Evidence of meeting #44 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was suppliers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
There are 24 people.
Liberal
Martha Hall Findlay Liberal Willowdale, ON
Can you tell me what your budget is for this fiscal year? I know we have the numbers somewhere, but your statement of operations in the fiscal year ending March 2009 has operations totalling $3,222,000. Can you tell me where you are now for the year ending in 2010?
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
Let me start by saying that in that budget you looked at, everybody realized that we were going to have a stump period; it was not a complete year by the time I was appointed and everybody else came in. So the budget was $3.2 million for that stump period; they knew that we'd only be working for part of the year. The budget for this year, this—
Liberal
Martha Hall Findlay Liberal Willowdale, ON
Excuse me. Could I just ask something? I'm a bit confused. You said you started in May of 2008.
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
But we didn't get our people hired until September or October, so there was no point in having a lot of money that we weren't going to spend.
Liberal
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
We'll vary between 24 and 28, somewhere in that range, depending on the nature of the work we're doing. In some cases, we may bring in specialists for short terms. I think we're at a comfortable place now.
Liberal
Martha Hall Findlay Liberal Willowdale, ON
One of the line items shows a payment to the B.C. ombudsman for a case management system. What is that?
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
We wanted a system that would track complaints: when a complaint comes in, how many days it takes us to resolve the complaint, how long it takes us to do a practice review, and how long it takes us to do an ADR. We wanted to come back to you next year with some definite performance numbers. This was going to be a business system.
When we went to the private sector, we were told that it would cost between $750,000 to $1 million to develop a system. I happened to know that the ombudsman of British Columbia had a similar system, so I went out to see them and they agreed to sell it to us for $50,000.
Liberal
Martha Hall Findlay Liberal Willowdale, ON
I note that the 2010 budget for the Parliamentary Budget Office is half of yours, at $2.1 million. I say that because it happens to be a personal concern of mine. It's not a reflection on your office.
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
No, but could I just--
Liberal
Martha Hall Findlay Liberal Willowdale, ON
It's a reflection on our view of the importance of that office, too, and I'm just noting the differences.
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
Could I make a clarification that you may want to check into? For us, in order to maintain our independence, we insisted that Public Works do the processing of our day-to-day financial payments.
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
But we pay them. It's not done for free. We want to be independent of them. It's on a cost recovery basis. We pay them for that. So to make comparisons with other offices, other ombudsman offices, you have to make sure that we're comparing apples with apples. We pay for our accommodation and admin costs.
Liberal
Martha Hall Findlay Liberal Willowdale, ON
That's a fair point.
I'm just curious. I see that you have finance for $67,000; HR, $137,000; and information technology, $209,000. So for your office, even though it was a stump period to set up and run, over $200,000 in IT for an office that only has 22 or 24 people seems like a very big number. Am I...?
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
Actually, it's not a lot where IT costs are concerned, but you have to remember that speed at which you're set up is where you get a lot of set-up costs. We had to get new wiring done. We had to buy all our equipment new. The government does this on a cash basis, of course, so all our initial purchases of equipment are reflected here.
Liberal
Martha Hall Findlay Liberal Willowdale, ON
Having been in business for many years, I think that seems like a very large--
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
Well, for 24 people you get 24 computers. You're not going to buy them every year, but you do have to get them in one year.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
Thank you.
We will have a last question because the bells will start ringing at 5:15.
Mr. Holder.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
Thank you very much.
Again, thank you to our guests.
I'm just noting that set-up of $200,000 for IT costs. I trust the procurement process was fair; I can only imagine that was the case.