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The Australian government is being urged to keep going with the reformation of its ICT procurement policy to ensure it falls in line with international practice when it comes to supporting local industry, according to a report from TechnologyOne.
The report, Improving evaluation of economic impact in ICT procurement, shows that reforms announced by the federal government in the past two years, such as supporting local research and development, intellectual property creation, tax payments and skilled job creation, were a step in the right direction.
Australian technology organisations, including the Australian Computer Society, Macquarie Technology Group, Agile Digital and DroneShield have welcomed the report for underlining the importance of underlining of procurement as a tool for driving economic outcome.
They want the government to ensure the Australian community, economy, and taxpayers benefit more from the massive public spending on government procurement.
Agile Digital executive director David Elliott said as the cost-of-living crisis continues there needed to be transparency with large, often unsuccessful Commonwealth ICT projects.
“As a country, we need to rethink awarding massive ICT contracts to multinational companies and consider turning to our local industry instead,” he said. “This report urges policymakers to learn from our trading partners — and to consider the benefits Australia could gain if our government were more strategic, focused and sovereign in its ICT procurements.”
With Australia’s major trading partners having been far more aggressive in using procurement to directly support their own technology industries than Australia has been, claimed the report.
Trading nations, “including the US, Canada and the UK, recognise their ICT industries as fundamental pillars of national self-reliance and economic growth and use procurement to boost them”, the report stated.
“This has left Australian high-tech businesses in a loss-loss situation and at serious risk of becoming reliant on overseas supply lines, a situation the [COVID-19] pandemic has already exposed as high risk to the economic and social stability of the community.”
In line with the report’s recommendation, the ICT industry is calling for a clear framework for measuring and evaluating procurements based on a number of factors including, a weighted scorecard approach, especially for smaller contracts, a calculator to transparently value benefits of medium deals and using standard economic multipliers.
The report also recommends an economic impact assessment for ICT procurement deals over $10 million, making explicit the expected outcomes as is already commonly done in other industries, such as mining and infrastructure.
Australian Computer Society CEO Josh Griggs said ICT continues to be the defining enabler of Australia’s economic growth.
“Yet our highly sophisticated and world class technology sector is not adequately prioritised by government procurement processes,” he said. “It’s time to give Aussies businesses a fair go so we can all share in the benefits of a truly advanced, high tech 21st century economy.”
The government’s roader efforts to promote internal capabilities, manage procurement efficiently and phase out contractors and consultants could prove to beneficial for local small- to medium-sized enterprise-focused managed service providers, as reported by ARN.
The Digital Transformation Agency was also looking to make it easier for local SMEs to participate in government ICT projects.
“Our procurement practices support SMEs by adopting whole-of-government solutions to simplify interactions, which includes using the standardised Commonwealth Contracting Suite for low-risk procurements valued under $200,000,” stated the agency.