ATO sets up IT services panel with 80 suppliers

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has consolidated three IT services panels into a single list of 80 providers lined up to provide services to Treasury agencies.

The new IT professional services panel will cover the 17 agencies operating under the Treasury portfolio, including the ATO, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the ACCC, ITNews reported.

For the vendors listed on the panel, the arrangement is worth a combined $91.5 million annually and has an initial two-year term.

Approved providers include IBM, HP, Fujitsu and KPMG. Other government agencies will be allowed to join the panel in future.

The establishment of the new panel is in line with the advice given in the 2008 Gershon review into the Australian Government's procurement and use of IT.

As part of the review, Peter Gershon recommended the government consider optimising the ICT panel arrangements in place at various departments, by combining them into whole-of-government or portfolio-based panels to improve buying power and economies of scale.

The ATO has been working to revamp its IT services panel arrangements since December last year.

Other vendors included in the panel include Hitachi Data Systems Australia, Teradata Australia, Ernst & Young, Lockheed Martin and Cogent Business Solutions.

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