On 30 August, 2012, I announced that a review was undertaken to understand the effectiveness and patronage of the ICT Management Consultants Multi Use List (ICT MCL) and the ICT Multi Use List (ICT MUL).
The review is now complete and Finance would like to thank all agencies and suppliers for their time and effort in participating in this review process.
As part of the review a simple survey was sent to Financial Management and Accountability (FMA) Act and Commonwealth Authorities and Companies (CAC) Act agencies as well as 661 suppliers to the ICT MUL and 214 ICT MCL suppliers. From this, 47 FMA Act and 2 CAC Act agencies returned responses along with 218 suppliers.
The findings of the review are summarised as follows:
The review found that agencies’ use of the two MULs is low, and suppliers consider the MULs provide little value.
Of the agencies that responded, 57% indicated that they did not use the MULs or that they did not know if they used the MULs. Of the agencies who responded that they had used the MULs, 38% indicated they hadn’t sourced services as a result and a further 38% indicated they only sourced services once a year or less.
Only 37% of industry respondents indicated that they had been invited to quote while being a supplier to the MULs and, of those, less than half indicated that they had actually received business as a result.
The establishment of a number of agency-owned IT Panels along with the proliferation of a number of mandatory-to-use coordinated procurements in the ICT sphere have reduced the need for the MULs. These panels provide agencies access to the goods and services available on the MULs, without having to approach the market. This for the most part has rendered the MULs redundant.
Consequently, Finance has elected to decommission both MULs as of Monday 5 November 2012. After this time agencies will no longer be able to utilise the list of suppliers to engage in a pre-qualified tender process.
Should you require information about the MULs in the future, these lists will be archived and information can be accessed by request to ICTProcurement@finance.gov.au.