Digital Marketplace delivers in a flash for council

By Dylan Bushell-Embling
Wednesday, 01 February, 2017

The experience of an early adopter of the Digital Transformation Agency’s Digital Marketplace, the City of Casey in Victoria, demonstrates the speed and ease of use of the digital procurement portal.

The city of Casey team came across the Digital Marketplace by chance in its first week of launch and was one of the first users of the system eight days after the beta release, according to the council’s manager of digital Chris O’Connor.

The team used the marketplace to find a specialist developer experienced in Gravity forms for a project that was too complex for the in-house team. O’Connor was very satisfied with the selected applicant.

“We’re a fairly new team and we’ve got a fairly junior developer,” O'Connor said, “so to bring in that expertise at the push of a button was just fantastic, to be able to help us lift the quality of our product.”

O’Connor said it took just 20 to 25 minutes to write the first brief in the Digital Marketplace. Even in its beta stage, he found the site well designed, with an easy-to-use menu and search function.

“I felt like it was designed for people working in the digital space... The simplicity of the language was a real strong point for my experience of the Marketplace — not having the RFQs the ROIs and the tenders,” he said.

“I’m just someone who needs a solution to my problem, and anyone who can help me connect with people who provide that solution I’m really happy with, and if it’s in plain English, all the better.”

Currently there are 304 registered government buyers from 92 different agencies using the Digital Marketplace to procure digital expertise. Buyers include the ATO, the ABC and the Department of Defence, Science and Technology.