The Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) today (June 25) gazetted a notice to invite tenders for the provision of professional services to undertake information technology (IT) projects in the Government under the new round of the Standing Offer Agreement for Quality Professional Services (SOA-QPS) scheme for a period of 48 months. The tender submission deadline is noon on August 6.

     "New measures are adopted in this round of the SOA-QPS scheme, aiming to sustain the momentum in fostering the development of the local IT industry. In particular, the essential requirements for tendering are lowered to encourage more small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups to participate. A new category is also added to facilitate the wider roll-out of a number of IT application systems common to different government departments. The upcoming round of the SOA-QPS scheme will provide huge business opportunities for the contractors, in particular SMEs and start-ups," a spokesman for the OGCIO said.

     Being part of the Government's IT outsourcing strategy, the SOA-QPS scheme enlarges the Government's delivery capacity for IT services and accelerates the delivery of IT solutions to support the increasing demand of digital government services. The total value of the contracts awarded under the prevailing SOA-QPS is over $2 billion. It is anticipated that the total contract value of the coming SOA-QPS scheme will be even higher.

     "The financial limit of contract value of each work assignment is raised significantly by one-third from $15 million to $20 million, enabling work assignments of a larger scale to be awarded through the scheme," the spokesman added.

     The new SOA-QPS scheme covers three categories of IT services:

Category A: pre-implementation, programme/project management services, ongoing services, implementation and combined system development services;
Category B: information security, privacy assessment and independent testing services; and
Category C: deployment and maintenance of common services

     Categories A and C are further divided into Major and Minor Groups with demarcation in terms of the contract value of work assignment remaining at $3 million.

     Aiming to embrace more contractors in the SOA-QPS scheme, the Government will award a maximum of about 130 standing offer agreements for a contract period of 48 months in this tendering exercise. A technical to price weighting of 70:30 will be adopted in the tender assessment as service quality is of utmost importance. During the contract period, government bureaux and departments may invite proposals for their IT projects from contractors in the relevant Categories and Groups and select contractors to undertake the assignment based on technical and price assessments.

     The tender notice and the tender document are available for download at the OGCIO's website (www.ogcio.gov.hk/en/our_work/business/tender_eoi_rfp/open_tender_notice.html).

     An online tender briefing session will be held on July 12 for prospective tenderers with details set out in the tender document.

Ends/Friday, June 25, 2021
Issued at HKT 11:00

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