Tax Office and Optus sign managed network services contract

The Tax Office and Optus have signed a contract for the managed network services (MNS) bundle. The MNS bundle, the first of three ICT sourcing bundles, includes the provision of data and voice carriage services, telephony services, wide area network and local area network services, videoconferencing services, and call centre infrastructure and services. The Tax Office currently spends approximately $60.5 million a year on these services.

The industry was briefed on the MNS bundle in December 2007 with an expression of interest released by the ATO in January 2008 with seven responses received. In March 2008, the Tax Office announced that following the expression-of-interest process, four companies had been selected to proceed to the request for tender stage of the MNS process. They were Dimension Data, Computer Sciences Corporation, Optus and Telstra.

In December 2008, two short-listed companies were selected to enter into contract negotiations with the Tax Office. They were Dimension Data and Optus.

The status of the other two bundles:

• End user computing: The request for tender closed on 11 May 2009. A contract is expected to be in place by March 2010.

• Centralised computing: The Tax Office expects to release the request for tender in July 2009 with a contract expected to be in place by mid-2010.