The Highways Agency (HA) hopes to cut IT costs by 15 per cent by consolidating more than 100 contracts into a single £75m five-year deal with Atos Origin.

The agreement covers the management and support of infrastructure, desktop and applications, and includes the transfer of around 40 staff to the supplier. The in-house team will keep hold of strategy, project management and business analysis.

The scheme both cuts the agency's costs and reflects its changing role, HA director of information Denise Plumpton told Computing.

"When all our old contracts were set up around five years ago the nature of the business was very different from its role today.

"Back then the HA was seen as a contractor on the roads network, whereas now we are very much focused on customers," she said.

The organisation's wider remit requires more from its IT, said Plumpton.

"We have traffic officers and regional control centres responsible for operating and managing the strategic road network 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

"There is an increased reliance on technology and communications and our people need to access systems and have the ability to communicate day and night every day of the year – our old contracts simply were not constructed to do that," she said.

The transition period is expected to run until March, before the main transformation programme focusing on the rationalisation and consolidation begins.

The original shortlist for the deal included HP, LogicaCMG and Fujitsu.