The NSW government (digital.nsw) has allocated $1.6bn dollars over a three-year period to invest in digital transformation projects through the Digital Restart Fund (DRF)
- The Digital Restart Fund is administered by the Department of Customer Service and funds the planning, development and delivery of digital products in NSW and encourages projects that use modern technology to deliver customer-centric business transformations.
This represents exciting opportunities for local Indigenous ICT companies to showcase our capabilities;
- The ICT and Digital Sovereign Procurement Taskforce announcement by Minister for Customer Service Victor Dominello in June 2020 is a further indicator that smaller Australian ICT providers are getting closer to competing for the larger NSW government ICT services engagements.
Further encouraging news is that the NSW Minister for Small Business, Damien Tudehope, has also indicated that this taskforce will look at ways to up spending on small and medium enterprises, Aboriginal organisations, disability enterprises, and start-ups, “stimulating the local digital economy and extending it through regional NSW”.
“We have the best small businesses in Australia right here in NSW, who deliver amazing products and services and we should always be looking at ways to make sure these businesses are getting more government work.”;
- The 3rd intersection of policy that strengthens this already positive message is the revamped NSW Government Aboriginal Procurement Policy. This policy, updated in January 2021, aims for NSW Government clusters to award 3% of the total number of goods and services contracts to Aboriginal businesses.
Many smaller but growing Indigenous ICT companies will be very excited by the combined effects of these 3 key NSW government initiatives and the potential opportunities that are likely to bubble down from them and the related ERP Modernisation Program that has also been launched within the NSW Department of Customer Service.
