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Letters to the Editor
March 2002
Procurement pros carry on fine tuning
I [attended] the Canadian Forum on Public Procurement in St. John’s,
Newfoundland, [where], I listened to procurement professionals debating the
issues surrounding getting best value for the public expenditures they manage
while respecting the challenge of providing fair and equal opportunity to
suppliers. When you think about it, there are only three ways that governments
spend your money: payroll, grants, and expenditures on goods and services. The
latter portion, the purview of procurement professionals, represents about 45
percent of total government expenditures in Canada. Intuition tells me that if
you ranked countries in order of whatever the in-vogue measure of development
is, there would be a very strong correlation with the maturity of and rigour
found in their procurement policies and procedures –not news to anyone
[trying] to sell products or services into developing countries where who you
know or who you pay is often most important.
In Canada we’re darn good at effective, efficient public sector procurement
and, thanks to the efforts of the likes of the attendees at the conference and
those in their organizations, getting even better all the time. I applaud your
efforts.
Gordon Kyle, Procurement Consultant and Director
Atlantic Region for Partnering and Procurement Inc.
Kudos and proposals
[Returning to the office] following the holiday season, [I found the]
latest complimentary issue of Summit magazine waiting for me. Although not
currently active in federal procurement policy, I found it a pleasant start to
the New Year – the best issue to date. It’s inviting, broadly informative,
balanced, educating and well laid out. I might, in my advancing years, wish
for a larger font, but I realize that’s a trade-off with quantity of material
to cover. I particularly appreciated the story on the MMI and the articles by
Wilson, Lalonde, Asner and Gordon.
I invite you to consider future coverage on this statement in Lalonde’s
article: “Trying to prepare a fair, challenge-proof RFP for telecommunications
services has to be one of the most daunting takes in federal procurement
today.” Complexity is always a challenge to communicate. Therefore, those who
can do it well provide a great public service to vendors, procurement
officials and taxpayers. I have long held the view that the cost to taxpayers
of a fair and equitable procurement process has not yet been well told. [It]
would be interesting to follow a high profile procurement and a routine one
from the cost-of-procurement perspective. It might make the current debate
over appropriate transition costs a little more informed.
Martin C. Dunn, Voluntary Sector Project Office
Treasury Board Secretariat
Note: Summit reserves the right to edit letters to
the Editor.
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