This presentation was made to the Contracting for Services in the Public Sector Conference in Canberra on 11 Aug 15. http://www.slideshare.net/PASAEvents/contracting-for-services-in-public-sec...

It aims to present an update on work in Australian Government Procurement issues.

The scope of the presentation is shown on this slide.

AusTender has been the system of record for publishing and reporting contract opportunities for Australian Government agencies. It managed $60 billion in 70,000 contracts in 2014-15.

All records back to 1999 are available on line on data.gov.au at http://www.data.gov.au/dataset/historical-australian-government-contract-da...

As well as being a rich source of historical data, businesses can register for alerts on AusTender and subscribe to the RSS feed. Help is available here https://www.tenders.gov.au/?event=public.help.list

Recently we have moved AusTender into the public cloud, saving money and achieving a 1-3 orders of magnitude speed increase. This is likely to allow us to increase the on site download limit from 1000 records to 100,000.

The CCS streamlines procurement processes under $200,000 for government and business. The documents reduce process costs by removing repetition and ambiguity, by simplifying liability, insurance and indemnity requirements and by creating consistency. The CCS forms part of the Government's deregulation initiatives and replaces the Basic Contract Suite.

The CCS includes; the Approach to Market (ATM), the Response to ATM, and the Commonwealth Contract.

The suite and its online building tool can be found here: http://www.finance.gov.au/procurement/commonwealth-contracting-suite/

We are expanding the suite to panel contracting. This week we are publishing the updated Source IT Plus suite for semi-complex ICT contracts, replacing the GITC suite. The SourceIT suite is available here http://www.finance.gov.au/policy-guides-procurement/sourceit-model-contract...

We are increasingly using social media to support our procurement activities. We use the AGICT blog (http://www.finance.gov.au/category/agict/) and the Procurement Coordinator's Blog (http://www.finance.gov.au/category/procurement-coordinator/) to advise and consult on procurement issues.

We've made extensive use of the blog to consult on matters like new whole of government approaches to market, particularly seeking ideas for improvements. Recent examples are travel management and airline travel.

We are also using social media to address incorrect perceptions about procurement through the myth buster series http://www.finance.gov.au/taxonomy/term/1456/

Small businesses fare reasonably well in Australian Government procurement, gaining a 30% market share by volume in 2013-14 and 12% share by value. (http://www.finance.gov.au/procurement/statistics-on-commonwealth-purchasing...)

SMEs have historically fared well overall (55%/34% respectively in 2013-14)

Almost 70% of contracts are below $80,000 (and not subject to Division 2 of the CPRs) - 3% by value. Only 832 were above $5m in 2013-14. Lots of opportunities exist for small business.

We are rewriting our guide with a focus on small business http://www.finance.gov.au/procurement/procurement-policy-and-guidance/selli... and developing this FY a mobile app to assist small business to access AusTender.

Cloud computing is growing in importance across the Australian Government due to the renewed cloud policy (http://www.finance.gov.au/sites/default/files/australian-government-cloud-c...) and the economies it offers.

Details of the cloud services panel can be found here: http://www.finance.gov.au/policy-guides-procurement/cloud-services-panel/

Its development employed wide ranging consultation resulting in rapid take up of the contract in negotiation - 55 providers signed up in 2 weeks.

The panel features refresh abilities without existing panellists having to reapply, an online service catalogue to which providers can add services in their approved categories.

govCMS is an exciting new offering from our Online Services Branch (https://www.govcms.gov.au)

It grew out of a desire to move off expensive proprietary solutions into an open source, public cloud environment.

It has been strongly adopted by agencies, despite not being mandatory.

Questions from the floor