More than 80 IT suppliers have secured places on a newly announced procurement panel spanning 16 government departments and over a dozen categories of technology services.
Infront Systems, Dialog IT and The Missing Link Network Integration are just a handful of the providers on the new ICT Professional Services panel for the Treasury Portfolio.
Full list of suppliers to the panel
The Australian Taxation Office is the lead agency for the panel arrangement, which closed to bids in December and effectively replaces the ATO's IT Applications Services Panel, APRA's IT Services Panel and ASIC's IT Professional Services Panel.
The arrangement, which is for an initial two-year term with three one-year extensions, is valued at $91.5 million per annum.
The move toward consolidated panels stemmed from the 2008 Peter Gershon review into the Australian government's use of ICT, which among other things recommended agencies make better use of the government's collective buying power.
Gershon recommended optimising the number of ICT panel arrangements established by agencies across government, including by introducing whole-of-goverment or portfolio-based panels "where they would deliver superior value".
"Larger agencies can use these panels, but if they get better prices through other procurement channels, then that price should be leveraged as the whole-of-government price," he stated in his report [pdf].
Expanding roster
An ATO spokesperson told CRN that the agency could make further approaches to the market to update the roster of suppliers and types of services on an "as needs" basis.
"As the lead agency, the ATO is able to undertake a panel refresh on an ‘as needs’ basis to ensure the panel continues to meet the requirement of providing contemporary ICT services throughout its term.
"The ATO may undertake a panel refresh to add a new ICT service category or panel members to the panel if we identify a need for a new ICT service category or subcategory; identify a need to add panel members to one or more ICT service subcategories or if we identify a specific skill set that is not available on the panel."
More buyers could also join up. "The deed allows other Commonwealth agencies to access the services from this arrangement via a deed of inclusion if they wish."
The panel spans a wide range of IT services, including end user compute, ICT services and security management.
The new arrangement follows news in June that the ATO was trimming its $40 million-a-year IT contractor panel from 37 members down to five.
FACT FILE: TREASURY PORTFOLIO
Agencies
- Australian Bureau of Statistics
- Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
- Australian Office of Financial Management
- Australian Prudential Regulation Authority
- Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation
- Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC)
- Australian Taxation Office (ATO)
- Clean Energy Finance Corporation
- Commonwealth Grants Commission
- Corporations and Markets Advisory Committee
- Inspector-General of Taxation
- National Competition Council
- Office of the Auditing and Assurance Standards Board
- Office of the Australian Accounting Standards Board
- Productivity Commission
- Royal Australian Mint
Services
- Architecture
- Design
- Benchmarking
- End User Computing
- Strategy
- Risk Management
- ICT Programs
- Server Management
- Security Management
- Systems & Solutions
- Software Asset Management
- ICT Consultancy Services
- ICT Service Delivery
- User Communications
- Other ICT Services, such as Digitisation and Search Appliances services
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