CGI assists Highways England to become independent

CGI has won a three-year end user computing services contract for the new government owned Highways England. The contract will see CGI support Highways England transition from UK Department for Transport to an independent entity, as well as delivering a computing services model set to provide increased mobility and provide 24x7 support.

Highways England, formally the Highways Agency, is a UK government company whose remit is operating the A class highways of England. The roads the company operates represent only 2% of England’s roads by length, however, they carry a third of all traffic by mileage - and two thirds of all heavy goods traffic, thereby making them of high strategic value. The company is charged with maintaining and modernising the highway network, as well as dealing with incidents on England’s motorways through a Traffic Officer Service. The company has 3,500 staff based in 7 offices in the UK.

CGI’s contract will see the IT consulting firm deliver information and communications technology (ICT) services to Highways England. CGI will be charged with supporting Highways England transition its IT services from its current place within the UK Department for Transport to a standalone government-owned company. This will in part involve the leveraging of end user computing services within a collaborative ICT model for the staff of Highways England.

The contract is set to further benefit the new company, with CGI helping to develop disaggregated ICT services that provide greater flexibility to facilitate the modernisation of Highways England’s ICT infrastructure. With the new computing services model set to provide increased mobility and security support, thereby allowing the new company to deploy a range of mobile devices such as secure laptops and tablets.

To help deal with the over 20,000 road incidents a month faced by Highways England, CGI will also provide its services with the support of its 24x7 by CGI’s five-star award-winning service desk, Secure Government Cloud Infrastructure and Secure Operations Centre (SOC).

“We are delighted to have been awarded this strategic contract with Highways England, which will take advantage of our experience in modernising other public sector clients’ systems and delivering stable, secure end user computing systems,” comments Steve Thorn, Senior Vice-President of CGI Public Sector UK. “This contract is further evidence of transport authorities in the UK turning to CGI to manage their core infrastructures.”