NSW DoE seeks partners for SaaS solutions marketplace

The NSW Department of Education (DoE) is seeking IT partners to deliver SaaS solutions for its Administration Marketplace Panel for Schools (AMPS).

DoE is the largest education provider in Australia, responsible for over 22,000 schools and employing more than 140,000 employees in schools and corporate offices across NSW.

Launched in November 2022, AMPS provides a shopfront for schools to access approved third-party SaaS school administration products.

In a request for tender published 30 October, DoE said it is allowing existing AMPS suppliers to expand their offering and is seeking new suppliers who can meet AMPS capability requirements.

The department is looking for SaaS solutions across five categories:

• Student administration solutions that collect, store, use and report on information about students.
• School management and operations solutions that collect, store, use and report on information about staff, school assets and resources.
• Timetabling solutions that support specialised algorithms and methods for building and optimising class, teacher and resource schedules.
• Parent/carer communication and consent solutions for providing and exchanging information between parents or carers and the school, including managing the consent process (e.g. for excursions) and other workflows.
• Student finance solutions that manage payments and other financial transactions with students, parents and carers. 

Successful suppliers will be appointed to the AMPS panel following an on-boarding process where their capacity to meet integration, technical and information security requirements may be validated through a certification process.

There are 11 existing AMPS panel members whose initial five-year term of agreement expires on 31 March 2027.

Term extensions are available to existing members via two, three-year extension options, which are subject to their performance under the agreed scope of services and the discretion of DoE.

The request for tender will close on 5 December 2023.