Industry views sought on Government's procurement arrangements for IT professional services
The Digital Policy Office (DPO) released today (September 23) a consultation paper on the future arrangements for the Standing Offer Agreement for Quality Professional Services (SOA-QPS). Practitioners of the information technology (IT) industry are welcome to offer their views.
The SOA-QPS5 in use will expire in early 2026. The DPO today launched the consultation on improvements to the current arrangements to, among others, strengthen the regulation and monitoring procedures of contractors' performance by taking into account contractors' performance in contracts awarded under the previous round of SOA-QPS and outside the SOA-QPS scheme.
Other proposals put forward by the DPO include introducing a new category for IT systems that adopt diverse secure and reliable technologies, raising the upper limit of the contract value for individual projects, and raising the demarcation limit of contract value for minor and major groups.
Since its initial launch in 2005, the SOA-QPS scheme has long been an effective means of addressing the Government's large demand for IT professional services. The scheme also provides promising business prospects for the IT industry and helps bring innovative and creative IT services to government departments.
The SOA-QPS scheme involves a two-stage bidding process. In the first stage, the Government enters into Standing Offer Agreements (SOAs) with a certain number of suppliers (SOA Contractors) selected through open tendering. During the second stage within the validity period of the SOAs, government bureaux and departments (B/Ds) invite technical and price proposals for individual IT projects from the SOA Contractors. B/Ds will award a service contract to the contractor whose proposal meets the technical requirements and attains the highest combined score according to the marking scheme. As of August 31, 2024, 1 696 services contracts were awarded under the current SOA-QPS5, with an accumulated contract value about HK$2,685 million.
The consultation paper can be downloaded from the DPO website (www.digitalpolicy.gov.hk/en/news/consultations/). Interested parties may refer to the consultation paper for details and forward their comments and suggestions by email (qps_consultation@digitalpolicy.gov.hk) on or before October 22, 2024. An online briefing session will be held by the DPO on October 8, 2024, with details available on the above website.
