Fujitsu Blacklisted By Government: Report

Japanese tech giant is on a government blacklist, meaning it cannot gain additional contracts with government bodies, according to a report.

People close to the situation said Fujitsu was considered too “high risk” to take on new public sector contracts, according to the Financial Times. The Cabinet Office is currently reviewing contractors as it looks to make big savings.

Fujitsu told TechWeekEurope it would not comment on its government contracts. Yet the company has a troubled history with the UK government. It is currently suing the Department for Health, after it failed to agree terms over the disastrous  National Programme For IT (NPfIT), which was supposed to transform IT in the NHS.

Bad relations

Fujitsu was fired from a £900 million project to set up electronic patient records across the south of England in 2008. It now wants £700 million from the DoH.

Last year, the Department for Work and Pensions cancelled a £330 million deal with Fujitsu to provide desktop services.

Fujitsu remains one of the two favoured providers for the £530 million Broadband Development UK (BDUK) project, which is hoping to bring next-generation networks to rural areas. Yet all the BDUK-supported contracts handed out so far, have gone to BT.

If Fujitsu has been blacklisted across public sector organisations, it will have a hard time gaining any BDUK contracts at all. That could have implications for the European Commission’s ongoing investigation into the BDUK process, which is concerned with the competitive aspect of the project.

Meanwhile, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude is trying to get more bang for the government’s buck, having told IT suppliers the days of wasteful IT projects are over. In February, he announced the government would have saved £140 million this financial year as a result of more stringent rules on ICT expenditure.

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