Flanders awards €1 billion framework agreement to IT companies

The government of Flanders has awarded a new mega IT contract worth €1 billion to technology companies Atos, Cegeka, DXC, Cronos and Proximus. 

With a population of over six million, Flanders is one of Belgium’s three main regions alongside the Walloon Region and the Brussels-Capital Region. Dutch-speaking Flanders is home to many of the country’s major economic hubs such as Antwerp and Ghent, and other cities such as Bruges, Leuven and Mechelen.

To operate and continuously improve its IT infrastructure, the Flanders government works with a number of external IT suppliers, using a framework agreement to channel its procurement. Over the past years, the government worked with Proximus and DXC for IT and infrastructure support, and dozens of others across more specialist fields of work.

With the framework agreement of Proximus and DXC up for expiry early next year, the government put out a new European tender, and following a due diligence on all bids (price, quality, track record, etc) a cohort of five have now been appointed to the new framework which kicks off in February 2022. 

The winners are: Atos, a French-origin IT services giant; DXC Technology, formerly HP Enterprise (which nearly merged with Atos at the start of this year); Cegeka, a Belgian-origin IT services firm; Proximus, the country’s largest telecom infrastructure and services provider; and Cronos; a Belgian IT services group. 

Atos has been selected to deliver integration & cloud and data centre services, Cegeka will deliver workplace support, DXC will take responsibility for the mainframe infrastructure while Proximus will manage the IT network. For the applications lot, DXC, Cegeka, Atos and Cronos were selected as preferred suppliers.

The contract runs for five years, and has a two-year extension period. The total value is estimated at €1 billion, making it one of Belgium’s largest IT framework agreements in the public sector.