The government is planning to run a series of competitions to aggregate further the purchasing of different categories of ICT for public bodies.
The Crown Commercial Service has launched a survey seeking the views of public sector customers, aimed at establishing common requirements for technology goods and services.
It comes shortly after the government released two frameworks aimed at aggregating email services and software services.
A statement from CCS said: “we would like to invite you to complete a short survey to help us establish common requirements for technology goods and service which can be aggregated. “Your feedback will be used to help us build a programme of further competitions over the next 36 months to meet your needs.”
The survey suggests a number of areas in which product and service purchases could be aggregates, including:
- Mobiles
- Mobile devices eg iPhones, Blackberries, dongles (equipment purchase only)
- Technology products – PC, tablets, monitors, printers – aligned to the lots of the hardware agreements
- Fixed lines / outbound minutes tariff
- Inbound services numbers and minutes
- Data connectivity (including broadband / WAN / point to point circuits)
- Unified communications
- Managed voice & data services
- LAN maintenance
- Conferencing services (audio / video or web)
- Contact centre service
- Software as service
- Software licences
- Traffic management – mapped to agreement lot structure
But it also asked for further suggestions from respondents.
The CCS also said that it would be running an e-auction in November or December for technology hardware products, following the launch of the Technology Products framework.
It added that a further similar competition could be run in the next year.
A competition for aggregated mobile and data services is also being developed, after a previous version achieved savings of £5.1m, it said.
And following the launch of the managed email agreement, CCS said it would also run another competition for these services.
