NSW Govt to recognise interstate procurement creds

The NSW Government has unveiled plans to recognise the qualifications of suppliers already approved to sell to other states, opening up the possibility that businesses will only have to apply once to work across all jurisdictions.

The state’s updated procurement directions paper was released last night at an Australian Computer Society forum by Finance and Services Minister Dominic Perrottet.

It includes plans to roll out a 'mutual recognition' mechanism towards the end of the year.

The news will no doubt be welcomed by members of the IT industry, who currently need to bid or apply for a number of different state and agency-based panels and schemes before they can even begin responding to most government tenders.

In NSW, IT suppliers need to gain membership of the ICT Services Scheme - a simple online verification process in most cases, but one that needs to be repeated for the Victorian eServices Register and the Queensland ICT Services Panel, among others.

NSW procurement execs also plan to promote the ‘mutual recognition’ plan to their interstate peers, with the goal of eventually enabling suppliers to prequalify once right across the country.

Towards the end of the year, the state government plans to trial a portal that will test the use of mutual recognition provisions for the construction sector, before expanding into other procurement areas like IT and telecommunications.

The government hopes that by making selling into government less of a burden on business resources, it will encourage greater participation by smaller enterprises.

“It’s time for government to get out of the way and remove unnecessary red tape, to allow small and medium businesses to innovate, grow and succeed,” Perrottet said in a statement.