Procurement / By / February 28, 2021 / 2 minutes of reading

NSW Aims To Reserve Procurement Budgets For SMEs

February 28, 2021
Procurement

We’re always pleased to see governments around the world improving their procurement processes, by broadening opportunities for all types of business to sell to them.

This week, the Australian state of New South Wales announced a number of new initiatives as part of its ICT/Digital Sovereign Procurement Taskforce, that began midway through last year. The objective of the task force is to assist SMEs to do business with the State Government, particularly in underrepresented categories like indigenous suppliers and start-ups.

While the final report will be released later this year, a number of initiatives have already been launched to level the playing field, including the introduction of SME spend targets, equating to 30% of total IT procurement in direct addressable spend. In addition, 25% of indirect IT procurement addressable spend valued above AU$3 million must also be awarded to SMEs.

We’re interested to know if the NSW Government plan to release data on contracts (including sub-contracts) openly, so that they and the public can monitor if these targets are being met. We’d also like to see the Government  monitor competition and the value it achieves, to be able to assess if different tender strategies secure better outcomes.

At Federal Government level, a similar SME support programme, the Digital Marketplace was introduced in 2016 and has awarded 69% of government contracts to SME’s since the programme launched.

These SME targetted initiatives will have a deep impact on the Australian economy, considering there are approximately 2.06 million small businesses in Australia employing less than 19 people, accounting for 97% of all Australian businesses by employee size. There are also approximately 51,000 medium-sized businesses, employing 20 to 199 employees, which is 2.4% of all Australian businesses.

Awarding government contracts to SME’s promotes local and regional economies, supports job growth, and provides a good return on investment for public funds. We will share more information on the full report and associated initiatives when it launches later in the year

In the meantime, if you’d like to discuss with us our government procurement data, please

March 21, 2023

AUKUS Defence Procurement Deal

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joined the US President Joe Biden, and the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, in San Diego this...
Read more...
March 14, 2023

Australian Government Responds to COVID-19 Procurement Review

Many governments around the world have faced pressure regarding their procurement of COVID-19 treatments and vaccines, so it is encouraging to see...
Read more...
March 8, 2023

EU Joint Ammunition Procurement

EU ministers will meet today in Stockholm to decide whether to  jointly procure  ammunition to aid Ukraine and replenish domestic stockpiles. EU...
Read more...
March 7, 2023

Denial Of Service By Wall Of Text

Clarkesworld Magazine is a publisher of science fiction short stories. They accept and pay for submissions from anyone. As of last week,...
Read more...
March 1, 2023

Canadian Government Announces Rail Procurement Process

This week, the Canadian Government announced a major step in the procurement process for their High Frequency Rail project: the launch of...
Read more...
February 28, 2023

Deduplication Routines

Deduplication is a deceptively complex problem to handle at scale. There’s a simple, ugly and brutal way to do it, where you...
Read more...
February 23, 2023

Policy Proposal: Analysts In Place

Data is critical to the functioning of government. Policies and services live or die on the quality of data. Successes and failures...
Read more...
February 23, 2023

Hallucination As A Service

I asked Chat-GPT to find me some academic papers that highlight the usefulness of combining two different machine learning techniques. I hoped...
Read more...
February 20, 2023

Future Trends in Government Procurement

Over the years, government procurement has undergone significant changes, with new trends emerging that are reshaping the way governments buy goods and...
Read more...
February 15, 2023

Making Your Own Export Platform?

If you are building your own export platform, sourcing, organising and analysing your data has its challenges. Here are some of the...
Read more...
February 14, 2023

Tackling Modern Slavery in Supply Chains – Guidance

On 26 March 2020, the UK became the first country to publish a Government Modern Slavery Statement, setting out the steps government...
Read more...
February 8, 2023

Securing The Competitive Edge.

Are you an exporter looking for leads for your exporters? Do you want to help your in-country teams build more partnerships within...
Read more...
February 7, 2023

The Benefits of Data Tech 101

Government procurement, the process by which government entities purchase goods, services and works from private businesses, is being revolutionised by the integration...
Read more...
February 1, 2023

EU Awards New Gas Aggregation Contract

In December 2022, EU energy ministers agreed to create a platform for the collective demand aggregation and joint procurement of gas, with...
Read more...
January 25, 2023

Does Procurement Need Blockchain?

Blockchain is fundamentally a database, but rather than a database where one item is allowed to replace another, each change to the...
Read more...

Newsletter

Compelling research, insights and data directly into your inbox.

Recent media stories

Search

Recent articles