Singapore’s government is due to dramatically increase the number of ICT contracts it awards through bulk tenders to help reduce procurement costs and save time.
Bulk tenders will account for almost 76% of Singapore’s projected $2.3bn public IT spend in FY2023 – nearly 50 percentage points more than in FY2022 when it accounted for 27%, said Singapore’s Government Technology Agency (GovTech) CEO, Kok Ping Soon.
“By aggregating demand for ICT products and services common across the government, bulk tenders reduce costs, time, and effort for public agencies in procuring these services,” said GovTech.
“The value of public agencies’ procurement through bulk tenders has been on an upward trend since 2018.”
The three key bulk tenders to be awarded this year include enterprise software-as-a-service, hosting support services and PCs and printers.
Singapore’s Ministry of Sustainability and Environment has also announced that environmental sustainability criteria will be included in government ICT contracts as of 2024.
The ministry said under the upcoming PC and Printer bulk tender, supplier requirements to comply with environmental and energy standards, and practise packaging and materials reuse would account for 5% of the tender evaluation.
At an industry briefing, Kok was reported to have said that 27 ICT suppliers were qualified to co-develop projects with the government and that this number would increase as the ICT budget rose.
He added that 80% of procurement opportunities would be available to SMEs.
Kok said in a statement: “Our ICT investments in the past five years have laid a firm foundation for the next bound of digital government. The government will maintain a high level of ICT spending in 2023, as we continue to push ahead with our cloud strategy and find more ways to work closely with the industry through co-developed projects and bulk tenders.
“Providing opportunities for SMEs to take on government projects is also important.”
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