The government is seeking vendors for £6bn-worth of contracts for supplying commodity hardware and software products to the public sector.

Buying Solutions, the procurement arm of Whitehall purchasing body the Office of Government Commerce, has issued a tender for framework agreements covering personal computing equipment and infrastructure hardware such as servers, storage and routers.

As many as 20 suppliers could be selected as part of the 3.5-year deals, which would provide a standardised set of contracts for public organisations to buy hardware and software at preferential prices thanks to the combined buying power of the sector.

“Buying Solutions is putting in place a pan-government collaborative framework agreement for use by UK public sector bodies including but not limited to central government departments and their agencies, non-departmental public bodies, NHS bodies and local authorities,” says the tender document issued on the Official Journal of the European Union.

The move is the latest of a number of tenders for government-wide framework deals recently issued. Earlier this month, Buying Solutions put up to £1bn of IT and communications contracts for grabs, while in June a tender was put out for £600m-worth of managed IT services provision.