Credit: Dreamstime
SMEs have been awarded $300 million in Government deals through the Digital Transformation Agency's Digital Marketplace over the last three years.
Since 2016, 1892 contracts have been awarded through the Digital Marketplace with total value of $500 million. Of these, 71 per cent went to small and medium sized companies.
However, a breakdown of top sellers shows big companies still dominate the deal wins, with IT giant Data#3 securing 22 Marketplace contracts this financial year.
According to the DTA, Data#3 came second only to Hays Specialist Recruitment in the number a contract wins, in a ranking 80 per cent dominated by recruitment companies.
Canberra-based professional services provider Cordelta was the only technology supplier SME to make the top 10, winning 13 Government deals.
The Digital Marketplace now has 1408 sellers, the majority of which — 759 — come from a software engineering and development field.
Some 683 sellers put themselves in the 'agile delivery and governance' category, while 500 describe themselves as 'user research and design'. Other specialisms include change and transformation, cyber security, emerging technologies and data science.
Agencies tapping into the marketplace the most include the Department of Human Services, National Disability Insurance Agency and the DTA itself. The Department of Defence and Department of Finance also made reasonable use of it.
According to Minister for Government Services Stuart Robert, 280 entities are now using the marketplace.
“ICT procurement transformation has made government open-for-business, encouraged competition, increased participation from SMEs and reduced the time it takes to source — to the benefit of government, industry and the taxpayer,” he said.
In December, the DTA announced it had awarded $240 million worth of Government deals to SMEs since a beta version of the marketplace was first launched in August 2016.
Two months later, it claimed $15 million worth of IT contracts were up for grabs.
Recently, the DTA reopened the panel for new suppliers, launching a new category for IT managed service providers.Notable providers on the panel now include AC3, Altis Consulting and Zettagrid.
