The government project for sharing IT infrastructure between Whitehall departments will go live on 1 October this year.

The Cabinet Office and the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) will be the first to use the system, which aims to cut overall IT costs by 20 per cent and desktop computing costs by 40 per cent.

Cafcass is the fourth department to sign up to the Flex shared service contract agreed by the Cabinet Office and Fujitsu ­ after the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills and the Office of National Statistics ­ but will be first to go live.

The contract will allow the service to cut IT spending while enabling change, according to Lamorna Wooderson, corporate director at Cafcass.

“We are aiming for a more interactive approach to our work such as games and tests with children ­ this means more laptops,” she said. “Flex will make our annual spend cheaper and more predictable.”

The Cafcass deal is worth £25m over seven years and will provide managed desktop services for 2,000 users across 100 offices and implement a complete update of the hardware and software after four years.

Under the Flex programme, organisations will share central servers as well as helpdesk support and the day-to-day delivery and management of applications.

Consolidation and virtualisation in the Flex servers as well as thin-client desktops will mean reduced carbon emissions for departments involved.

Users will also be able to introduce optional extras such as real-time collaboration, wireless access and other business applications.

“Flex provides us with the opportunity to demonstrate reduced costs from a low-cost desktop infrastructure with high levels of security and the ability to recover quickly from a disaster,” government chief information officer John Suffolk told Computing.

“We also receive benefits from the freedom to work at locations of our choice, improving our productivity and reducing carbon emissions from travel.”

Fujitsu is now bringing on board third-party consultants to provide organisations reluctant to adopt the scheme with a persuasive business case, said John O’Brien, senior analyst at Ovum.

“Educating people on the benefits of shared services is a key step in getting them on board ­ especially local authorities,” he said.