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An extraordinary chance to work with Government

Regular readers will know that here in Australia, and around the World, the way in which Government services are delivered is undergoing a revolutionary change. “Digital by default“, user-centred not technology-driven (in the words of Leisa Reichelt, Head of Service Design at the Digital Transformation Office (DTO), “GOV.AU is not a technology project“), Governments are trying to (and in fairness succeeding in) doing things differently.

But there’s an elephant in the room. Procurement, which for those who don’t deal with Governments commercially, is “the act of acquiring, buying goods, services or works from an external source, often via a tendering or bid process”.

And the reason why many really smart, talented individuals with skills and knowledge Governments really need to do things better don’t work with Governments is the complexity and effort associated with procurement.

Luckily, smart people in Government also realise this is a challenge, and the World leader in Government service delivery transformation (which really is a mouthful) the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS) developed a digital marketplace, to make it much less complex and time consuming for

all public sector organisations … to find people and technology for digital projects

including

people to work on digital projects, eg technical architects and web designers

OK, that’s the UK, what about here in Australia? Well, today in addition to releasing an alpha of GOV.AU DTO also announced Australia’s own Digital Marketplace. While it’s not there yet it’s clear where things are headed, and it is, if the UK experience is any indication, a significant improvement, and also a real opportunity for individual professionals, and smaller agencies looking to work with Government here in Australia.

But what about today? Well, there’s a real opportunity right now to potentially work with the DTO at all levels of Government. The DTO has a request for Tender open for locations all over Australia:

to establish a panel of Digital Service Professionals. The DTO has identified nine service categories required to support the work of the DTO:

  • Product Management;
  • Business Analysis;
  • Delivery Management and Agile Coaching;
  • User Research;
  • Service Design and Interaction Design;
  • Technical Architecture, Development, Ethical Hacking, and Web Operations;
  • Performance and Web Analytics;
  • Inclusive Design and Accessibility; and
  • Digital Transformation Advisors.

But it closes April 4th at 2pm Canberra time.

Personally, I’m as baffled by the process of tendering as just about anyone who doesn’t do it regularly, so if you’re thinking “awesome, but this is too complex and I’m too busy…” well, hopefully we might be able to help you a bit.

We happen to know folks who do do this sort of thing regularly, and have roped one of them in to help you do it too. All you need to do is free up a couple of hours on the evening of Thursday March 31, that’s next Wednesday, from 6pm at our Surry Hills office (if you’re not Sydney based, or can’t make it we’ll see what we can do to help). We’ll walk you though the process, and demystify the terms, and what you have to do.

It’s free, so if you are keen, even if you’re not in Sydney or can’t make it, just fill in this form, and we’ll either see you there, or find some way to help demystify this all a bit, and get the best chance to get on this panel.

Honestly, don’t miss the chance.

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Going to #wds18 has given me inspiration to attend more conferences. Meeting tech folks like myself and learning from each other is pretty amazing!

Hinesh Patel Ruby and React Developer