aurora's blog: DWP spending data: Pensions department spends �4.59bn with suppliers

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

DWP spending data: Pensions department spends �4.59bn with suppliers

Department for Work and Pensions - the government's biggest-spending department - has released its top suppliers, thanks to a Guardian FoI request. See what the DWP's data says
? Get the data

As Sir Philip Green releases his report into government waste, with a critical focus on buildings and IT, the Department for Work and Pensions has released a list of its largest suppliers ? led by buildings and IT.

In first place, Telereal Trillium, DWP's facilities management provider ? which means providing and managing buildings ? received �782.9m in the 12 months ending last March. In second place, HP Enterprise Services, which until September 2009 was known as EDS, received �656.9m.

Further large sums go to other IT and telecoms suppliers, including BT
(�232.8m, the fourth largest supplier) and Atos Origin (�150.8m, the
seventh). This may not all be on IT, but given the suppliers, most of
it probably is: in 2008-09, the department said it spent �987m on
computing. There's more on the spending with IT suppliers at
Kable.co.uk.

Royal Mail was the fifth largest supplier to the DWP, receiving �175.3m in 2009-10, although the department uses commercial delivery firms as well: UK Mail got �17.7m while TNT received �16.5m. Other state sector recipients included HM Revenue and Customs (�36.3m), the Office of National Statistics (�7m) and a few local authorities, led by Dudley metropolitan borough council (�9.1m).

The amounts paid to suppliers are huge, but so is the department. It runs Jobcentre Plus and the Pensions and Disability and Carers Service; is the responsible department for the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission and the Health and Safety Executive; and administers the National Insurance Fund on behalf of HM Revenue and Customs.

According to its accounts for 20009-10, published in July, every working day the DWP receives more than 10,000 job vacancies, handles 1.1m online job searches, provides more than 4,000 pension forecasts, processes more than 20,000 new benefit claims and pays around 2.8m benefit payments.

In the year, DWP made gross social security benefits of �149.5bn. Sending that out, in relatively small regular amounts, incurs significant costs ? hence the nine-figure amounts paid to the eight suppliers at the top of this list.

The full data is below. What can you do with it?