Digital Marketplace cracks the $1bn mark

The Digital Transformation Agency's Digital Marketplace procurement portal has reached the milestone of having more than $1 billion worth of contracts awarded since its launch in August 2016.

As of Tuesday, 4 February, a total of $1.037 billion in contracts has been awarded through the portal through 3058 tender opportunities. There were 227 opportunities contracted in January alone.

The Digital Marketplace enables registered buyers to approach the market looking to temporarily hire a digital specialist or access training to allow them build their own digital capability.

Since last year, the portal has been expanded to allow buyers to seek proposals and quotes for a specific digital project, or to approach sellers seeking expressions of interest for participating in proof-of-concept projects.

Since GovTech Review's last review of the Digital Marketplace in July, the number of registered buyers has increased from 287 to 320.

Just under half (47%) of these are Commonwealth government entities, with the remainder mostly split nearly equally between state/territory and local government entities.

The number of registered sellers has meanwhile grown by 47% to 2074, with 72 new sellers registered in January alone.

The increasingly crowded field is resulting in a growing number of responses per opportunity, with some listed opportunities receiving 25 or more.

Among the opportunities posted to the portal since its launch, 67% were for digital specialists. Meanwhile, 39% of all opportunities were open to all comers, with the remainder offered to selected sellers.

The most popular categories remain software engineering and development (653), agile delivery and governance (491), user research and design (190), support and operations (155) and cybersecurity (125).

The categories with the highest number of sellers include software engineering (975), agile development (916), strategy and policy (646), change and transformation (621) and user research and design (585).

Around 65% of the dollar value of contracts awarded through the marketplace to date has gone towards SMEs with fewer than 200 employees. But the top sellers awarded contracts this financial year are larger companies — Hays Specialist Recruitment and Talent International.

SMEs nevertheless make up five of the top 10 sellers for the financial year, with HiTech Group in third, Compas in fourth, Rubik3 in sixth, AUREC Group in seventh and Finite IT Recruitment in ninth.

Rounding out the list are Modis Staffing (fifth), Peoplebank Australia (eighth) and Data#3 (tenth).

The top buyers for the month of January in terms of opportunities posted include the Department of Human Services (34), the Department of Home Affairs (16), the Department of Health (13), the Attorney-General's Department (10), the Department of Defence (9) and the DTA itself (9).

The Digital Marketplace has been such a success that the Digital Transformation Agency has replicated the model with the Hardware Marketplace and is planning to develop a Cloud Marketplace shortly.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/William W. Potter