Project Overview
AusTender (www.tenders.gov.au) is a central repository of all Australian Government Tenders (ATM) and Contract Notices (CN), and includes details of agency Procurement Plans, Request for Quotes (RFx), and supplier Panels. Gruden works with the Department of Finance to maintain AusTender, and to envisage, plan and implement significant system changes/refinement to suit ongoing and changing business needs of the department; and to support the ongoing needs of Government Agencies, and user’s of the system, particularly Suppliers.
Introduction
AusTender (www.tenders.gov.au) is a central repository of all Australian Government Tenders (ATM) and Contract Notices (CN), and includes details of agency Procurement Plans, Request for Quotes (RFx), and supplier Panels. All Australian Government agencies and entities use (and are obliged to use) the administrative component of the AusTender procurement system to publish details of ATMs and CNs. All Australian and other suppliers can respond to published ATMs and RFx.
The site is available to the Australian and general public. Citadel Edge works with the Australian Government Department of Finance to maintain the AusTender application and supporting AWS infrastructure day to day, make minor data and functional changes, ensure system security, and maintain the currency of tools and processes that underpin AusTender.
Citadel Edge also works with the Department of Finance to envisage, plan and implement significant system changes/refinement to suit ongoing and changing business needs of the department; and to support the ongoing needs of Government Agencies, and user’s of the system, particularly Suppliers.
Customer challenges and needs
Citadel Edge has been involved in the development of AusTender since its first iteration in 2013. The original AusTender was a well-designed and extremely well implemented single purpose system, and over time has established itself as a solid and reliable performer, and a critical tool in the Case study.
Australian Government Procurement landscape. However, the synthesis from its monolithic foundations to contemporary distributed services, to cloud computing, and most importantly to better cover a range of Procurement functions, and better support supplier’s of services has been the challenge of recent years.
Application, software engineering and development services AusTender reports and facilitates only a portion of the procurement lifecycle function. It has also been recognized that some AusTender functionality is ill-suited to current needs of smaller agencies, and the support it provides to suppliers. AusTender also co-exists in an environment that involves other Governments systems, like GrantConnect. The client has identified some challenges and needs that will involve significant application, engineering, and development work. The challenges include Augmenting AusTender’s data centric screens with information that better informs the users; and for that information to directly managed by the client (and not the coder).
- Enabling a user to better choose an appropriate Panel to procure from.
- Rationalise access to systems.
- Better support the supplier.
Alongside Citadel Edge’s daily support and operations activity for AusTender, and implementation of smaller solution changes, Citadel Edge provides significant engineering services. For example, in addressing the challenges listed above, Citadel Edge has Conceived, designed, and implemented an Umbraco content management solution/ framework that will allow the client to control AusTender page make-up and informational content. The solution has involved significant technical work to use micro-services/APIs; thus allowing existing AusTender to coexist with Umbraco; and facilitate movement of AusTender function to the new framework when required.
Worked with the client to develop a first use of the Umbraco framework – AusTender currently shows opening pages that are now user-centric in the help and education they provide. Moving forward, the work will soon provide new content rich, educational pages to support a Government Agency user in selecting a Panel. The Umbraco framework can be used by AusTender’s sister application, GrantConnect. To facilitate ease of use, Citadel Edge has implemented a single point of access to AusTender and GrantConnect (and Umbraco), revamping the custom login functions originally written for AusTender, and now uses AWS Cognito. The above are examples of significant multi-team, multi-skill services provided by Citadel Edge for advanced application engineering.
Recent challenges include
- Augmenting AusTender’s data centric screens with information that better informs the users; and for that information to directly managed by the client (and not the coder).
- Enabling a user to better choose an appropriate Panel to procure from.
- Rationalise access to systems.
- Better support the supplier.
Citadel Edge has conceived, designed, and implemented an Umbraco content management solution/ framework that will allow the client to control AusTender page make-up and informational content. The solution has involved significant technical work to use micro-services/APIs; thus allowing existing AusTender to coexist with Umbraco; and facilitate movement of AusTender function to the new framework when required.
Worked with the client to develop a first use of the Umbraco framework – AusTender currently shows opening pages that are now user-centric in the help and education they provide. Moving forward, the work will soon provide new content rich, educational pages to support a Government Agency user in selecting a Panel.
The Umbraco framework can be used by AusTender’s sister application, GrantConnect. To facilitate ease of use, Citadel Edge has implemented a single point of access to AusTender and GrantConnect (and Umbraco), revamping the custom login functions originally written for AusTender, and now uses AWS Cognito.
