Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to appear before you today.
With me is Daphne Meredith, our associate deputy minister.
PWGSC spends more than $1 billion a year on contracts for professional services. In observing the legislation, regulations and policies governing contracting, our contracting officers make every effort to promote competition, fairness and transparency.
The Auditor General's work has given us important insight into how we conduct our work in this area.
We are pleased that the Auditor General found that PWGSC awarded publicly tendered contracts correctly in 95% of cases and sole-sourced contracts in 96% of cases.
Furthermore, we welcome the Auditor General's conclusions and recommendations as they relate to contract administration. More importantly, she noted that the issues were not of a systemic nature.
We are addressing her observations with respect to a lack of rigour in the administration of contracts. We want to ensure that our contract administration achieves the same high standards as our contract awards.
We have taken a department-wide approach, which is embodied in a comprehensive action plan that has been tabled with the committee. This departmental action plan addresses all the recommendations contained in the chapter and was developed in full consultation with the OAG. The implementation of this action plan is substantially complete, with the remaining elements to be fully implemented by the end of April 2009, in a month from now.
The action plan focuses on the development of a contract management control framework that identifies the elements that are key to sound contract management and lays out how they should be addressed. These actions apply across the department and include the integration of governance processes to provide oversight and ensure accountability; identification of key controls to prevent and detect identified risks related to managing consultants and administering contracts; identification of risk mitigation measures to manage identified risks; integration of best practices to ensure that our contract management control framework is best in class; development of guidance on procedures, as well as tools and templates, to help ensure consistency and quality in contract management; and finally, training on and communication of this guidance to help ensure that it is understood and applied.
As well, we are putting in place an ongoing program to monitor key contract requirements and ensure high-quality consistent contract administration department-wide. Through this program, the department will be able to identify potential areas of concern and follow up accordingly.
The basic elements for success have now been assembled: a solid framework; an ongoing monitoring program; and as the last ingredient, the training and development of our staff.
In 2006, as part of Treasury Board policy, managers and executives were required to validate their knowledge regarding the essentials of managing in the public service, which includes material management and contract management. At that time, we had identified 1,331 managers and executives that required this validation. By December 2008, 1,700, or 100% of managers and executives had validated their knowledge, which included new recruits.
In conclusion, Mr. Chair, I am satisfied that the work carried out by the OAG has helped us move to the next level of quality management and it supports us in getting the fundamentals of the department right by continuously improving our performance.
I welcome your questions.