Badge of trust for Queensland's top IT providers

Queensland's state chamber of commerce has announced the start of an accreditation scheme for IT providers.

Primarily designed to provide small businesses confidence in selecting IT providers, the new CCIC QAssure program was launched by The Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland.

"Through CCIQ QAssure, businesses will have confidence that suppliers are viable, registered businesses, who have been assessed based on their suitability to trade and award contracts," said Stephen Tait, chief executive of CCIQ.

Tait said that the service will independently provide certainty, transparency and "surety" for technology providers and buyers.

"CCIQ saw the need for a way to connect businesses requiring technology solutions with providers that they can trust," he said.

As well as the small business market, QAssure will be used in the public sector, with the announcement that the Queensland state government will abandon its own assessment system in favour of the CCIQ initiative.

"QAssure has the potential to develop Queensland’s ICT industry, while removing the burden of repeatedly providing the same information with each tender response," said state information technology minister Ian Walker.

"In the future, the Queensland Government will use QAssure to cut red tape in the Government Information Technology Contracting (GITC) framework accreditation process," Walker said.

The scheme is not designed to accreditation for an IT provider's IT skills, said CCIQ's general manager, commercial, Phillip Gallagher."We don't undertake a review of their ICT competencies. "

Rather, the process includes the following checks:

• Verification via ASIC search of business registration
• Verification via ASIC search of director information
• Proof of active Workers’ Compensation insurance
• Proof of active insurance currency
• Proof of solvency

An application for QAssure will cost $396.

 "A lot of organisations have to replicate that prequalification process three or four times a year depending on who they are doing business with. Most large organisations will have a process an organisation has to go through," Gallagher said.

"We would hope in time other local governments, other organisations will look at our prequalification system, and say it makes sense, let's use that as well."

Queensland chairman of the AIIA and director of NICTA, Professor Simon Kaplan, said: "[QAssure] will reduce red tape for business and provide a quality accreditation component. NICTA will certainly be signing up."

Tait said that the QAssure was just the beginning: "As other industry bodies provide important accreditation components, such as REIQ and Master Builders, this is the first stage of CCIQ working with an important industry and their partners to develop a credible and professional recognition process."