Published in Canadian Public Administration: “Breaking All the Rules: Information Technology Procurement in the Government of Canada”
I’m really thrilled that our research article on government IT procurement was recently published in Canadian Public Administration. It’s a bit over two years since Prof. Amanda Clarke and I began this research project, and this article being published is in some ways the final milestone of that work.
The article is open access, and you can read it online (or download the PDF version). Here’s the upshot:
We reveal that the federal government betrays accepted best practice in modern government IT procurement on several key dimensions, including on contract values and lengths; on the diversity of suppliers; on the source of IT expertise; and in the management of intellectual property. We argue that the Canadian approach to IT procurement is an historically overlooked but crucial driver of its failing digital reform efforts. We conclude by turning to IT procurement policy reforms gaining traction outside Canada that may help the Government of Canada improve how it buys and deploys IT going forward—a task we argue is essential if the government wants to avoid future IT contracting scandals and deliver on its long-standing promise of digital era modernization.
I’m really grateful to Prof. Clarke, to Chantal Brousseau and Anne-Michèle Lajoie who were research assistants on the project, and to my former department and the Canada School of Public Service for the opportunity to work on this. I’m also grateful to the many friends and fellow public servants who contributed ideas, feedback, or help troubleshooting R code (thanks Lucas!), to Prof. Evert Lindquist from the Canadian Public Administration journal, and to the anonymous peer reviewers for their feedback and comments.
Along the way this research project included publishing a website analyzing Government of Canada contracts, being featured in news coverage from a variety of publications, almost presenting at the 2022 FWD50 conference (which Prof. Clarke was fortunately able to do and which you can watch on the FWD50 Access platform), and speaking on several occasions at the House of Commons’ Government Operations committee. It’s been a fun adventure!
Alongside the published article, you can read our Guide to Reforming IT Procurement or read the preprint version shared in July.
This research had its origins in an Ottawa Civic Tech volunteer open data project that started in 2017. Ottawa Civic Tech recently started up again after a pandemic hiatus – if you live in Ottawa you should definitely check it out!
If you love procurement reform…
Coming up on October 10 (next week!), the FWD50 digital government conference is having their all-online day (in addition to hybrid and in-person sessions later in November).
Warren Smith (my UK procurement reform hero) is one of the presenters. Is a “public procurement renaissance” overdue? Heck yeah!
You can get tickets online on the FWD50 website. I’ll be attending virtually & hope to see you there!
Also at the end of October, I’ll be presenting at the Canadian Open Data Summit in Edmonton about the R data analysis that went into this project. It’s a great community of open data folks (also relevant to my day job) and I’m looking forward to being there!