Credit: Andrea Polini/Pixabay

The Scottish Government has retained the same quartet of suppliers on a reiteration of a major national framework to allow public sector bodies across the country to bring in short-term technology workers.

The fourth version of the government’s Interim IT Staff Services buying vehicle came into effect on 13 April and runs for a term of four years. Up to £200m is expected to be spent via the deal, which features four suppliers: Venesky-Brown; ASA Recruitment; Lorien Resourcing; and Harvey Nash.

These four companies also featured on the previous version of the framework, which ran from 2019 to 2023.

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The framework is available to public sector organisations across Scotland, and offers the provision of temporary workers in a comprehensive range of roles covering the support and delivery of IT systems, as well as agile development specialisms, such as researchers, software engineers, project managers, and data professionals.

Procurement records indicate that, over the four-year term of the previous version of the deal, more than 650 individual call-off contracts were awarded via the framework – the majority of these by the Scottish Government itself.

In a newly published procurement notice, the government said: “This framework agreement is for the provision of Interim IT Staff Services nationally. The framework agreement will be for a maximum period of 48 months. Contractors must be capable of supplying suitably qualified interim workers covering a diverse range of skill sets that have been through the relevant disclosure/security processes. Interim workers should be suitably trained and experienced to perform the duties required of them and must be eligible to work in the United Kingdom.”