MoD awards third G-Cloud contract to Kahootz
The UK MoD has awarded a third 2-year G-Cloud contract to Kahootz, the cloud collaboration service.
Their secure cloud-based collaborative working environment, (branded as Defence Share) is enabling MoD teams to work collaboratively and share information, protectively marked up to OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE, with external organisations.
Kahootz was chosen after being re-evaluated against competitive services and the MoD’s own assessment criteria of flexibility, scalability, speed of delivery, value for money and, most importantly, service and operational security.
Explaining the impact the service has had, Craig Savery, IT Strategy and Architecture Assistant Head at DE&S told Desider (the magazine of Defence Equipment and Support): “This secure online service will make sharing information far easier, ensuring DE&S teams can work more efficiently with any authorised external organisation and industry partners.” The article also revealed that Kahootz “is also the only system of this type to be accredited by Defence Assurance and Information Security.”
Following a remarkable 300% growth in users during the previous 2-year contract, it’s expected the adoption of Kahootz will now gather further momentum as MoD staff continue to innovate and find new ways of working with team members and key external stakeholders.
One leading example, known to its 700+ members as “ListXtranet”, is an online workspace that has become the primary means for MoD communications with List X companies who are themselves using it to provide each other with support.
Given a DE&S CEO award for excellence, the collaborative features provided by Kahootz have been applauded for the way they have helped to strengthen and support engagement of the SME community in particular.
The success of Defence Share has also not gone unnoticed by the wider Defence community, with an increasing number of prime contractors deploying their own Kahootz sites to improve engagement with their supply chain and industrial and academic partners.
One example is Team Defence Information, a collaborative association that informs defence information policy and pilots new ways of working to transform the defence ecosystem.
On hearing the news, Team Defence Information’s Managing Director Phil Williams said: “We’re delighted to learn the MoD has decided to award another contract to Kahootz. Previously unknown to many of us in the industry, they have quickly become recognised as the ‘go to’ collaboration service for dispersed project teams that need to share information safely across organisational boundaries.
“As an active member of ours, the team at Kahootz has invested a lot of time and effort to work with our members over the last 4 years to understand the teamworking challenges faced by the UK Defence Industry and are now starting to reap the benefits.”