Digital Policy Office reviews IT services agreement

The SOA-QPS5 in use will expire in early 2026.

The Digital Policy Office (DPO) has launched a consultation paper on the future arrangements for the Standing Offer Agreement for Quality Professional Services (SOA-QPS) scheme to strengthen the regulation and monitoring procedures of contractors' performance. 

It includes introducing a new category for IT systems that adopt diverse secure and reliable technologies, raising the upper limit of the contract value for individual projects, and raising the demarcation limit of contract value for minor and major groups.

Since its initial launch in 2005, the SOA-QPS scheme has long been an effective means of addressing the government's large demand for IT professional services. The scheme also provides business prospects for the IT industry and helps bring IT services to government departments.

The SOA-QPS scheme involves a two-stage bidding process. In the first stage, the government enters into Standing Offer Agreements (SOAs) with a certain number of suppliers (SOA Contractors) selected through open tendering. 

During the second stage within the validity period of the SOAs, government bureaux and departments (B/Ds) invite technical and price proposals for individual IT projects from the SOA contractors. 

B/Ds will award a service contract to the contractor whose proposal meets the technical requirements and attains the highest combined score according to the marking scheme. 

There are already 1,696 service contracts awarded under the current SOA-QPS5, with an accumulated contract value of about $2.685m as of 31 August.