Governments are by far the largest buyers of information and communications technology in Australia. The federal government alone spends about $8 billion to $9 billion on ICT products and services annually. Combined with state and local jurisdictions, the public sector is a massive opportunity for technology vendors and service companies.
But just how competitive the government market for technology products and services in Australia is difficult to tell. At the federal level, there is a trend toward the use of restricted tenders and increasingly opaque procurement practices.
Technology procurement reforms, including the introduction of a Digital Marketplace, initiated as part of the National Innovation and Science Agenda in 2015 to increase the ability of smaller tech companies to win government business have been stymied.
Certainly, there is no public data to suggest that smaller local vendors have greater access to government contracts than prior to those initiatives.
InnovationAus is testing the temperature of technology suppliers and potential suppliers to the government sector. We want your feedback.
This five-minute survey gives sellers a chance to express a view on how the procurement machinery in government is working.
The survey is being conducted independently by InnovationAus. It is not being performed in conjunction with any government agency, nor has it been sponsored by any private sector technology vendor, whether large or small.
We have asked for a name and email address as part of the survey. This information will not be shared with anyone. The information is collected only to provide a small, if imperfect layer of verifiability for the survey. Participants will be sent a full report on the results prior in advance of their publication. It serves no other purpose.
The data produced by the survey – the results – will be published in anonymised form on this site in December. The results will be publicly available to anyone who wants to read them.
Data collection for this survey will close on November 30.
Most questions are in multiple choice form, but there is plenty of room on each question to leave a comment, or further explanation. Please use the ‘Please Explain’ dialogue boxes to elaborate on your experience. We will include selected comments in the full report.
We have previously run surveys on government procurement. Our previous efforts – most notably in 2017 – were immensely illuminating, as much for the tenor of the commentary as for the raw data.
The survey is intended as a positive contribution from InnovationAus to the ongoing discussions about government use of technology.
We hope you will join in. You can access the Selling to Government Survey here.
Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.