Government Operations Committee on Nov. 1st, 2011

[Herman Yeh]

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 see what the requirements are for other industries. If they can work with the contracting authority and work together to listen to the SME as to what they can do and what the requirements are, I believe that experience can be transferable. That's why I pointed out in the document that we should spend some time looking at what this STAMS group is doing and whether they are successful in engaging the SMEs without ignoring the large enterprises. They're doing a pretty good balancing job, in some cases.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

A number of small businesses in the IT sector are authorized resellers of major suppliers. Does that enable small and medium-sized businesses to access government contracts in that sector in a major way, and thus to enter the IT market, or is that a marginal factor?

[Herman Yeh]

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 the large multinational products also. This may be industry-specific, but in some other industries we see it can work that way too--for example, some professional services or property management. There are more SMEs active in working with large enterprises in those cases.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you very much.

In your brief, you discussed the advent of Shared Services Canada, but with a certain amount of fear. I would like you to tell us how you think there could be a harmonious transmission for SMEs in the IT sector.

[Herman Yeh]

Do you mean the transition between the current state and the future?

Okay, on that front, the IT sector is actually changing all the time. It's never static. So if you look at how the PC grows into the current state, it's very different. As the government goes toward more consolidation.... There are lots of misconceptions about consolidating technology versus consolidating procurement. They are two different things. You can do consolidation of technology without consolidating procurement into one single large contract. You still can do the project by breaking it down into smaller chunks and working through the competition.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

How much time do I have left, Mr. Chairman?

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

There are about 30 seconds.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

As you've discussed performance indicators that can be used to get a slightly clearer picture of the effectiveness of the Office of Small and Medium Enterprises, you definitely already have some ideas that you could share with the committee. Could you tell us a little more about those performance indicators?

[Herman Yeh]

I missed the translation.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Has it come back?

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

It's coming now.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

I was talking about performance indicators.

[Herman Yeh]

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 activity.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

That concludes your time, Denis. Thank you very much.

Ron Cannan.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to our witnesses for being here this afternoon and sharing a little bit about your personal experience working with OSME.

As you know, our goal is to analyze the effectiveness of the Office of Small and Medium Enterprises in the Canadian innovation commercialization program. I was just reminding the committee that OSME is committed to giving small and medium-sized businesses access to compete for government business by working to reduce barriers and simplifying requirements for SMEs that want to do business with the Government of Canada.

Mr. Gillham, do you have any idea what website OSME has set up to help small business?

[Jason Gillham]

No, I'm not familiar with it.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Mr. Hayes?

[Tom Hayes]

No, I'm not.

[Herman Yeh]

I can agree with that.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

It's called....

[Herman Yeh]

Is it the buyandsell.gc.ca?

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

There you go. Give that man a prize.

[Herman Yeh]

Thank you.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

That's our ultimate goal, to get the message out. We've talked to many witnesses. Don't feel bad. There are a lot of people who don't know about it. As you said about your members, very few of them were aware of the Canadian innovation commercialization program, and ultimately, our goals.

Mr. Yeh, in your handout you indicated a couple of suggestions and talked about the low-hanging fruit. I was co-chair of Canada-Taiwan. They call it the “early harvest”.

[Herman Yeh]

Yes.