HMRC has awarded three contracts worth up to £657 million for low-code software development and support, undercutting the assumption that low-code platforms—designed to let users build applications with minimal traditional programming—necessarily translate into low costs. The contracts, given to Atos, Cognizant and Coforge, cover leadership, build and support services for HMRC's low-code technology estate, which includes tools such as Pega, ServiceNow, Microsoft Dynamics and Power Platform, as part of the tax authority's ongoing effort to modernise its ageing and complex IT infrastructure.

Atos won a £78.2 million deal for "specialist low-code leadership services," including programme oversight and governance, while Cognizant secured a £360 million contract for build, configuration, DevOps and live service management, and Coforge won a £219 million contract for similar services. All three awards fall under Lot 4a of the Digital and Legacy Application Services (DALAS) framework, whose second phase has been valued at a combined £2.8 billion, within a wider DALAS framework originally estimated at up to £4.5 billion. The National Audit Office has previously warned that remediating HMRC's legacy systems is taking longer and costing more than expected, given the scale and complexity of its IT estate.