for reasons they can't fathom. Therefore...

      Actual time dedicated to doing real work = 2.5 hours per day per tech

      If a few REAL techs assigned to it and left to get on with it without any distractions and some goodwill on the part of the customer, couple of months excluding accreditation.

      Anyone think I'm incorrect?

      1. Tim99 Silver badge

        Re: Checking the tarot cards for likely outcomes

        Anyone think I'm incorrect? Yes, you have at least 2 too many grads…

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. Bebu Silver badge

      Re: Checking the tarot cards for likely outcomes

      1. Screwing it up.

      2. Taking much longer than expected.

      3. Needing more money due to reasons 1 and 2 above.

      4. Doing it right.

      Sherlock Holmes would exclude (4) - the impossible - and deduce (1,2&3) - elementary.

      My guess is 1,2&3 plus a transitional period (5) when both evil empires are running in parallel which will be intended to last weeks or at most months but of course this semi-disfunctional state will be extended indefinitely.

      Holmes had the good fortune to "live" in simpler times.

      With a Starmer goverment (one doesn't have to be psychic) probably adding one or more players to this IT miasma. Only box unticked would be tossing a Musk entry in this witches' cauldron.

      If only Mycroft could be resurrected.

  10. gerryg

    Leading from behind

    Given that the solution was never going to focus on interoperability and open standards it's just further evidence that the national centre for cyber security advises the use of chocolate teapots.

    If the only way central government can play buzzword bingo with words such as integration, efficiency, cross-departmental collaboration, synergy is by using software from the same organisation (and it really doesn't matter which one) then someone somewhere is missing the point.

    Why does the bingo card never include: lock-in, resilience, independence, innovation (let alone reliability or security)?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why did it split into two in the first place? Answer enclosed

    Find the common thread between the Cabinet Office, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Ministry of Justice and now the Parliamentary Digital Service, and you will find the reason why this failed - and continues to fail in all of the existing gov depts this person is in charge of.

    Having two systems is failure. Pick one and support the hell out of it - have two and there is always going to be a lack of connectivity.

    1. gerryg

      Re: Why did it split into two in the first place? Answer enclosed

      That is a restatement of the problem not a solution.

      Last time I checked the Internet is pretty big and no-one needs a specific piece of equipment.

      Once people promoted beyond their level of competence started choosing walled gardens for solutions it's only a matter of time before the wall become a problem.

    2. Paradroid

      Re: Why did it split into two in the first place? Answer enclosed

      They had two systems because someone had taste and knew Office 365 was a pile of crap.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Re: Why did it split into two in the first place? Answer enclosed

      > have two and there is always going to be a lack of connectivity

      It takes a lot of innovation to make make computers not able to talk to one another /s

      1. Falmari Silver badge

        Re: Why did it split into two in the first place? Answer enclosed

        @t245t "It takes a lot of innovation to make make computers not able to talk to one another" ^

        Then Microsoft must be a very innovative company. ;)

        But seriously it is easy to make it hard for them to understand each other. by placing obstacles in the way. Obstacles in such as file proprietary file formats Microsoft office has theirs, so does google docs. Same with communication protocols/formats, can you join a video conference in teams with anything other than teams, or Zoom with anything but Zoom or Google etc.

        The problem is that these systems use proprietary formats, so using two (Google Workspace and Microsoft 365) will result in a lack of connectivity.

        1. Twanky

          Re: Why did it split into two in the first place? Answer enclosed

          Whatever happened to government's commitment to using ODF V1.2?

          see: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/using-open-document-formats-odf-in-your-organisation

          The Open Standards Board has selected the ODF 1.2 standard for use across government. The government chose ODF 1.2 because it:

          - is an open standard that allows suppliers to create interoperable office productivity solutions

          - allows stricter security checks to help prevent common cyber-attack scenarios

          - can lower IT costs as ODF is either low cost or free to use

          - allows the government and citizens, businesses and other organisations to share documents

          - allows government staff to share and edit documents

          - is compatible with a wide range of software including assistive technology

          - can add digital signatures to a document

          - has a powerful generic metadata system

          Note the bit about across government. In my book that includes local government. So no more bloody .docx documents you lot!

  12. Twanky
    FAIL

    ...between...

    French IT service giant Capgemini has been awarded a deal worth between £12 million and £15 million

    So you mean a deal worth more than £30m?

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "personal productivity software."

    I assume that phrase was used as a joke?

    However, the more Microcruft the cabinet uses, the less "work" they are doing and so less damage.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    not going to mention the Cabinet Office top bod at the time

    However...…Virtually the whole of Govt uses O365 because THAT is what the users want. They are used to it and MS gives Govt a MASSIVE discount on software because they are such a big customer.

    HOWEVER, it seems that a small group of top bods in the Cabinet Office insisted on Google regardless of user wishes.

    I know this is a techie site and 90% of the people here would want linux servers with linux desktops running Open Office and probably still using floppy disks for "secure transfers"; however users like O365, that's what they are used to. Personally I Can't stand Teams or outlook and have myself set to OOO as much as I can so I Can get 2 minutes a day to actually do my real job.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Would be nice if....

    ...Google Sheets could handle more than 100000 rows without causing the Chrome browser to have a meltdown. This could be £15million+ project just because a bunch of people want Excel as well as Google Workspace.

  16. steviebuk Silver badge

    How accurate is this?

    We were sold the "Chocolate Factory" as being cheaper by a shady consultant company. It was an intentional lie or a massive fuck up because being local gov MS 365 would of been cheaper because.

    1. Local gov gets MS 365 cheaper than normal

    2. MS said they'd migrate our exchange for free.

    The Chocolate Factory has been massively more expensive.

    They charged about 30k to migrate exchange.

    Documents looks shit in Google Docs and don't convert properly.

    Having to share Google Docs with others who don't have Google is a pain in the arse.

    Google Workspace is fine for local business', local garages etc. But shit for medium to large companies.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well, duh..

    Quite why the Cabinet Office decided to go its own way with Google Workspace, the documents do not disclose, but the department renewed its faith in the productivity tools as recently as 2021.

    It appears the government has been sending our personal tax data to the US for a lot longer so I'm not that surprised:

    ~ % dig +short mx digital.hmrc.gov.uk

    10 aspmx.l.google.com.

    20 alt1.aspmx.l.google.com.

    20 alt2.aspmx.l.google.com.

    30 alt3.aspmx.l.google.com.

    30 alt4.aspmx.l.google.com.

    There's no other, more benign reason for this to exist inside one of the more important parts of UK government IMHO, and this has been there far too long IMHO.

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