Bristol City Council information day on ICT procurement

Connecting Bristol recently announced that Bristol City Council will be holding an information day on Tuesday, 4th September 2012 between 9.30 am and 3.30 am at the Colston Hall, Colston Street, Bristol (map).

The purpose of the day is to explain the radical changes the council is making to its ICT procurement process, which will provide greater opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses (also known as SMEs. Ed.) to become suppliers to the council, particularly in the following areas:

• telecommunications;
• infrastructure and network;
• server support;
• web support.

Cllr. Jon Rogers, deputy leader of the council, said: “Our aim is that within a few years, more than a quarter of our annual spend on ICT is directed towards SMEs and I hope Bristol firms will be in a position to gain from this.”

In addition, the event will also feature news from the Cabinet Office about the Government’s G-Cloud sourcing arrangements and how SMEs can get involved.

Attendance at the event is by invitation only. Anyone wishing to attend needs to drop an email to procurement.support@bristol.gov.uk with their details and Procurement Support will forward an invitation on to them. After you’ve received your invitation, that’s only one half of the process: invitees will still have to register before they can attend. 🙁

Guardian Government Computing also carried a report announcing the event.