Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses.
My question is for Ms. Royds.
Ms. Royds, in your opening remarks you said, “The department buys, on behalf of other federal organizations, some 24 billion dollars' worth of goods, services and construction each year from nearly 10,000 suppliers.” You also indicated that about 88% of those are from small and medium-sized businesses.
Also, I understood from your opening remarks that you work with SSC to procure IT services. Within the IT services, you talked about access to specialized knowledge, knowledge transfer and dealing with some surge of the services.
IT consultants are easily the largest group of professional services that the government contracts externally. Can you explain why and what types of services are actually being outsourced?