Government Operations committee  Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here. I'd like to give you a practical view of SMEs in action. I'd first like to talk a bit in terms of general feedback about the challenges that SMEs are facing when it comes to federal procurement, some of which have been mentione

Government Operations committee  I haven't seen a lot of it in Australia or New Zealand, but there were a couple of situations in which the rules were relaxed in the U.K. to allow this kind of stuff. You know, it's not really about technology; it's about creating the conditions for small and medium enterprises

Government Operations committee  One of my recommendations is to create a network enterprise support office. That would be a good catalyst, if you like, to help the SMEs form these relationships. When there's a bid on the street, when there is a major DND procurement, when something is going on with the big guys

Government Operations committee  I will answer that. I want to make a comment on this whole outcome-based prescriptiveness. There is no one size that fits all. At times, the government needs to be prescriptive; at other times, it needs to be outcome-based. In every medium to complex procurement, you have thre

Government Operations committee  I can name many, but is this confidential? Is it recorded?

Government Operations committee  Would the vendors hear me say this?

Government Operations committee  I'm going to only, then, talk about—

Government Operations committee  I'm only going to talk about RFPs. We participated in it. Just as an example, there was a PPP RFP. Our organization does public-private partnerships. We have a new model. I've written a book about that model. We have an alliance with KPMG. We are a small company, but we are very

Government Operations committee  Actually, the federal government—

Government Operations committee  Usually in the private sector what I've seen is 12 months' revenue.

Government Operations committee  From my experience, the critical factor in a successful initiative is managing the relationships among stakeholders. What we see, though, is misalignment between government departments in working towards these outcomes and in deciding what the expectations are. It's not about the

Government Operations committee  Yes, that is definitely a challenge. The higher the number of stakeholders, the more complex are the relationships. That's true also in any prime-led relationship. You still have all these stakeholders working with the prime, and you have no visibility of them. At least in the ot

Government Operations committee  I'd like to comment on this, if I may. There's an existing mechanism within the procurement process. It's called the rolling wave. You can have a 30-year relationship with a firm, but that relationship continues based on the performance of the vendor. If the vendor is still doi

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here again. What I'd like to talk about today is agile procurement. Obviously it's in the context of complex business arrangements, because it wouldn't need to be agile if it's not that complex. It's not a secret that the majority of

Government Operations committee  May I add to that? I totally agree. I think it's a journey. It's not something that you're going to be able to change over the next few years. It's a change in culture, in how the procurement officers actually view the vendors and the contract managers view their partners. They d