Government Operations committee  There are probably three things. First of all, the first people to get on board were cabinet and Treasury Board. The leadership needed to be backstopped and supported there, because there was going to be learning going on, so I spent a lot of time educating and getting them enga

Government Operations committee  I think you have to get the right people in charge of the program, right? Alex Benay, for example, is working very hard at trying to get some things going on around innovative procurement. He needs some support and airtime. Involve people up and down the chain so you have some of

Government Operations committee  Oh, yes. The teams were poached continuously. They were poached by other departments. They were poached by industry. They've gone on and they've worked for governments across the country. I'm not there anymore. We were all poached eventually, right?

Government Operations committee  Well, I still look back at those four or five years as the best years of my career, because you can get something in the public sector that you can't get from any private sector organization, and that's the ability to make that kind of impact. You will find the people who are mot

Government Operations committee  That was 10-plus years ago, so I think now I would have applied a little more of the agile approach in making the contracts smaller, because we had billion-dollar deals going on. That was the thing of the day.

Government Operations committee  Exactly—scalable, the same without having to go back, but more flexible; rather than winner takes all, I'd have several. If you're doing workstation support, for example, have several vendors involved so you have the ability to move work back and forth, depending on performance.

Government Operations committee  I think it's agreed that it's people who deliver projects, not firms. It's going to come down to the 10 critical people on that team, or however many there are, so it's about making sure that you've spent the time doing your due diligence on the people, on the cultural fit, on th

Government Operations committee  The teams should be lined up so that the incentives for your vendors should also be lined up with the incentives for your internal team. You're right that the sourcing piece is important. However, the stewardship after the deal is signed is where your value is either going to be

Government Operations committee  That's a lack of discipline, and it's inexcusable. It doesn't matter whether it's private sector or public sector. An agile approach still has to be disciplined. In a way, it would reduce your risk, because after every 30 days or 90 days you have to prove you have delivered value

Government Operations committee  That's not agile's fault. That's just poor discipline.

Government Operations committee  I'm sorry; I can't.

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.

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  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