I just want to reinforce that the spending of digital government is substantial. From my perspective it's very important to adhere to our guidelines of cost-effectiveness and security while at the same time, if possible, making opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises, and particularly businesses that help create greater inclusion of some of the groups that find it harder to access government services. We're currently testing an innovative contracting framework that is called “procurement process 3.0” to simplify procurement, to promote more competition and openness, and to ultimately get better results.
We're working with Technation, which represents many IT providers, both big and small. This was the first group I met with, I believe, after the last election as the Minister of Digital Government. I heard loud and clear that innovative small businesses were not feeling that our procurement system worked for them because it was just too much of an investment and took too long to get through a procurement. We are working with Technation to be able to change the contracting processes so that there will be more access for small and medium-sized enterprises. Pilot results have shown to be very promising. More than 80% of the respondents in this pilot participated in an invitation to refine our approach. They found SSC's responses timely and the communication from SSC transparent, and wanted to continue working with us. That's just one of the new initiatives.
Another has to do with what I would consider harnessing private-sector innovation by putting the procurement out: not as in, “We want you to do this for us,” but, “We want this outcome. What are your ideas and innovations for achieving that outcome?” I think that's really an exciting approach because it will unleash the creativity of the private sector.
I'll ask if Paul has more examples of the modernization aside from what I already mentioned, which is working with associations that represent some of the vulnerable groups we want to help create more opportunities for.
Paul, are there other things that you would like to highlight?