First of all, it's not very well known at all. I'm not sure whether it has a PR office, because only 5% or 6% of members are even aware that it exists. These are the people who are actually involved in federal government contracts. I think one of the reasons might be that it is not perceived as being independent of Public Works; therefore, it may not be perceived as a place where small business owners can go to either get information or deal with the problems they may run into when it comes to procurement.
There is the ombudsman; however, the ombudsman has a very limited mandate in what it can look at. So where do you go when you have questions about the activities happening within a particular project or contract you're bidding on? Right now I don't think OSME is seen by them as being independent enough or capable enough to help them through that process.
The second piece touches a little on the comments from the previous groups that were here last week. We also believe it has an important role to play as an advocate internal to Public Works. We're not clear at this point whether that's being done effectively or not, again because I think it is seen as being part of Public Works, so we're sure how influential it can be within Public Works.
At this point we're not sure whether it needs to expand its mandate. We're loath to suggest you put more money into something until we understand the best way to use that money to effectively help small business progress when it comes to procurement issues. We recognize that there is the Office of the Procurement Ombudsman of Canada as well, and we need to make sure we're not duplicating efforts here and we're actually making sure that there is effective change happening within Public Works that is actually reflecting back what's happening with small businesses.
Is OSME doing that? There are elements of what OSME is doing that are helpful. The buy and sell website was a huge step forward in finally having one place to go to get all the information you need. It's too new for us to know if our members are using it or not. I do credit OSME with putting that together, but whether or not our members feel it's actually helping them to progress is debatable at this point.