Improving Canadian Government Accountability?

In whom do you think our government puts more faith to accurately report the business of government:
1) me
or
2) the government departments themselves that buy the goods and contract the services from companies like mine?

Today I received an email from Public Works and Government Services Canada with respect to my company's Supply Arrangements (SAs) with their department. Many of us are familiar with PWGSC -- they're the department that handles much of the procurement for the Government of Canada, notably in the area of real property, commercial goods, and services (especially IT services). And, of course, it is also the department under the spotlight in the ongoing sponsorship scandal in the form of the Gomery Commission.

As of today, I have been duly notified that in an effort for the Government of Canada to meet its promised cost savings, once again they have decided to off-load the costs for running their programs back onto Joe Public. As of May, companies like mine are now going to be responsible for reporting ALL our supply arrangement business activity to PWGSC on a monthly basis.

Is PWGSC really going to get better accountability by requiring companies to self-report the business they are doing with the government rather than have the departments themselves report the information back to PWGSC? What message does this convey about the competency of the departments' reporting capability? Perhaps this was the process used by all those ad companies in the Sponsorship Program.

Given how busy we consultants can be (well, at least during the month of March at the end of the government fiscal year) you could forgive us for being forgetful in our reporting requirements.

Now, in the past I haven't much minded the reporting I was required to conduct for two of my Supply Arrangements (Temporary Help Services and Informatics Professional Services) with PWGSC. Afterall, it was only quarterly reporting and required just a simple acknowledgement of the department and the amount I billed them for. Shucks, I even suffered through the horrible online application that was used for ongoing self-management of my Government Online (GOL) Supply Arrangement contracts. (Which were, of course, a lot less than what we were led to believe was going to be spent on that program.) Thankfully, that GOL reporting application and the self-reporting requirement only lasted a couple of years.

So it really shouldn't have surprised me now that I'm asked to self report all my business activity with the government. Hmmm, don't I do this already at tax time? (Speaking of which...) In fact, I should really be quite flattered that the government trusts me so much to report the numbers myself.

So what's my gripe? Well, first up, all companies like ours spend considerable time and effort just trying to land Supply Arrangements and Standing Offers with the Government of Canada. For a small business like mine there is a very real cost to this effort. And at the end of this process, there is no guarantee of any work. Our reward is nothing more than an invite to the game. There's no guarantee we'll get off the bench and into the game.

So not only do we have the non-remunerated costs of landing ourselves onto the Supply Arrangements but we then have the costs of actively marketing our presence on these lists to our client departments as well as train them on using the SAs. Most of our clients don't have a clue about using these procurement vehicles and many don't even know they exist.

Then, we have the added cost of writing proposals in response to the RFPs that come through these SAs... and more proposals and more proposals and more rewrites of the original proposals. It's not uncommon to have to rewrite a proposal several times because a client or some new Finance clerk is struggling through the learning curve of how to prepare the RFP or Statement of Work to the proper tune of the agreement.

And now, even in light of the complicated and expensive financial systems in place in government, I have to tell them what they contracted me for?

Not only do I have to remind them, on a monthly basis, which supply arrangement(s) I am using, what my SA numbers are, I also have to remind them on what date the agreement started and what day it ends, the total value of the services in the contract, the amount for the current reporting period (the month), the start and end of the reporting period (hey, you asked for it monthly, you figure it out), the department that contracted me, a description of the services they are paying for, and the date it was delivered.

Whew! Am I going to have time to do the actual work for the month? Oh well, if it's anything like the Sponsorship Program, I won't really have to...

To whomever is listening out there at PWGSC, can't the contracting systems within departments spit this stuff out? Or how about given the fact that I now get a T1204 form every spring from every government department that I do business with -- the consultants equivalent of getting a T4 from an employer -- couldn't this form simply itemize whatever information you require? I promise, I'll send it back to you -- via CRA of course (you do talk to each other right?) -- annually, quarterly, monthly, whatever, along with my GST installments, my income tax installments, my payroll deductions and all the other reporting I'm already doing.

Please, give the small businesses community a break. I'm not sure that we can afford any more government accountability.