1.17 The Australian digital sector continues to attract interest, including recent reports by the Australian Government on the ‘influence of international digital platforms’ and ‘supporting the development of sovereign capability in the Australian technology sector’. Further, Australian companies are keenly interested in the success of the technology sector within Australia. (For example, Technology1’s report on ‘Improving evaluation of economic impact in ICT procurement’.)
Overview of the current SSAs
1.18 The SSAs are pre-negotiated, whole of Australian Government technology agreements with specified sellers, established to leverage the government's collective buying power and ensure consistency with legal terms and conditions.
1.19 The Australian Government has SSAs with six sellers: AWS, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Rimini Street and SAP. At a high level, the graphic below summarises the structure of SSAs:
Description of Figure 2
The left side of the figure shows a timeline of key changes in the technology environment since the 1980s and the right side of the figure shows key government technology initiatives since the 1990s.
The key changes in the technology environment, on the left-hand side of the timeline, are grouped into five areas:
- Personalisation of computing: IBM release the first personal computer (1981); ARPNET gives birth to the internet (1983); Microsoft releases Windows (1985) CERN release the first websites (1989 to 1993)
- The rise of Big Data in the 1990s and 2000s
- The rise of the cloud: Amazon release Simple Storage Service and Elastic Computer Cloud (2006); Google release its first cloud (2008)
- The smart revolution in the late 2000s: Apple release iPhone (June 2007); Apple release iPad (Jan 2010); Release of smart TV’s (2007 to 2011)
- Release of Large Language Models in the early 2020s: OpenAI release ChatGPT (Nov 2022); Microsoft release Copilot (Sep 2023).
The key technology government initiatives, on the right-side side of the timeline, are listed as follows:
- 1990s: General IT Conditions put in place for the first time
- Apr 2004: Establishment of the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO)
- Apr 2008: Review of the Australian Government’s Use of Information and Communication Technology (the Gershon Report)
- Jul 2009: Australian government decision to establish first Whole of Australian Government (WoAG) technology contract with Microsoft, which subsequently became an SSA
- Sep 2013: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Review by the Department of Finance
- Nov 2013: Audit of Australian Government ICT
- Jan 2015: Establishment of the Digital Transformation Office (DTO) within the Department of Communications
- Oct 2016: Digital Transformation Agency established, replacing the DTO
- Sep 2017: First SAP SSA established
- Jun 2018: First IBM SSA established
- May 2019: First AWS SSA established
- 2020: First Oracle and Rimini Street SSAs established.
Identify the right performance indicators
Select meaningful metrics: Collect metrics that accurately capture your service’s ability to deliver the outcomes your users expect. These might include adherence to design standards and privacy legislation, site/app performance, security benchmarks or tasks completed by users.
Off
Description of Figure 1
The image provides an example of how a chapter overview page is set out.
Contains a chapter number, followed by chapter title and description.
The chapter overview content is a one-page summary of the content contained within that section of the report.
1.6 The scope of the review is outlined in Appendix L: Scope.
1.7 Throughout the report, key actions are identified in bold and as ‘should’ statements. A consolidated list of these can be found within Chapter 7 Recommendations and actions within this report.
1.38 This spend profile was also considered against other digital marketplaces and panels which the DTA have established.
- For figure 6, “other digital marketplaces” is a combination of: Digital Marketplace Panel 1.0 (SON3413842), Cloud Services Panel (SON2914302), Cloud Marketplace (SON3668352), Telecommunications Marketplace Panel (SON3713272), Telecommunications Services Panel (SON3386916), Hardware Marketplace Panel (SON3541738), Major Office Machines Panel (SON3390763), The Mobile Panel (SON2589631), Data Centre Panel 3 (SON3945937), Data Centre Facilities Supplies Panel (Panel 2) (SON2402841), Software and ERP Marketplace Panel (SON3490955).
- For figure 7, “other panels” is a combination of: Cloud Services Panel (SON2914302), Telecommunications Services Panel (SON3386916), Major Office Machines Panel (SON3390763), The Mobile Panel (SON2589631) and the Data Centre Panel 3 (SON3945937).
The below two figures compare the SSAs with these other arrangements:
Description of Figure 5
The figure shows the Australian Government buy profiles from SSA sellers for 2019 to 2024 as per Contract Notices. The value of the ‘SSA standing order number’ exceeds the value of ‘Other contract notices’ for 5 out of the 6 sellers. The exception is IBM, where the value of ‘Other contract notices’ exceeds the value of the ‘SSA standing order number’.
The combined value of the ‘SSA standing order number’ and ‘Other contract notices’ for each seller is as follows: AWS is between $0.5 to $1 billion; IBM is between $3.5 to $4 billion; Microsoft is between $3 to $3.5 billion; Oracle is between $0.5 to $1 billion; Rimini St is less than $0.5 billion; and SAP is between $0.5 and $1 billion.
Off
Description of Figure 6
The figure shows the Australian Government buy profiles from SSA sellers for 2019 to 2024 as per Contract Notices. Their collective spend profile is lower than other established digital marketplaces and panels. The combined value of the ‘SSA standing order number’ and ‘Other contracts’ for the SSA sellers is between $5 to $10 billion. This is less than the combined value of ‘Other contracts’ for ‘Other digital marketplaces’, which is between $25 to $30 billion.
Off