Paul Blomfield – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Blomfield on 2016-03-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how much his Department spent on upgrading IT systems at 2 St Paul’s Place, Sheffield in 2014-15.

Joseph Johnson

The Department spent £38m on upgrading IT systems in 2014-15, including both software and equipment development. This includes around £31m for internally developed software, predominantly within delivery bodies of the department such as the Student Loans Company. It also includes the Core Department roll out of a new ICT system, Evolve, for use by all staff. This replaced the previous IT service. The total cost of the Evolve rollout was £3.5 million.

The IT systems at 2 St Paul’s Place Sheffield are part of the Core Department’s IT infrastructure, so the upgrades are included in the total cost of the Evolve rollout of £3.5m. Costs were not recorded separately by location for this general upgrade to our systems.