Government Operations committee  If you're talking about large organizations.... For example, if you're using some large telco company, they're not at the same touch level. They might have the skill set level, but they do not attack the business the same way. They don't go to the engineering level or the managem

Government Operations committee  In the last five years we have not seen a lot of evidence that they are able to do that. Reducing barriers, I know they did try that term, but they don't want to cross the line into influencing the clients as to how they want to buy stuff. If they're saying “I will make sure they

Government Operations committee  Actually, at the small and medium enterprise level of selling, it's totally different from buying from Best Buy or Future Shop--two different ways. At the SME level, it requires a lot of integration work, and a lot of introduction to technology. We bring them manufacturers, we br

Government Operations committee  If you look at it from a business point of view, we often talk about let's protect the existing customers first. If you're losing customers, that is not a very good thing. So in OSME's case, the customer is the SME clients. If you're losing those clients, that's not a very good t

Government Operations committee  When OSME started, it was formed as a very small section within PWGSC. It opened regional offices. It hosted seminars. That worked well, especially for people who didn't understand how to deal with the government. They pointed out the MERX website, and they started using the webs

Government Operations committee  In the policy we're looking for, we are not looking for a set-aside for SME or things like that. I think we're looking for what Pat was talking about a little bit earlier. On the U.S. side they are enforcing—at the department level, not PWGSC level—the break-down of contracts to

Government Operations committee  I missed the translation.

Government Operations committee  Well, for that part it's like with any good management--you're always looking for measurement indicators, or as we call them, key performance indicators. Without those it's hard to measure the efficiency and effectiveness, and currently there's not enough data to support that act

Government Operations committee  I can agree with that.

Government Operations committee  Is it the buyandsell.gc.ca?

Government Operations committee  Thank you.

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  Yes. Actually, that's why in my presentation I talked about having cooperation between the technical authority, as we call it, and a contracting authority. That's within PWGSC right now. If they do it well, it's transferable. At least the experience can be transferable. You can s

Government Operations committee  In the IT sector, usually how the chain works is that if the manufacturer does not have enough people to service their customers, they rely on the SME resellers to service that portion, and multinationals don't do lots of things by themselves. We are reselling HP products, and th