Published on the 27/08/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
A gap between reality and rhetoric seems to have emerged in terms of ICT companies’ success in selling to the public sector, which has been revealed by comments on a Government blog…
Australian Government chief technology officer and procurement co-ordinator, John Sheridan, this week revealed the results of his analysis of AusTender data to see whether there was any substance to the comments he was hearing from ICT vendors who reported that they had successfully responded to tenders, made it onto Government panels, but then failed to be awarded contracts.
While Sheridan said that there were no clear trends in the data to substantiate that claim, he did provide an interesting glimpse into the Government’s ICT appetite.
At the beginning of July there were 156 active ICT panels which engaged 1360 suppliers with the average number of contracts per panel being 78. However only 57 percent of the suppliers had secured contracts, which explains how the average number of contracts awarded per supplier could be nine, though the median was only one, suggesting a small cohort of suppliers are winning most of the work.
More than 12,000 contracts were awarded with an average total contract value per panel of $37 million.
Despite the lack of any clear trends, Sheridan invited blog readers to share their insights and experience and quickly heard from one small business which had failed to secure any Government contracts despite being appointed to a panel.
According to “Don” the business was appointed to a DHS panel in 2012, and then piggybacked onto a number of smaller agency panels, but had received no work at all as a result. Don also lamented the unprofessional nature of communications from Government procurement officers who had regularly failed to respond to the organisation.
“Now we admit we have not actively chased work with the Australian Government. We have been too busy with other clients who we found it easier to engage with. At the same time, the lack of engagement and communication from agencies about opportunities means we simply feel it is a waste of our sales effort and unlikely to provide a return.
“As a result of this, we are very much against any notion that a firm should have to pay a registration fee to be on a panel. There is too high a risk that no work will ensue.”
A further response from “Peter” noted an apparent skew that favoured large companies able to deliver a full range of services rather than to pick and choose solutions from individual, often smaller suppliers.
