The RFT by the Australian Bureau of Statistics seeks support for Chrome OS devices among others.
Seeking to manage applications and information rather than devices, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has gone to market for an enterprise mobility management (EMM) system.
The system is meant to allow secure access to the ABS's IT systems from mobile devices, and the request for tender mentions a variety of operating systems for which it seeks to support, including Apple iOS, Microsoft Windows, and Android and Chrome OS by Google.
“Currently the ABS manages corporately owned iOS devices through a Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution,” the ABS said in the request for tender (RFT). “The purpose of this RFT is to implement an EMM solution that will allow the ABS to move away from managing the device and towards managing ABS applications and information.”
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The ABS has sought a system that includes MDM “to perform asset management functions on ABS owned devices and to provision settings to these devices.”
The system should also include mobile application management “to securely provision ABS developed apps, managing the data both on the device and in transit to and from the ABS data centre,” the ABS said. And ABS seeks mobile information management “to provide access to ABS documents and information in a secure and managed way.”
The ABS indicated a supplier must "demonstrate a willingness to actively consider open source software" in their response to the tender.
“This may include incorporating open source software components together with proprietary software components.”
The ABS said the mobility management system must be scalable to support its upcoming work on the Australian Census in 2016.
“Support for a large concurrent user base anticipated to be around 30,000 devices that may be enrolled in a one week period and used for 3 to 6 months is required,” the organisation said.
The organisation said it will only consider a cloud-based implementation if “all processing and storage, including backups, is based solely in Australia.”
The ABS seeks a contract with an initial period of two years but that could be extended for up to three additional years. The contract could be accessed by other Commonwealth agencies, it said.
Interested parties must submit proposals by 10 February.
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