Government Operations Committee on April 24th, 2018

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

It could do. One thing about mystery shopper is that it's anonymous. We know that a lot of small businesses are always concerned that if they make a complaint about a process, they'll somehow get blacklisted. I think that is a barrier to businesses of all kinds complaining about experiences they have. I think that might be helpful.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Great. Thank you very much.

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

My pleasure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

For seven minutes, Mr. Jowhari, go ahead, please.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for your comments. We've heard from a number of presenters and witnesses that simplification of the process is always supported, but we always need to find a balance between managing the risk associated with the simplification of the process, specifically when it comes to making sure that we have all the qualifications and all the requirements clearly indicated.

I want to hear from you about how you have managed to balance simplifying the process with risking missing some requirements or missing some qualifications, As you know, we are using taxpayers' money to pay for these services.

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

Taxpayer value comes first and foremost for us, even with the target, and we make that clear in everything we talk about. I think we have done our best to move the point at which you ask for qualifications or insurance, say—that has been a real concern—to the right point in the process.

If you're running a competition and looking at seven, 20, or 30 suppliers, you don't need to know they all have insurance in place at the point of competition. You want to be confident that the moment your chosen contractor starts the job, starts delivering whatever they're delivering, that they have insurance in place or they have the necessary qualifications. You want to choose the right place in the process.

In the past, we've asked for qualifications or membership of a particular group or insurance at an earlier stage, and that has been a real barrier to SMEs in participating in different markets. We now tend to ask for them up front at the point at which the service starts being delivered or just after—

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

To an extent, then, you're also using an agile process for the qualification of your suppliers.

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

Yes.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I would like to talk about prompt payment. It's easier to be able to achieve 100% within 30 days if you are working directly with the SME. But as you've said, a lot of large contracts are subcontracted to the SMEs. How do you ensure that those SMEs, which are level two or level three or sub-subcontractors, still benefit from the 5% payment within five days and 100% within 30 days?

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

The targets do apply only to direct contracts.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay.

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

At the minute, they're not going in directly, and I think that is a problem we're absolutely grappling with at the minute, particularly in light of the Carillion liquidation. We have a number of different routes in place. Very briefly, first, we have the prompt payment code, a voluntary code in the U.K. There are several thousand members. They are public and private sector organizations, and they sign up to meet certain standards. That has some value.

I mentioned that we have recently announced this consultation on considering prompt payment in awarding government contracts. Do you have a record of being really bad at paying your subcontractors? If so, we will take that into account. Now, we are—

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

So you're including that as part of your qualifications for your tier one suppliers.

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

We're consulting on that.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay.

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

The consultation will run till early June, and then we'll take a look at it. Finding an approach to do that, that also fits within our legal framework, has required some careful thought.

Finally, I would mention—I'm going to sound like a stuck record—the mystery shopper. We ask people to shop cases of poor payment to—

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

That was a great segue for me to start talking about the mystery shoppers, and I still have one more question after the mystery shoppers.

You've demystified the whole concept of mystery shoppers. This is a platform for suppliers to be able to give you feedback anonymously. You said it's been effective because it has helped in simplifying or making your processes more efficient. What were some of the issues that were raised regarding your mystery shopper program?

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

They vary enormously. A lot have to do with prompt payment. For example, let's say I've been chasing this council for months—typically for quite small sums, 1,000 pounds or a few hundred pounds—and not getting any results: “Can you help me?”

One I particularly enjoyed was at Crown Commercial Service. We had let a series of lots for a particular framework agreement over Christmas. We chose some quite family-unfriendly times to do that. We required all the applications to come in on January 1 or something. The whole of the holiday season, we were all going on leave and expecting our potential suppliers to complete documentation for us. The complaint came in, and we said, “Oh, okay. We hadn't thought about that. We can stagger the responses and we can give extensions.”

So quite often it's to do with the time period. It's also to do with whether financial thresholds, or requirements for insurance, or requirements for a particular kind of accreditation are reasonable and fair. Lots of different kinds of things come in. It's essentially anything that could go—

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I have one minute left, and I want to actually go back to the Contracts Finder. In the briefing note provided to me, it says the U.K. is the first G7 country to implement the open data contracting standards for contracts administered by a central purchasing authority.

In 40 seconds or less, can you talk about what type of contracting standards and what type of data are actually allowed to be displayed there? I'm sure defence wouldn't want some of the information to be published on that platform.

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

No. We put limitations in place for security reasons.

In a nutshell, the open contracting data standard is a standard established by the Open Contracting Partnership. At the minute, I think five or six countries are signed up to it.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Is Canada part of that? Is it for European countries?

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

No.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

It's for European countries.

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

It's France, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina—

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay. So it's not European only.

Sorry, Chair. I know I'm over.