Defence redesigns IT services mega panel, calls for new providers

The Department of Defence has opened its massive IT service panel to new providers interested in joining after redesigning the arrangement last year.

The department’s chief information officer group issued a tender on Thursday calling for IT providers not currently signed-up to join the ICT provider arrangement (ICTPA).

The ICTPA was first established in July 2018 to replace Defence’s former system integrator panel, dubbed the applications managed service partner agreement (AMSPA).

It introduced a flexible buying model, allowing the department to become a more sophisticated buyer of IT services, in line with the 2015 First Principles Review.

The panel currently consists of 134 providers, including four of the five previous AMSPA panellists, across three domains: system integration, application services and IT services.

Following a review in 2019, Defence last year sought to refresh the panel to “maintain and extend the ecosystem that allows ICT procurement… to deliver affordable, high-quality and flexible services”.

In August 2020, the department invited interested suppliers who missed out in 2018, as well as existing panellists, to participate in a series of co-design workshops for the redesign.

As a result of the workshopping, Defence has emerged with a redesigned terms and conditions, statement of work and pricing framework and terms to “better facility agile delivery of services”.

It is part of wider push by the department to ensure its IT operating model “remains sufficiently agile”, with smaller, interactive IT capabilities set to be relied on more heavily into the future.

The expanded terms and conditions largely relate to “incident services that may be procured under primary services”, namely cloud services, hardware, software and managed services, Defence said.

The ‘ICT services’ and ‘systems integration’ services towers have also been renamed ‘ICT personnel resources’ and ‘systems integration services’, while all service towers now referred to as modules.

Both new providers and current panellists looking to expand their service offering are invited to respond to the tender.

Defence said that new providers tendering for application services or systems integrator services also need to submit a tender for all categories of ICT personnel resources.

Providers wanting to tender for only ICT personnel resources will be expected to submit for at least one category.

Defence said it was “undertaking a refresh of the ICTPA to ensure that [it] has a dependable, secure and integrated ICT environment to support… business and military operations”.

Submission to the tender will close on May 27, with the revised panel expected to be established by January 2022.