The Department of Finance and Deregulation will establish a panel of suppliers for the provision of Internet-based network connections as part of its move to establish new whole-of-government arrangements for the procurement of a range of telecommunications and related products and services.
Under the arrangement all agencies governed by the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997 and all bodies governed by the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997 will be obliged to source their connections via the panel.
The Internet Based Network Connections panel will cover virtual connection management services (VCMS), network carriage services (NCS) and major Internet connection services (MICS).
NCS offers base carriage services that provide guaranteed bandwidth, performance and resilience of packetised traffic between defined points across a public carrier network.
VCMS provide agreed throughput, performance and resilience across participating agency endpoints to meet or exceed the defined service levels and other agreed performance standards.
MICS provide access to and from the Internet from the unsecured side of a gateway.
According to Finance documents, end user internet connections, wireless internet connections, owned links, ICON links, and other point-to-point links are not covered by the panel.
In the documents, Finance said its intended approach to procuring IP Telecommunications Services would see it disaggregate virtual connection management services from network carriage services.
“It is expected that this vertical disaggregation will allow the Australian Government to gain the benefit of horizontal aggregation of carriage across participating agencies, while maintaining industry competition,” the documents read.
The panel follows the launch yesterday of a whole-of-government data centre strategy which will govern procurement and consolidation of existing and new data centres for all Federal Government departments over the next 15 years.