Government to Call for A Record $2.2 Billion IT Tenders This Year

The local infocomm sector is getting a huge boost this year with the Singapore government set to call for tenders worth a total $2.2 billion in financial year 2005 (April 2005 to March 2006). This is the largest ever amount expected to be spent in a year, with the bulk of the amount going to a $1.5 billion tender to develop a standardised desktop and network operating environment.

Speaking at the Industry Briefing on Business Opportunities for IT in the Public Sector held on 28 April 2005 at the Suntec Convention Centre, Mr Chan Yeng Kit, CEO of IDA, said: "A Standard ICT Operating Environment (SOE) will greatly enhance the operating efficiency in government. It will reduce the time needed to deploy new ICT services in government, improve our ability to respond to ICT security threats, and most importantly, make it easier to operate and maintain our desktops and networks." Mr Chan added that the SOE will be implemented in phases from 2005 to 2009 and that an open tender for the management and operation of the SOE be called this year.

Ms Wu Choy Peng, deputy chief executive of IDA and Government Chief Information Officer said that the SOE is expected to bring about at least 30% savings in ICT costs when fully deployed. She added that the SOE will cover desktop hardware and applications as well as network services but not servers, where individual applications often need to run on specific hardware.

Currently, ICT services and products are purchased on a "piecemeal basis" as and when required by the various government agencies. This has resulted in diverse hardware and software products. The SOE, Ms Wu added, is thus targeted at standardising and consolidating the ICT requirements across the government agencies to achieve greater economies of scale. With SOE, it also heralds a move by the government away from the piecemeal procurement method to a utility based model where ICT services are on a "per user per month basis," she added.

The remainder of the $700,000 worth of tenders will include tenders for a cyber watch centre, a centrally administered desktop firewall, a central secure remote access gateway for the government and many more.