Government Operations committee  Thank you very much. There's a presentation that I think is in your packs that I'll just generally refer to. I'll mostly just speak, but there's some material in there that might be useful to you later on. I very much appreciate the chance to come and speak with you today. When

Government Operations committee  I think there are two things. When we were facing this problem in British Columbia, what we recognized very quickly was that we didn't have the talent in-house and that it would take too long to grow it, so we put in place something almost like a SWAT team, a very small, smart, h

Government Operations committee  Sure. There were a bunch of them. There was the revenue collection system, for example. Revenue is collected in about 147 different places across government, and they're all different, disconnected systems. What we did was basically go out and define what outcome we were looking

Government Operations committee  These were all led by that secretariat.

Government Operations committee  It was a combination. I was hired as an independent who was brought in on a contract, but in a titled role as a deputy. Everybody else I hired on contract. I replaced those people with government people over a period of time.

Government Operations committee  It's a little bit of a sad story. It continued on for quite a few years, and it has morphed into something they call the Strategic Partnerships Office. However, they didn't sustain the funding for it and it has kind of lost its teeth, to be honest. It wasn't sustained.

Government Operations committee  They're now trying to restart it again. We're actually having conversations about that. They're trying to figure out how to get back and do it again.

Government Operations committee  Desktop services, all the technology, and payroll, all of those—

Government Operations committee  Sorry; I didn't see that.

Government Operations committee  On your issue of transparency, there are ways to make sure that you can level the playing field in terms of the information available: contracts, all sorts of procurement documents, all of the outcomes of previous levels of work. If you set the expectation up front that it's goin

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  I'd love to comment on that. You're 100% right. There's no downside for not making a decision, and there's no downside for making the safest decision. There is no upside for experimenting, so we do have to create the ability and the incentives so that people are actually able t

Government Operations committee  That could work well. When we did it, we had somebody from the Ministry of Finance. We had to build the internal capability to look at risk differently, so we had them engaged, almost designated, on our team. We'd involve them right from the beginning around the inception of the

Government Operations committee  I think some of the rules around limitations of liability are also a real impediment, so just keep it very simple.

Government Operations committee  The U.S. government is even doing things like paying for providers with a credit card. They're using reverse auctions. If they want some development done, they put it out there. You just go online and you bid for it. You get paid with a credit card. It's simple, simple and easy.