Benchmark agreement between Queensland Government and Microsoft ‘ground-breaking’

Queensland’s ‘Toward Q2 through ICT’ strategy took an important step forward this week with the announcement of a landmark enterprise agreement between the Queensland Government and Microsoft.

The ‘whole of government’ agreement signals a deepening of the relationship with Microsoft as the Government looks to enhance service delivery and tap into savings gained from greater efficiencies via a program of ICT modernisation.

Up to 150,000 employees will be covered by the new agreement, which will also underpin the Government’s moves to establish a standardised desktop fleet, e-mail and server platform.

Microsoft negotiated the ‘whole of government’ agreement under the ‘Toward Q2 through ICT’ strategy, establishing it as a best practice approach for future government interactions with ICT suppliers.

Describing the deal as ‘ground-breaking’, the Minister for Public Works and Information and Communications Technology, Mr Robert Schwarten, said that the Queensland Government had negotiated a new arrangement with Microsoft to deliver competitively-priced products and services to government agencies.

“A whole-of-Government arrangement has been entered into that gives all departments access to a range of essential server technologies for deployment across the government,” Mr Schwarten said.

“In addition, the arrangement gives all state and local government entities the opportunity to purchase other Microsoft solutions with various options, depending upon the needs of the agency involved.”

Pip Marlow, Microsoft Australia’s director of public sector, said the new arrangement was fundamentally about helping Queenslanders get access to better services by making them more accessible, efficient and effective.

“Queensland has a dynamic economy with a fast rate of population growth, so finding ways to deliver services to meet these demands is critical,” Ms Marlow said.

“This agreement and the ‘Toward Q2 through ICT’ strategy more broadly shows that the Queensland Government is a forward thinker when it comes to investing in smart ICT infrastructure to achieve the State’s ambitions of delivering better services.”

Mr Schwarten said the arrangement had offerings to enable efficiencies across the sector, as well as flexibility so individual agencies could benefit from various products, upgrades, licence management or other specific service requirements as needed.

“Such an approach will support our ’one government’ vision and bring about benefits for government including simplified purchasing processes, better control of software assets and savings,” Mr Schwarten said.

Ms Marlow also said there would be potential flow-on benefits for Queensland’s ICT businesses.

“Queensland is also home to over 3,000 Microsoft partner businesses working to deliver ICT solutions to a range of customers in the State,” she said.

“This three-year enterprise agreement will provide a lot of certainty and be a confidence booster for those businesses as they work with the Queensland Government to help enhance services.”

Mr Schwarten said a panel of large account resellers was being established following an invited (Microsoft Large Account Resellers) tender process.

“A panel arrangement is the most useful and cost-effective solution for government as it promotes responsive service from the resellers as well as offering variety at competitive prices,” Mr Schwarten said.

“We look forward to working with these companies to help us to deliver more efficient, effective and accessible government services to Queenslanders.”

‘Toward Q2 through ICT’ outlines the Queensland Government’s information and communication technology priorities and targets to help create more accessible, efficient, and effective services for the benefit of all Queenslanders.

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