99 suppliers join DTA's govt-wide software panel

The government's co-ordinated procurement arrangement for software licensing and services has climbed 100-fold after the Digital Transformation Agency added 99 new suppliers.

The government-wide buying scheme was established in March 2018 to replace the long-standing Data#3 Microsoft licensing arrangement, which had been in place since 2008.

The panel began with a single Microsoft licensing category that Data#3 won back from the government after a tender process opened the lucrative deal up to one or more suppliers.

But the DTA had always intended to extend the panel to other software products as required through additional approaches to market.

It went looking for Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software and services providers to “come on board” last August.

On Tuesday the DTA revealed another 99 suppliers had joined the panel’s sole supplier under the newly launched COTS software category.

Big names to join the revised panel include Civica, Citadel Group, Dell, Dialog, Dimension Data, EMC, Ethan Group, Forward IT, Fujitsu, IBM, NEC Australia, NetApp, and Veritec, to name a few.

The list is also made up of a number of firms offering security software, including Aegis9, Airlock Digital, Aquion, Dynatrace, Enosys and SecureSoft.

The full list can be found here.

The DTA said the new category would provide “a platform for government to buy a broad offering of COTS software and associated services”.

It has not indicated if any further categories will be added in the future, but has designed the panel to be flexible so that more categories can be added as other panels are phased out.

“The panel is built to be flexible, so as technology evolves new software and services can be added through future refreshes of the panel,” the DTA said.

The panel is now understood to be the third biggest across government after the DTA’s digital marketplace, the Department of Infrastructure, Regional Development and Cities’ IT services panel and the Department of Defence’s ICT provider arrangement.