DTA transforms government ICT procurement

Australia’s Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) has partnered with digital workflow company ServiceNow to transform government ICT procurement, making it fast, easy to use and with built-in compliance controls.

The DTA’s objective is making government services accessible, transparent, adaptable and user-centric. To support this aim, the DTA built its award-winning BuyICT platform using the ServiceNow platform. This has increased participation from small to medium enterprises (SMEs), boosted contract value by 82% and increased the speed that DTA customer support teams respond to users.

“The government procurement space is complex. ServiceNow helped us build a platform that is simple, fair and fast to manage buying and selling, and also comply with rules and legislation,” said Anthony Conway, Product Manager and Director of Sourcing Platforms, DTA.

“We have facilitated 5000 transactions in the last financial year alone. We have seen an 82% increase in contract value, from AU$700 million to almost AU$3.9 billion in 2021. Before ServiceNow, these volumes would have been quite challenging to manage.”

As government embraces digital transformation, the DTA needed to shake up the way that procurement was being done. The BuyICT platform is now used by over 100 government agencies and 3500 sellers, with centralised procurement pathways consolidating government spending and minimising inefficiencies.

In just one year, the DTA facilitated 2100 Hardware Marketplace, 801 Software Marketplace, 132 Telecommunications Marketplace and 98 Cloud Marketplace requests for quotes — or 12.5 quote requests per day on average — using ServiceNow.

“Improving public sector productivity means the government can do more with less. We are delighted that the ServiceNow platform helped increase the DTA’s efficiency through the introduction of seamless and automated digital processes,” said Eric Swift, Vice President and Managing Director ANZ of ServiceNow.

Historically, government digital procurement has been a manual process, with requests for quotes published via email. Quotes were then submitted via email or, in some cases, physically to locked tender boxes. Contracts often required handwritten signatures and physical records had to be stored on site for seven years. These manual processes and a cumbersome, time-consuming email administration process meant response times were slow. Necessary data to enable informed decisions was often lacking and there was a constant risk that sellers’ questions or buyers’ responses could be missed.

Now, using ServiceNow Customer Service Management and custom workflows, buyers and sellers can manage requests and quotes directly through BuyICT. Sellers can also update their profiles through the portal to ensure that buyers always have accurate information about their company.

“With the automated workflows, government buyers, including new hires who are less experienced in procurement, can literally just follow the automated process and fulfil compliance and accountability guidelines,” Conway said.

“Sellers can now submit quotes in minutes without guidance or instruction. We are seeing the same phenomenon with buyers, who are now receiving responses to complex quote requests within a day or two. That could have taken weeks in the past.”

A new contract process built into the platform enables users to fine-tune details such as individual terms and conditions before exporting contracts as pdf files for signature, streamlining several previously manual steps. Newly developed dashboards enable both sellers and buyers to manage requests, quotes and contracts, while catalogues allow buyers to select the right sellers for their needs.

In the past, customer support emails could potentially take up to two weeks to be resolved. With ServiceNow Customer Service Management, the customer service desk resolves level-one support issues in an average of just 40 minutes.

“Since the deployment of ServiceNow Customer Service Management, our customer service desk resolved 10,000 cases raised in 1.5 years, with 95% dealt with at level one support and only 5% escalated to level two,” Conway said.

BuyICT has also enabled DTA to engage more sellers through platform efficiencies and automation. This has meant more SMEs have applied to sell through DTA marketplaces.

Image credit: iStock.com/Supatman