As announced at DFAT's 2018 Aid Supplier Conference, DFAT expects to launch an online Aid Portal in November 2018 that consolidates all opportunities for sub-consultants/contractors/grantees in a central location. Currently, organisations and individuals can face significant costs searching multiple web sites and other information sources to identify opportunities to engage with the Australian aid program. A portal would serve as a single source of information listing opportunities and providing links for searchers to the entity holding the primary contact with DFAT so searchers can find more information and apply. DFAT contract holders would be required to list such opportunities on the portal and this requirement would extend to all suppliers in the supply chain.

We are seeking your input on best practice portals / websites that easily allow searchers and buyers to connect. Please email supplier.engagement@dfat.gov.au with your ideas by Tuesday 4 September. In particular, we are interested to learn from current websites that you believe have good or poor features, explaining why you believe that the feature helps or hinders your search more accurately and faster for opportunities.

For example, we want to know the best way to:

• Categorise and search for opportunities, i.e. could be by sector/sub-sector, value, organisation (buyer), location, or more; and
• Allows users to set up alerts for newly posted opportunities.