FOI reference: FOI-2024-2093

You asked

Connectivity and Network Services:

a. Who provides your WAN and internet connectivity and the annual spend on each

b. Who provides your SIP trunks and what is the annual spend

c. Who provides your WAN services, is this MPLS, SD WAN or Internet, and what is the annual spend

d. Who provides your LAN infrastructure and what is your annual spend

e. Who provides your WIFI infrastructure and what is your annual spend

f. Please confirm the manufacturer(s) of your wired network core and edge switching?

g. When was your core network installed?

h. Has it been updated subsequently?

i. Who maintains your core network?

j. When is the contract renewal date?

k. Please confirm value of the initial project?

l. Please confirm the value of annual support/maintenance services (in £)?

Telephony and storage:

1. Telephony and UC/ Collaboration

a. Please confirm the manufacturer of your telephony system(s) that are currently in place b. When is your contract renewal date?

c. Who maintains your telephony system(s)?

d. Do you use Unified Communications or Collaboration tools, if so which ones?

2. Microsoft

a. What Microsoft 365 licence do you have across the business e.g. E3, E5

b. Which partner looks after your Microsoft tenant?

c. Where do you host your applications? Do you have on-premise infrastructure or do you host your applications in public or private cloud? Which?

3. Storage

a. Does your organisation use on-premise or cloud storage or both?

b. Please confirm the on-premise hardware manufacturer c. Please confirm your cloud storage provider d. What is your annual spend on cloud storage?

e. How do you back up your data and with who e.g. Backup as a Service

Contact Centre, CRM, and AI & Automation:

1. Contact Centre -- target to organisations we know have a CC

a. Do you have a customer/ citizen facing contact centre? If not please skip these questions.

b. Do you employ and manage your own agents, or do you outsource to a third party? If you outsource who to?

c. How many contact centre agents do you have?

d. Do agents work from home? Or just your offices?

e. Please confirm the manufacturer of your contact centre system(s) that are currently in place?

f. When is your contract renewal date?

g. Who maintains your contact centre system(s)?

2. CRM

a. Do you use a CRM in the contact centre? What platform is used?

b. Do you use the same CRM for the rest of the organisation? What platform is used?

c. Do you use a knowledge base / knowledge management platform? What platform is used?

3. AI & Automation

a. Does your organisation have a customer or citizen facing chatbot? If so, who provides this chatbot technology?

b. Does your organisation utilise RPA technology? If so which RPA technology provider do you use?

We said

Thank you for your request. Please note, all values provided do not include VAT.

Connectivity and Network Services 

1. Internet -- BT - £82,300 and HSO -- ISP Lines: Approx. £90k

2.  N/A

3. SD WAN -- Cisco: Approx. £90k

4. Cisco: £250k p.a.

5. Cisco: Approx. £100k p.a. for both on-going support & licencing

6. Cisco

7.  2016/2017 -- in our current on-prem Datacentres

8.  Yes -- in progress

9.  ONS -- Internal Teams

10. N/A as managed in house

11.  Approx. £10 million

12.  Approx. £250k p.a.

Telephony and Storage

1. Telephony and UC/ Collaboration

a. We use Microsoft Teams for Telephony across our estates (so laptop based) except for a handful of emergency handsets that are linked to MS Teams that are made by Yealink or Polycom.

b. October 2026

c. GCI/Modality/NASSTAR

d. MS TEAMS

2. Microsoft

a) E5 and E1

b) Boxxe LTD

c) On-Premise and Public Cloud

3. Storage

a. Both

b. Lenovo/Fujitsu/Pure/Dell VNX

 c. Microsoft/Amazon/Google Cloud Platform

d. £948,000 per year based on average spend

e. VEEAM / to EMC Data Domain

Contact Centre, CRM and AI & Automation

1. Contact Centre

a. Yes

b. We manage our own agents

c. 3

d. The UK Statistics Authority operates a flexible working framework which provides flexibility around where and when work is undertaken, subject to the requirements of the role

e. 8x8

f. 31/03/2025

g. In House admin -- any major outages are supported by 8x8

2. CRM

a. Yes 8X8

b. N/A

c. SharePoint is the knowledge management platform we use for the organisation

3. AI & Automation

a. Not in relation to the Customer Contact Centre

b. Yes, we use IBM RPA