Question

To ask the Senior Deputy Speaker whether the Parliamentary Digital Service plans to replace the Polycom telephone system on the parliamentary estate and, if so, what is the budget for this project.

The Senior Deputy Speaker has asked me, as Chair of the Services Committee, to respond on his behalf. The Voice Programme has been set up to address service quality and user experience priorities regarding telephony in Parliament. The programme’s high-level benefits include increasing business resilience and value for money and improving customer experience across telephony services. The programme is upgrading and replacing the existing telephony infrastructure (a combination of on premise MS Teams and Skype for Business) and has completed procurement of a unified communications service, to be implemented later this year, that will deliver resilient telephony. Initially, the new service is expected- to re-utilise the existing Polycom telephone handsets, however, replacement telephone handsets will be introduced as part of product lifecycle replacement.

The House of Lords Services Committee, the House of Commons Administration Committee and the Business Resilience Board are being consulted on implementation plans for the new service.

The Investment Committee and Accounting Officers have approved a business case for the Voice Programme which has an approved whole life cost of £6.37m. These costs cover implementation, programme resources, licences, and support costs until FY28/29.