Alberta’s ShareIT public procurement program has hit a major new milestone in its group spend and savings. Since it was launched in 2017 by Cybera — in collaboration with Alberta’s post-secondary institutions — the program has marked over $100 million in cumulative member spending on IT hardware, licenses, and other services via ShareIT’s negotiated agreements.
This has brought over $61 million in combined savings for the education sector when compared to what organizations would have spent using the average educational discount rate.
In the last year, ShareIT also added 28 new contracts and two new categories to its catalogue, bringing it up to 44 contracts in 16 different areas of IT services, hardware, and licensing.
“Reaching this level of spend and savings for Alberta’s education sector is a huge achievement in collaboration, and is the result of a long journey of collective growth,” says Cybera’s ShareIT Manager, Mary Friedrich.
“This is a member-owned and member-driven program, and the fact that we have done so well in a relatively short amount of time is really down to the commitment of the member community. This is not a Cybera success, this is a community success.”
Municipalities invited to join
This milestone comes as the program opened up participation to a new public sector community: municipalities and municipal affiliates. Starting in August 2023, the catalogue of offerings have been made available to Alberta municipal organizations, and four new members have since joined, bringing the total ShareIT membership up to 69.
“This is a crucial time for the public sector, as it contends with year-after-year of IT price increases combined with squeezed budgets,” says Barb Carra, President and CEO of Cybera. “Opening up the ShareIT program to municipalities — who are already a part of Cybera’s member community and making use of our networking and cybersecurity services — is a natural next step in our mission to enable better services and collaborations for all Albertans.
“I’m proud of everything our ShareIT team has accomplished, not to mention the dozens of community members who have invested their time into making this program as effective and successful as it is!”
About the Alberta ShareIT Program
The Alberta ShareIT Program is an Alberta-based collaborative initiative, managed by Cybera and overseen by representatives from the province’s post-secondary institutions. Its procurement service leverages economies of scale to give participants in the post-secondary, K-12 education, and municipality sectors access to a broader, more powerful, and more economic suite of computing technologies.
This suite of technologies and services available include not only IT hardware, software, and licensing, but also training and professional development opportunities.
For more information, visit Cybera.ca/shareit.