The Government has laid out plans to reform the way central IT contracts are allocated and monitored as part of its Program for government.
IT contracts have long had a reputation for inflated costs and poor performance, but the Government plans to make the system of allocating contracts more transparent and make it simpler for smaller IT firms to bid.
“We will take steps to open up government procurement and reduce costs; and we will publish government ICT contracts online,” the coalition said. “We will create a level playing field for open-source software and will enable large ICT projects to be split into smaller components.”
This, the theory goes, would allow smaller companies to bid for public sector work and reduce the reliance on major multinational contractors.
The government also plans to carry on the work started under the last administration in opening up public databases for use by public and private sector developers.
The new leadership said it would “create a new ‘right to data’ so that government-held datasets can be requested and used by the public, and then published on a regular basis”.
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