Who publishes on GETS?
Mandated agencies advertise open opportunities on GETS. Eligible agencies use it too. On 16 September 2026 the board carried notices from the Ministry of Education, MFAT, NZTA, Porirua City Council, New Plymouth District Council, Queenstown-Lakes, Health NZ, the EPA, NZ Post, Kāpiti Coast, Fire and Emergency NZ, Thames-Coromandel, Waikato District, Western Bay of Plenty, and the Ministry for Primary Industries. The buyer mix is the point: central agencies, health, transport, and councils share one board.
That breadth does not make every notice your notice. A council tree-maintenance RFP and an MFAT scoping study run on different buyer rules, different delivery geography, and different evaluation logic. The listing tells you the work exists. The pack tells you whether it is yours to chase.
When does registration matter?
Registration is required only to log in: to download detailed information, to respond to tenders, and to manage notifications for categories and regions you care about. Browsing current, late, closed, completed, and future opportunities does not need an account.
Set alerts by category and region before you need them, not on the day a close date appears. An alert that arrives after the clarification window has shut is a decoration. The question the alert should trigger is always the same: does this pack pass the first twenty minutes of the gate.
Who do you ask?
The purchasing agency named in the notice, as directed in that notice. GETS staff have no involvement in running or evaluating tenders. Responses, proposals, and queries relating to a published opportunity go where the agency says, inside its contact rules.
That boundary is not a suggestion. Off-channel contact with a buyer during an open process is a probity event, however well meant. The permitted-contact trail is on probity and conflicts of interest.
What about secondary work and panels?
Established contracts and panels advertise their formation openly. The actual call-offs (secondary procurements from a panel) run through agency processes, increasingly through Procure Connect. A formation notice is a bid for the right to be considered later, not a work order. All-of-Government contracts and panels owns the access rules; the panels gate owns the economics.
What does this mean for the bid/no-bid call?
Treat every GETS listing as an inbound to be gated, not as work that found you. Day one: log the RFx ID, the close date and timezone, the lodgement mechanics, and the buyer’s contact rules. Then check pre-conditions and the evaluation method before anyone opens a response template. The Australian discovery habit transfers (where tenders are published is the AU board), but the rules underneath do not. A notice from a council is still a council’s rules: NZ council tenders.