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The federal government’s digital marketplace has awarded more than $2.2 billion in contracts in four years, with the value of deals doubling since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
At the beginning of February this year, the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) shared it had awarded $1 billion in contracts since 2016, with Data#3 dominating the technology companies.
The value also represents a quadrupling of deal values since this time last year, whereby $500 million was awarded, with 60 per cent going to small-to-medium-sized enterprise (SMEs).
In its latest update, the DTA claimed more than $1.5 billion – or 68 per cent – of these deals were awarded to SMEs.
This represents five times the value of SME deals scored in the DTA’s 2019 update, whereby the sector accounted for $300 million of the $500 million posted on AusTender.
According to the DTA, there are now more than 2,700 sellers using the marketplace, 90 per cent of which are SMEs.
The Australian government launched the Digital Marketplace platform in August 2016 as a way to help simplify the process for businesses to do work with government agencies, as well as technology procurement on the buyers side. Since then it has posted more than 4,300 opportunities.
The DTA made a converted effort to boost SME participation in 2018 when it introduced a restriction in the size of individual contracts to a maximum of $100 million.
Recruitment agencies and IT consultancies dominated the top ten sellers list back in February with Hays Specialist Recruitment, Talent International and HiTech Group securing the top three spots.
