"The system must be able support transactions per annum of 600 pages per cycle of 12 cycles per year with 1000 changes to the schedule (additions, changes, deletions and authorization actions)", according to the documents.

The facility will support two separate business streams, recommendations and pricing. The pricing stream determines the price at which a drug can be listed on the PBS.

Business requirements for the system must be interoperable with Oracle and SAS databases, facilitate ad hoc reporting through an SQL interface, allow access for at least 200 internal and 200 external users and have aligned service levels for system recovery with IBM GSA procedures.

Tenders close September 29, 2006 and the contract is expected to run from January 2007 through to July 2010.