The ACCC alleges that on five occasions in 2019, Swift Pty Ltd (Swift) made an agreement with a competitor, DXC Connect Pty Ltd and DXC Technology Australia Pty Ltd (together DXC), to rig bids and fix prices for the supply of technology infrastructure at mining camps in WA’s Pilbara region.

The ACCC notes that technology infrastructure includes IT, communications, and audio-visual entertainment infrastructure and associated services for providing internet and media services such as free-to-air or subscription television to mining villages

The tenders were for projects located at Rio Tinto Limited’s Gudai-Darri, West Angelas and Yandicoogina, Western Turner Syncline, an projects, it is alleged Swift and DXC agreed that one of them would submit a higher price than the other in response to a request for bids.

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Ssince late 2017, Swift and DXC sometimes engaged each other as sub-contractors for projects involving the supply of Technology Instructure to mining sites in the Pilbara. However, in the case of the five projects, the ACCC alleges Swift and DXC acted beyond the scope of any sub-contracting relationship.

“Bid rigging and price fixing drive up prices for businesses and harms the economy, which is why cartel conduct is a serious breach of our competition laws,” ACCC Commissioner Liza Carver said.

“This case is a reminder to all businesses, large or small, that they must exercise caution when they are dealing with competitors to ensure that these discussions do not lead to anti-competitive arrangements, including cartel conduct.”

The ACCC is seeking declarations, penalties, costs and other orders.

By way o background the ACCC notes:

“Swift is a specialist technology company delivering technology infrastructure, entertainment and communications to the mining and resources, aged care, and hospitality industries.

“DXC is a global information technology services provider across a range of industries. It supplies “technology infrastructure” in the mining sector in Western Australia.

“Bid rigging, also known as collusive tendering, happens when suppliers discuss and agree among themselves who should win a tender, and at what price.

“Price fixing happens when competitors agree on pricing instead of competing against each other.

"ACCC works to detect cartels including through education programs, proactive intelligence gathering and data assessment and working with overseas counterparts to identify cartels that operate on a global level.

“The ACCC also manages an immunity program that enables past or present cartel members to confess their actions and cooperate with investigations in exchange for immunity from civil cartel proceedings brought by the ACCC and criminal cartel charges laid by the CDPP.

“Anyone who thinks they may be involved in cartel conduct is urged to call the ACCC Cartel Immunity Hotline on (02) 9230 3894. More information about the immunity process is available on the ACCC website at Cartels.

You can also report cartel conduct by using the anonymous cartel portal.

“Public procurement officials who want to know more about detecting cartels are encouraged to contact the ACCC Cartel Outreach team at carteloutreach@accc.gov.au(link sends e-mail).”

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s warning comes with its observation that public sector procurement is a multi-billion-dollar sector which makes a vital contribution to the Australian economy and the welfare of Australian citizens and residents.

Based on recent experiences, however, the ACCC says it is concerned that some public servants and businesses may not be sufficiently aware of the risk of breaching cartel laws during the procurement process.

“Cartel conduct by businesses tendering in a public sector procurement process is illegal, just as such conduct is illegal in the context of a private sector tender,” ACCC Chair Rod Sims said.

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“Encouraging businesses to discuss their bids with each other, or to make agreements about who will bid for a particular tender, is likely to amount to cartel conduct which is against the law.”

Sims says Cartel activities may start with a “small encouragement or an innocent remark, but this can create an environment that enables, condones or facilitates collusive conduct between competing firms”.

“Competition to supply governments with goods and services is crucial in ensuring value for money for taxpayers. Cartel conduct in government procurement is therefore not only against the law, but will often result in taxpayers paying considerably more for goods and services,” Sims said.

Sims encouraged procurement professionals in the public sector are ento familiarise themselves with an ACCC guide on cartel deterrence and detection.

“It is also important for prospective bidders to be aware of their obligations and comply with the law,” Sims said cautioned.

“We encourage public sector procurement professionals to proactively review their procurement processes and identify and remedy any potentially anti-competitive elements in any procurement procedures, policies or guidelines.”

 The ACCC’s statement issued on Monday noted that it cannot make further comment on the circumstances of the recent investigation.

In a separate matter, the ACCC previously instituted proceedings in the Federal Court against a company and its director for involvement in the alleged attempt to rig a bid in connection with a tender by the National Gallery of Australia. That matter remains before the Court.

By way of background to its statement on cartel conduct, the ACCC says that businesses providing goods and services under public sector procurement must not engage in conduct which is in breach of the competition provisions in the Competition and Consumer Act.

The ACCC says in 2019-20, there were 81,174 contracts for the Federal Government published on AusTender with a combined value of $53.9 billion.

Cartel behaviour, which involves businesses agreeing to act together instead of competing fairly, breaches the Competition and Consumer Act and cartel conduct can involve price fixing, bid rigging, market sharing, and controlling the amount of goods or services available.

ATO chief information officer Ramez Katf said the organisation plans to follow 2020's six managed network services contracts with contracts for the supply of centralised computing, end user technology, and enterprise service management centre services.

The plan is to sound out the market in 2021, and execute and implement the contracts in 2023.

“This is a reshape of how we get these services into the organisation. The technology ecosystem continues to evolve, and our outsourcing model needs to adapt and become future ready,” said Katf.

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The ATO plans to issue at least one requests for information for these services in June 2021.

The ATO’s annual procurement plan is available here.

The DISP program ensures the Department of Defence acquires goods and services from a security-vetted supply chain.

Membership means Macquarie can now submit tenders across its government, cloud, telecommunications and data centre services and products. It claims to be the first sovereign member of DISP to supply this range of services.

"From a data perspective alone, Defence has worldwide operations and deals with all levels of data classification," said Macquarie Government managing director Aidan Tudehope.

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"The ability to provide an all-sovereign range of services, personnel and facilities gives us a unique ability to bring together and secure the entire supply chain, providing a safe harbour for Defence data during increasingly uncertain times."

DISP members undergo continuous assessment to ensure standards are maintained.

Tudehope pointed out that the Australian Signals Directorate's certified cloud services list (CCSL) comes to an end next month, and that programs such as the Information Security Registered Assessors Program are limited to providing a point-in-time validation of a supplier's security.

"Many agencies are large enough to have a qualified security team and/or a CISO, but many are not," said Tudehope. "Without the guiding hand of the CCSL, smaller agencies in particular will become increasingly reliant on independent assessments and validation of cloud service providers to make informed decisions and keep the whole of Government secure.

"There's a certification gap forming as CCSL ends and we await expansion to IRAP's existing functions. Agencies need to take into account other accreditations such as DISP to make informed decisions, particularly at a time when they're so dependent on cloud services and cyber security is high on the national agenda."

Under the contract Freelancer.com will help the US space agency NASA crowdsource talent to design innovative tools and technology for its new era of space exploration.

Freelancer.com says NASA has used open innovation, specifically in the form of public challenges since the launch of the Centennial Challenges Program in 2005 - and since 2011, NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI) has been working to mature its experience primarily focused on the use of procurement-based public challenges.

Steven N. Rader, Deputy Manager of NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI), said, “Crowdsourcing is a very good tool for public engagement with NASA”.

“Our approach with NOIS2 is designed to encourage the crowd to work on some of NASA’s most compelling matters, making them feel they are a part of the mission. We want to tap into the diverse talents available around the world, made possible through crowdsourcing.”

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Under NOIS2, NASA aims to further:

Crowd-based Challenges and Prize Competitions: competition-based activities that use a focused problem-statement approach and crowdsourcing, rather than specifically identified individuals or groups, to obtain solutions and/or stimulate innovation.

Crowd-based Freelance Projects: the process to select and manage individuals, teams, and/or talent pools (members of the crowd/community) best equipped to work on and deliver solutions and/or stimulate innovation.

Crowd-based Micro-task and/or Freelance work: the process of splitting a large job into small tasks that can be distributed, over the internet, to many people (members of the crowd/community).

Other Crowd-Based Methods: other crowdsourcing-based methods not covered above that would provide solution(s) or stimulate innovation.

Matt Barrie, Chief Executive of Freelancer Limited said “I am excited to deepen our relationship with the NASA and the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation”.

“We have been working together since 2015 to solve a range of complex problems being faced by astronauts on the cutting edge of space exploration. Today, we will be taking this to the next level, and there is no higher honor than to be able to support the United States space program”.

The $100 million Gig State project – part of the $400 million Regional Digital Connectivity program announced last year – has kicked off with a call for expressions of interest in improving the price, quality of service and choice in Wagga Wagga, Parkes, Dubbo, and a corridor west to Cobar, and delivering fibre connections to Sutton, Bywong and Wamboin.

The project will be extended to other parts of NSW to ensure "regional communities have access to the same level of service and opportunities enjoyed in metropolitan centres," according to the government.

Another goal is to make regional NSW more resilient.

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The expressions of interest phase will be followed by a request for tender later this year.

Full details for tenderers are here. The EOI will close at 9.30am on 2 June 2020.

Image: Bidgee via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

Led by the newly formed Department of Regional NSW (DRNSW), the NSW Government is calling for ‘Expressions of Interest’ (EOI) from providers to pitch innovative digital solutions that will” improve the price, quality of service and choice” in the target locations of Wagga Wagga, Parkes, Dubbo, and a corridor west to Cobar, as well as a fibre solution for residents in Sutton, Bywong and Wamboin.

The Government says Gig State will seek the most effective and innovative ways to upgrade the critical digital links for regional NSW to deliver improved digital services, “ensuring the potential of regional communities, businesses and local economies is not limited by geography and technology in an increasingly online world”.

A recent NSW Government survey highlighted the day-to-day connectivity challenges experienced in regional communities, with the majority of people reporting issues with the speed and reliability of their service making work, running a business and educating children particularly challenging.

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The Government says all of these issues have been further highlighted by the impacts of COVID-19 and ‘social distancing’.

In an announcement on Wednesday, the Government says the Gig State project will start with the target locations, with the aim of extending the project to more of regional NSW, ensuring regional communities have access to the same level of service and opportunties enjoyed in metropolitan centres.

“The NSW Government is focused on making regional NSW resilient – whether its rebuilding after bushfires, new dams to drought proof the state, or thinking ahead to a post-COVID-19 economy,” the statement says.

“Gig State is part of the $400 million Regional Digital Connectivity program, announced in 2019, which is focused on ensuring families and businesses across regional NSW have better access to mobile, internet and digital services.

“The EOI is the first step in the two-stage tender process for the Gig State project, with a ‘Request for Tender’ (RFT) to follow later this year.”

The contract, known by its acronym JEDI — Joint Enterprise Defence Infrastructure — is meant to unite all Defence services under one cloud vendor as the CIA did in 2013 with Amazon at a cost of US$600 million, the magazine said in a detailed investigative report.

As iTWire has reported, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle Corporation are said to be in the running for the contract which is expected to be awarded by the end of September. It will be worth US$10 billion.

Microsoft was said to have improved its chances by winning a deal to supply cloud services to 17 intelligence agencies in May.

{loadposition sam08}But now that assumption may have to be revised, given the criteria laid down for the company that will ultimately get the contract.

Vanity Fair quoted insiders as saying that the 1375-page request for proposal contained a number of conditions that only Amazon could satisfy.

One was that a bidder must already be pulling in more than US$2 billion a year in revenue from a commercial cloud implementation. A second is that any bidder must keep its data centres at least 150 miles (241 kms) apart and provide 32GB of RAM, both specs that few apart from Amazon can satisfy.

The report said although talk of the Defence Department joining the cloud had been going on for some time, the call for bids was only put out after the Defence Secretary James Mattis hired Sally Donnelly, a lobbyist from Washington DC who had been a consultant for Amazon.

Donnelly worked as an adviser to Mattis while the JEDI specifics were being finalised and Mattis visited Amazon's headquarters in Seattle while she was still working for him. And as the contract details were being bedded down, Donnelly's former lobbying company, SBD Advisers, was bought by an investment fund that was connected to Amazon's cloud-computing arm.

The report said questions had been raised over the level of access that Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos had in Washington. It quoted John Weiler, an industry expert who runs a trade group that includes many leading IT firms, as saying: "When you have that kind of access during a $10 billion procurement, that compromises the integrity of the procurement. Amazon was basically able to write the playbook.”

In a response provided to the magazine, Amazon Web Services said it was "eager to participate in a fair, open, and competitive bidding process that allows the customer to thoroughly analyse the various providers and select the solutions that best meet their needs".

Greg Wells, the NSW Government chief information and digital officer, said the new agreements provide "a framework that agencies can take advantage of to get the best price when dealing with Microsoft, Salesforce and a range of telecommunications providers".

Wells added: “These agreements don’t lock anyone into using these providers, agencies still have flexibility of choice.

"What they do is ensure that if agencies choose to procure through these suppliers they get the best deal which gives the benefits of the purchasing power of one government to small and large agencies alike.

{loadposition alex08}“We have built in pricing review mechanisms and in the case of the telecommunications purchasing arrangements which includes multiple suppliers there is flexibility to ensure that new suppliers can come on board as technology changes and the market evolves,” Wells continued.

We're told that "the three-year Microsoft agreement which commenced in June allows for licence portability across agencies and increases consistency in pricing and service delivery".

Meanwhile, "the four-year Salesforce contract, signed in July 2018, gives agencies the opportunity to use leading cloud based applications to manage customer relationships and enable new collaboration models with citizens".

When it comes to the telco side of things, we're informed that "the five-year Telecommunications Purchasing Arrangements with eight initial suppliers came into effect on 1 July and represent a whole-of-government approach to buying landline, mobile, fixed data and internet services".

Wells concluded: “These partnerships are critical to realising the NSW Government’s digital strategy – to deliver smart, simple and seamless services to everyone in NSW."

A Telstra spokesperson told iTWire: "Telstra has a long history working with both the NSW Department of Finance, Services and Innovation and the various departments of the NSW Government.

"The new five-year panel agreement is significant, as it enables us to continue to serve our customers with better access to potential savings and innovative new technology services and solutions."

You can find more info on the contracts at the NSW Goverment's Procurepoint site here. 

The next supercomputer to be acquired by CSIRO will combine CPUs and GPUs to deliver a combination of performance and energy efficiency.

CSIRO was a pioneer of GPU-accelerated computing in Australia, and its Bragg accelerator cluster (pictured) was ranked 156 on the Top500 when it was commissioned in 2012.

Bragg was supplied by Xenon Systems, which has just been selected to expand the National Computational Infrastructure's Raijin HPC system.

{loadposition stephen08}But technology marches forward, and the organisation has decided it is time to start looking for Bragg's successor.

The new system will be capable of petaflop speeds, significantly exceeding Bragg's performance and putting it among the 100 fastest systems in the current Top500 list. It is also expected to rank highly on the Green500 list of energy-efficient supercomputers.

"It's an integral part of our strategy working alongside national peak computing facilities to build Australian HPC capacity to accelerate great science and innovation," said CSIRO acting deputy chief information officer for scientific computing, Angus Macoustra.

Application areas include data analysis, modelling and simulation in domains such as biophysics, material science, molecular modelling, marine science, geochemical modelling, computational fluid dynamics, and artificial intelligence and data analytics using deep learning.

The successful bidder will be asked to deliver and support the system for three years within a $4m proposed budget.

The tender process is open for submission at AusTender, and will close on 19 December.

The winning system is expected to be up and running during the first half of 2017.