The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) has recently launched a Reports and insights page that provides transparency on government expenses.
The page, which is updated monthly, allows anyone to view data relating to the DTA’s cloud, digital services, hardware, software and telecommunications marketplaces.
This will help the DTA deliver greater insights to the public on where the government is spending money and what it’s spending it on.
“We are seeing some encouraging trends in this data,” General Manager for Digital Investment Advice and Sourcing Wayne Poels said.
“Since 2019, the number of opportunities going through the marketplaces has more than doubled to almost 8,000 opportunities in 2022. The number of sellers has tripled over the same period. I think that speaks to the great success of BuyICT.gov.au in making it easier to buy and sell digital products and services across government.”
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Poels states that out of the $17.47 billion spent through the marketplaces, over 44% of the spend has gone to small-to-medium enterprises and more than 2% to Indigenous-owned businesses.
While these exceeded current government procurement targets, Poels says that there is still work to do to improve competitive procurement practices.
“We can clearly see that government needs to take steps to improve competition, with 35% of opportunities still going out to a single seller,” Poels said.
“While the DTA cannot direct agencies on their procurement decisions, we will use this data in our engagements with buyers to encourage more competitive practices when approaching the market.”
The launch of the Reports and insights page is part of the DTA’s commitment to improve the transparency of the use of procurement panels and encourage more competitive procurement practices.
“For DTA, this is more than just a simple data transparency exercise. Agencies can now see the trends, and potential shortfalls, in their procurement practices,” Poels said.
“We will work with them on this to identify if there are capability gaps that we can address, or if we need to advocate for policy change more broadly.”
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The Reports and insights page further reinforces the DTA’s long-standing commitment to transparency in whole-of-government ICT procurement, which led to the introduction of this functionality onto the beta Digital Marketplace platform in 2018.
“This new page completes the migration of the Digital Marketplace to BuyICT.gov.au,” Poels said.
“We have been working steadily to migrate and standardise the records and transparency provided in the old Digital Marketplace platform so that this functionality could be rolled out and continue across our marketplaces and whole-of-government arrangements.”
The DTA will continue to iterate and enhance the functionality of the Reports and insights page over time.