We're beginning to launch the process, so we'll be engaging a fairness monitor in the very near future.
We'll be working with the client departments to put together their initial requirements, which will be based on the policies that they have to deliver on for their employees, so Treasury Board, RCMP, and the Canadian Forces.
Once we've put those requirements together, we'll be going out for a request for information to industry, and that will be the beginning of engagement with industry. At the beginning of engagement with industry, one of the fundamental questions we're going to ask is, how do we structure this procurement to get the right outcome? That engagement will involve a set of questions. There'll be an industry day, there'll be a set of questions, and we'll wait for responses.
Subsequent to that, we'll get some conclusions out of that, which may require a second engagement with industry—or not, depending on the results of the information we get. On that we will then put together the request for proposal, and it'll be used as a draft request for proposal that will go back out to industry.
The fairness monitor oversees every one of these discussions, and they also oversee the meetings we have in terms of each of the steps in the process, so the internal meetings as well as the meetings with our clients and the meetings with industry.
Once the draft request for proposal has gone out, we receive comments and we do the changes required to that, based on those comments, and then go to a final request for proposal.
One of the things we will be developing in the process is an evaluation framework, which is how we'll evaluate the request for proposals. We are going to be engaging with an independent third party to do the evaluation, to assess if the evaluation is fair and does not favour an incumbent, and that it's treated fairly and openly.
The last element after that, once there is the request for proposal, is that the bids come in and then we have to prepare a Treasury Board submission for contract approval.
As you can see, there is a fair amount of time. We need the time to put all that in place so that we have a positive outcome at the end.