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The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) has published a glowering review of its Digital Marketplace initiative from Victoria’s City of Casey.
Following the publication of the City of Casey’s first brief just eight days after the DTA’s Beta release of the Digital Marketplace, the DTA revealed that the City’s Manager for Digital, Chris O’Connor said he was happy to find the experience ‘simple, clear and fast – even in its earliest Beta stage’.
Mr O’Connor said he didn’t want to go through the same procurement process for a developer that the council had been through in the past, so after following the work of the DTA, council wrote a brief that took “about 20 to 25 minutes”.
He jested that when he reached the end of the form, he thought “Is that it? There must be more…”
Mr O’Connor told the DTA he was happy with the developer they found on the Digital Marketplace.
“We’re a fairly new team and we’ve got a fairly junior developer, I’m sure he won’t mind me saying that, so to bring in that expertise at the push of a button was just fantastic, to be able to help us lift the quality of our product,” Mr O’Connor said.
If the Digital Marketplace continues down the path as taken by the City of Casey, it could prove revolutionary for government procurement processes that are often seen as slow, cumbersome and unable to keep up with the growing demands that governments have to complete tasks faster for a more scrutinising public eye.
Mr O’Connor said the benefit of the Digital Marketplace was that it gave access to the vendors in one single spot where “we could just go and see well here’s all the players”.
“The menu and search function was really easy, the filtering was brilliant and I felt like it was designed for people working in the digital space,” Mr O’Connor said.
He praised the simplicity of the language of the Marketplace – “not having the RFQs, the ROIs and the tenders”.
“I’m just someone who needs a solution to my problem, and anyone who can help me connect with people who provide that solution I’m really happy with, and if it’s in plain English, all the better,” he said.
The Digital Marketplace has been created so buyers from all levels of government can access digital expertise quickly and easily.
According to the DTA, there are presently 304 registered government buyers from 92 different agencies, including the Australian Tax Office, the ABC and the Department of Defence, Science and Technology (DST Group).
