Onvia released the results of its Q3 State and Local Procurement Snapshot, which shows state governments continue to publish more formal bidding opportunities. State agencies have increased spending from last year, more than education and local agencies.

“The Q3 results point to a SLED marketplace that continues to show stability,” said Paul Irby, market analyst at Onvia. “It points to continued diversification in where and how agencies make their purchases.”

The report broke out growth rates for the third quarter and ranked the industries based on stronger growth or expansion within each type of agency.

State Ranking:

  1. Architecture and engineering.
  2. Educational products and services.
  3. Construction.

Education Ranking:

  1. Public safety.
  2. Professional business services.
  3. Transportation.

Local Ranking:

  1. Financial services and insurance.
  2. Professional business services.
  3. Operations and maintenance.

This quarter Onvia analyzed IT areas “considered to be critical according to state agency IT chiefs along with IT buyers at the county and city levels,” the report said. The top five areas for SLED include:

  • Cybersecurity: Contracting for cyber-related projects has almost doubled from July 2015 to July 2016, when compared to the previous 12-month period.
  • Mobility/mobile applications: 41 percent growth rate for mobile apps over the past year nationwide, according to Onvia’s database.
  • Open government/open data: 34 percent in the volume of bids for IT projects mentioning open data-related terms.
  • Cloud services: 61 percent increase of bids for cloud software or cloud providers.
  • Business intelligence/analytics: 43 percent increase in the volume of these projects over the previous year.

“Trusted with safeguarding large silos of sensitive information, states are scrambling to keep up with the deluge of new threats and are worried about preventing massive and expansive data breaches as well as protecting the privacy of individual citizens,” wrote Ben Vaught, director of Onvia Exchange.

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