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The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) is preparing to create a panel of up to six suppliers to develop and support solutions from US workflow automation technology company Pegasystems.
MPI wants to partner with organisations that can support all or part of the software development lifecycle as well as provide people or roles to augment the its own resources.
The ministry said it expected to introduce a Pega environment in the coming months and expected it to be ready for development work from February 2025.
The proposed panel will consist of preferred providers for all work where no internal MPI resources are available to achieve the delivery of approved requirements, a tender released this week said.
The deadline for proposals is 2 December and contracts are expected to be awarded next April.
MPI’s digital strategy introduced changes to improve the agency’s ability to support an efficient and connected primary sector digitally.
It also recognised the changes would impact the way the ministry worked, its approach to technology investment and its culture and mindset arould solving business problems.
One of the changes is the adoption of what the ministry called a “platform-based approach”.
“This is designed to encourage reuse and simplification of our technology landscape,” the tender said.
“These platforms will take care of the foundation and allow the business to focus on adding their specific services on the top.”
A list of business services had been identified for digitisation and work was under way to refine and validate business requirements.
Digitisation of services could also boost service delivery in the current, more constrained public service environment.
In May, MPI joined a procession of agencies in slashing staff numbers, confirming it would cut 391 roles, or around 10 per cent of its workforce.
“We have been able to reduce the impact on affected staff through holding vacancies, offering early redundancy, and retaining additional roles in some business units,” director-general Ray Smith said.
The losses did not include any reductions to frontline services or statutory roles, he said.
Other key MPI platforms include Salesforce and, due to go live soon, a MyMPI portal for customer self-service as well as an Azure integration services.
“Our digital platform strategy presents a cloud-platform future, with Pega central to this picture,” the tender said.
Engagements through the panel of less than $100,000 may be allocated directly to a panel supplier while engagements over that amount would be awarded through a competitive process involving some or all panellists.
Earlier this month, Pegasystems enhanced its artificial intelligence tools to accelerate the development of generative AI.