Election 2013: Government IT
The Federal Government has boasted of millions of dollars in savings generated from its coordinated approach to ICT procurement. The strategy has been to trade membership of exclusive markets through restricted panels for hefty discounts on everything from desktop hardware and Microsoft licences to floor space in data centres.
The Coalition plans to turn this on its head, scrapping the panels in favour of a single central list of suppliers vetted to supply to government across all goods and services categories. It says that this will avoid the costs of bidding for a panel place, which can exceed $40,000.
Labor:
Fixed term procurement panels for commodity goods and services, including ICT
Savings generated by leveraging coordinated buying power in exchange for discounts
Agencies required to consider cloud options as part of new ICT procurements
ICT procurement overseen by the Department of Finance and Deregulation
Panels mandated but agency autonomy in other buying areas
Coalition:
One central panel of all prequalified suppliers, including ICT
Savings generated by minimising administrative costs and red-tape
Advocate ‘cloud first’ approach where cloud options would be selected as default
ICT procurement overseen by the Department of Finance and Deregulation
ICT spending audit
Allow ‘heavy user’ agencies to maintain IT autonomy while ‘light user’ agencies move to cloud or shared solutions
