The Department of Defence's CIO Group, headed up by Greg Farr, will represent the Commonwealth of Australia when negotiating a procurement template for all government agencies.
(Credit: Department of Defence)
A briefing will be held in Canberra next Wednesday at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation Building, between the DoD's CIO Group and "Large Account Resellers" (LAR) in order to cut a deal for all Commonwealth Government agencies.
According to tender documents, seen by ZDNet.com.au, the purpose of such a deal is to reduce costs each time a government agency seeks Microsoft products.
Just yesterday, Dell Australia was named a Microsoft LAR, joining HP, Dimension Data, Data, Corporate Express, Insight Enterprises, Kaz, HP, Computelec, Simply International Group, and Comstra.
LAR licensing arrangements have been pursued previously by the South Australian state government.
South Australia's Department of Education and Children's Services (DECS) in 2006 released a three-and-a-half-year LAR tender for Microsoft software. DECS specified that the selected Microsoft reseller would allow schools, preschools and corporate offices to purchase the vendor's software at academic-style discounted prices.
The Department of Defence's CIO Group was unable to respond to questions at the time of publishing.
And get more Open Source software in there too. I would have thought it'd be prudent for the government to spend taxpayers hard earned dollars on cheaper, better, more secure software than Microsofts offerings ?