Public Accounts Committee on May 27th, 2021

[Karen Hogan]

Right.

Our audit here wasn't really looking at the procurement process. We were starting to look at whether or not they were applying “agile” in a good way and making sure that they were on the right track. We found that there were a couple of gaps here,,so definitely some training is needed.

If you're going to embark on agile procurement processes for complex IT solutions where agile really blends well to a complex IT solution, where you need some of that private sector expertise to meld with the business needs, you do need to worry about fairness and transparency. That's why we highlighted the need to have better fairness, the use of the fairness monitor, a better ability to demonstrate how fairness issues were resolved going forward.

Agile involves many vendors and trying to keep many vendors engaged as you move through in order to try things that might not work and to adjust and go back. It is a different way of procuring and one that requires different skills. That's why training is important.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Your report highlighted, though, that the process isn't clear, that adequate training isn't being provided, and that step-by-step guidance isn't being given—correct?

[Karen Hogan]

Absolutely, which is why we recommended that they should do that. The playbook doesn't even define what agile procurement is. In order for this to be successful moving on, these two initiatives, the Next Generation pay and the benefits modernization, are at the start of it. In order for this to continue and work well going forward, that needs to be developed now so that the procurements can stay on the right track.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Ms. Harder.

Mr. Sorbara, you have five minutes.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Good morning, everyone. It's been a busy morning, to say the least.

Auditor General, this report, which began, as you mentioned, not under your watch but under one of your predecessors, is very important. It's even more important when we think about the world we live in and have experienced since the start of the pandemic, which in my head I always date as March 15 of last year—of course, it's ingrained in many Canadians—because of what's happening towards digital adaptation and what consumers and individuals are doing.

I have a couple of questions. I'll try to pull up all the speeches that were provided today.

The first one is with regard to the Office of the Comptroller General. I know that not every MP references the Office of the Comptroller General every day, but I would like Mr. Huppé to expand on what he said about the office's area of responsibility in overseeing or in the “assurance government-wide for financial management, the management of our acquired services and assets, and internal audit”.

Just to clarify, does the responsibility of the asset come to you at the end, or do you have oversight during the process?

[Roch Huppé]

Our role, basically, is in establishing the frameworks, the policies and the guidelines in which the departments will actually operate. When you talk about acquired services, as per my speech, we have new policies that have been approved over the last 18 months that deal with the planning of investments. It includes a new directive on procurement, which was approved two weeks ago, and new directives on project management and asset management.

Through these policies and through this documentation, we provide the guidelines that the departments have to operate within, obviously.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Sir, I know you used the word “guidelines”. If I may, I like to use the word “guardrails” for these large projects, which obviously utilize literally billions of dollars of taxpayer money to ensure a smoothly functioning public service.

I'd like to move on to your remarks, Mr. Matthews, on the acceptance of the recommendations. The third recommendation by the Auditor General is on data analytics. Obviously, data analytics is so very important. Perhaps you could explain to me why it's important for your group and how it will be utilized. It's great to get data, but if the data is useless or out of date, or it's not the right data, then you're going to go down a road that we don't want to go down, if I can add that colour.

[Bill Matthews]

It is critical to upgrade the analytics function to effectively add sophistication to our work. What I would say about our experience to date, as referenced in the AG report, is that it was difficult to do good analytics because of inconsistent data. An easy example here, just for members to get their heads around, is the same supplier being described by different names. It's really hard to do analytics if you're categorizing the same company by slightly different names.

The new e-procurement tool or system that I mentioned is launched. It will be fully operational shortly. That will allow us to upgrade the sophistication of our efforts on this front. What you're really looking for is patterns—contract-splitting, price-fixing, collusion—and you really need to have a consistent interpretation of the suppliers out there to properly do that type of analytics.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Okay.

Mr. Matthews, when you're talking about the procurement solution, are you talking about the CanadaBuys solution?

[Bill Matthews]

Yes, it's CanadaBuys. A big part of that is the e-procurement software system that's been launched, as well as the portal for suppliers, but yes.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

If I take a step back and just think of this at a high level, we have a budget in Canada of, give or take, $300 billion in a normal year, and of that, $60 billion is for salaries, etc., to pay the wonderful public servants who run our government and provide the services. We want to make sure that on the procurement side there's some centralization, I would hope, and that CanadaBuys takes us that way. I'll use the word “efficiency” here, or efficacité. Will this take us down that route?

[Bill Matthews]

There's already centralization to the degree that PSPC and Shared Services Canada do run the procurements for large-dollar procurements. What this does, though, is make the tools and the process more standardized and more automated to allow us to better collect data and also make it easier for suppliers to bid on government opportunities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Mr. Sorbara.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

We will now move on to our rapid round of two and a half minutes, starting with Ms. Vignola.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

My question is for Mr. Matthews.

Does agile IT procurement imply nearly complete omission of the competition process to favour a single company, or does it imply the use of the competition process to favour the resellers of products of the company used without a competition process? Is that what agile procurement is?

[Bill Matthews]

Thank you for the question.

I would say that it's neither one nor the other.

In agile procurement, a competitive process is used to select one supplier. In most cases, several suppliers are used. The goal is to divide a large project into several small parts. In fact, a number of suppliers can be selected to participate in the project. The idea is to have an opportunity to revise the project to adjust the objectives and the deadline, for example.

Rather than have one big project, one big contract or one big competition, you're dividing it into pieces, and in fact often working with multiple vendors, but also getting feedback partway through, revisiting and adjusting the schedule and the approach going forward.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Where is the competition, if everyone is selling the same product? In the end, the company selling that product receives the majority of profits, not the resellers.

What is the interest of this approach for Canadians and Quebeckers, since this is taxpayers' money? How is it ensured that no exaggeration or concentration of prices occurs in that process? At the end of the day, the same person is always getting the profits.

[Bill Matthews]

Thank you for the question.

In the case of the two examples the Auditor General used in her report, the NextGen initiative for human resources and the benefits delivery modernization program, a number of resellers are participating in the project. For NextGen, there are three: SAP, Workday and a third one whose name I have forgotten. Perhaps Mr. Glover could tell you what it is.

So there are generally more contracts, instead of a single large contract.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Vignola.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

We will now move on to Mr. Green for two and a half minutes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Rapid fire, I'm going to ask one question of each of the representatives for all of the departments that are present, and the question is very simple: Did your department apply GBA+ to the development, implementation or oversight of the programs that are before us today?

We can start with TBS.

[Roch Huppé]

Yes, from a policy perspective, any policies that go for approval to Treasury Board ministers will have a GBA+ analysis done, and in our recent policy that's just been approved we have, I would say, additional clarifications around GBA+ and how we could promote it—absolutely.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Okay.

Can we go on to PSPC, please?