While We Were Sleeping: A Story of Misdirected Efforts in the World of Public Sector Procurement Policy

It has been one of the more interesting weeks in the world of Government of Canada procurement policy-making.

Despite the numerous “outward facing” storylines that can be pursued in terms of GoC activity, the real action (or lack thereof) is actually within the supplier community itself.

I am of course referring to the ongoing inability of associations and lobbying groups to respond to government policy outside of the confines of a narrowly defined platform.  A platform I would add in which the tempo is being set by the government.

As a point of illustration, let’s consider the concern that the Task-Based IT Professional Services (TBIPS) Strategy will be superseded by a “couple of winner take all contracts awarded to very large multi-nationals.”

In a June 6th, 2006 meeting hosted by PWGSC, Mike Appleton, FCMC (representing the CMC Association’s Ad Hoc Committee for Government-wide Procurement) raised a number of concerns on this very same subject.

The association reported that PWGSC’s Jerome Thauvette, Director of the Informatics Procurement Directorate, responded with a “revised” TBIPS Strategy document.  The report went on to say that within the text of the “revised” document, PWGSC had “given in on several areas as a result of the Association’s intervention and the intervention of several other associations including ITAC, CabiNET, CATA, etc.”

The concluding notes from the meeting indicated that while the “Committee feels that the revised strategy is not yet perfect,” the general consensus is that it “does present a much more reasonable approach.”

All I can say is that there must have been some further “revisional” developments that strayed from the expected path, because here we are close to 2 years later and the issue is far from being addressed let alone understood and resolved.

The fact is that the supplier community as a whole and the associations that represent them are too focused on the GoC’s practice of dangling shiny papers.  In essence look at the pretty lights over here, while the “real work” (nee agenda) is moving forward someplace else.

What is really needed is a change in tempo.  And I am not talking about the issuance of yet another association “position paper”, or an expeditionary effort such as the one associated with a May 9th, 2006 undertaking titled “Partner or Perish: Prosperity, Global Supply Chains and the Role of Government Procurement.”  While I do not take issue with the contents of these types of documents themselves, it is their ultimate inability to affect true and lasting change that is most troubling.

Or to take an excerpt from one of my most recent white papers (SAP Procurement for Public Sector):

“Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. While mildly amusing, it is nonetheless a thought provoking statement when applied to the evolution of the enterprise software industry and in particular the introduction of supply chain/e-procurement solutions.”

In the case of the ongoing GoC saga, in which countless meetings, roundtables and papers have been leveraged to bridge the disconnect between government procurement policy and its supply base, one cannot help but think about the old saying, “when everything is said and done, there is more said than done!”

Collectively, at least from the supplier perspective, we are no further ahead.  Therefore, in situations such as these, you have to change the rules of engagement.

In a recent discussion I had with an industry veteran, it was suggested that the government will continue to do everything possible to work on the periphery of the issues versus participating in a direct debate where hard evidence and facts are presented and intelligently discussed.

A forum if you will, that resembles the Democratic debates that are now taking place south of the border.

This format will not only table the issues but will also “stimulate” (I am reluctant to use the word force here, but you get my drift) tangible responses from senior bureaucrats such as the Chuck Henry’s or Steven Poole’s, rather than the sacrificial government lambs who have participated in previous “dialogues.”

Don’t misunderstand me I am not suggesting that a forum be used as a vehicle to attack the soundness of a shared services strategy itself.  Based on experience this approach certainly merits consideration under the right set of circumstances.

However, the government’s reluctance to expose the program to the light of informed scrutiny undermines their overall creditability in that there is an assumption that the shared services strategy will be broadly applied (to the detriment of most stakeholders) across the entire enterprise.  An assumption that is hopefully wrong as the broad application of any strategy forces the practice to fit the program versus the program fitting the practice.  Historically, this has resulted in an exceedingly high rate of initiative failures.  Failures, I might add that have been well documented.

And herein rests the probative value of an open forum in that an honest debate of the facts will lay the foundation for true understanding.  And understanding of course is ultimately the key to sustainable success. As I had opined in a recent post titled Supply Chain Confidence? (https://procureinsights.wordpress.com/2008/02/28/supply-chain-confidence-a-pi-q-and-a/), “effective communication leads to understanding.  Understanding of diverse stakeholder interests and objectives in turn leads to the development of a shared vision from which confidence is a natural progression.”

Right now, there is a serious lack of confidence on the part of important stakeholders both within and external to the government.  Laying the proverbial cards on the table for all to see is the first and most important step to ending the endless volley of what now appears to be empty platitudes leading to the same dead end results.

Unless it is the government’s intention to wear down the supply base through an attrition of interest, there should be no reason for them to avoid this opportunity to communicate with an informed and certainly interested supplier constituency.

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