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The federal government’s Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) is working out whether it should delay its approaches-to-market for a number of upcoming IT procurement panel arrangements amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The agency, which is tasked with much of the government’s IT procurement responsibility, said on 22 April that it is reconsidering the release dates for some of its planned marketplace panel approaches as the pandemic causes “major disruptions” to most workplaces.
“This is due to the amount of effort on both sellers and the DTA, in order to respond to the approaches-to-market,” the DTA said in a blog post.
“As such, the approach-to-market dates for the establishment of the new Cloud Marketplace, and the annual open-to-new-sellers processes for the existing Software and Hardware Marketplaces are being reviewed, alongside other activities underway at the DTA,” it added.
While it may delay progress on some of its upcoming panel arrangements, the DTA said it would continue to operate and support all existing arrangements to ensure the supply of goods and services to agencies.
At the same time, the DTA’s Digital Marketplace, which was originally designed to give smaller suppliers greater access to government work, is also currently accepting new suppliers as part of its streamlined onboarding process.
In March, the DTA moved to defer its planned procurement for a new cloud services panel due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis.
The agency had intended to replace its existing Cloud Services Panel (CSP) with a new Cloud Marketplace panel before the former’s expiry on 31 March.
However, the agency has now postponed the procurement until at least June 2020 due to the “significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented disruptions being faced by most workplaces”.
