PA Consulting led the winners parade at this year's MCA Best Management Practice Awards. PA won the prime platinum award for its work with Westminster City Council and also carried off gold trophies for its work in outsourcing consultancy and technology exploitation. Other winners included Edengene as best small firm and winner of the operational performance category, RightCoutts for business strategy, Trilogy for change management, Unisys for electronic trading and Mercer HR Consulting for human resources.

ITNET is forecasting “a step change in revenue growth” following a year of improvement and investment in its selected sectors of local and central government, services and transport. ITNET reported a 145% rise in 2003 pre-tax profit to £18 million, on turnover climbing 5% to £189 million. Local government turnover rose 8%, with commercial revenue up 3%, supported by a gain of 22% in transport turnover and services turnover up 14%.

Atos Origin has made an early gain from its merger with SchlumbergerSema through a $200 million, seven-year outsourcing contract at Standard Chartered Bank. SchlumbergerSema was bidding for the contract before the announcement of its acquisition by Atos Origin, but did not make the bank's shortlist. After the merger agreement, it was reinstated and went on to win a contract that will be staffed by a mixed team of Atos Origin and former SchlumbergerSema employees.

The BBC has shortlisted eight bidders for a contract involving a £2 billion, 10-year IT outsourcing deal and the purchase of BBC Technology. In the line-up for the next stage of bidding are CSC, Fujitsu, EDS, Capita, Accenture, IBM, LogicaCMG and HP. The BBC intends to reduce this list to three in April, before awarding the contract in September and getting started before the close of the year. As well as walking away with a £2 billion outsourcing contract, the winner will take on BBC Technology, a company founded in March 2001 to provide products and services for the BBC as well as other broadcasters, platform and content owners, and government organisations.