Department of Human Services awards $102 million in IT services contracts to DXC, Capgemini, Accenture

The Department of Human Services has awarded a combined $102 million in IT services contracts to DXC, Capgemini and Accenture.

The contracts are part of the department’s resource strategy for its Welfare Payment Infrastructure Transformation (WPIT) program, an ongoing initiative overhauling the delivery of welfare payments that started in 2015 and will run until 2022.

DXC's deal is worth $63 million, Accenture's contract is $25 million, and Capgemini was awarded $13 million.

The deals represent the latest round of contracts to supply on the project, supported by a funding injection of $316.2 million, the project's third allocation, which was handed to the DHS in May, as reported by iTnews. Total allocations now sit close to $600 million.

DHS did not go into specifics, but said the companies would provide resources for systems integration, business transformation and technology-related services for the program, but no purchases for software or hardware are involved.

In 2017, iTnews reported the WPIT overhaul was the biggest IT project in Canberra, with DHS's sprawling, legacy systems that currently calculate and pay all of Australia’s Centrelink benefits to be ripped out and replaced at the cost of an estimated $1.5 billion.

This is DXC's latest government contract win this month, following a Cisco network security contract with the Department of Parliamentary Services and another contract with DHS to provide IT trainees via its Dandelion Program.