IT procurement rules could trigger more ArriveCan-style disasters: study

Content of the article

OTTAWA — The federal government’s IT procurement rules are so bad they violate nearly every accepted best practice and will likely lead to more scandals like ArriveCan, a new research paper finds.

The study found overly long and expensive contracts, a lack of supplier diversity, a lack of prioritization of open source software, granting intellectual property (IP) rights to companies at the expense of products they develop for the government, and a “lack of in-house capabilities.”

Content of the article

“The federal government is violating nearly every globally accepted best practice for modern IT procurement, which we believe helps explain why scandals like the ArriveCAN disaster continue to occur,” Amanda Clarke, an assistant professor at Carleton and an expert on digital government, wrote in a new article.

“More importantly, we believe that unless we reform federal IT procurement to align with widely accepted IT best practices, any attempt to implement meaningful digital reforms across the Government of Canada is doomed to failure.”

In a new research paper co-authored with former federal official and government IT policy expert Sean Boots, the authors found that nearly a quarter of the nearly $20 billion spent by the government on IT contracts since 2017-18 went to three companies: IBM Canada, Bell Canada and Microsoft Canada.

They also found the government was making the same IT contracting mistakes that led to other disasters, such as the Phoenix payroll system, the Canada.ca project and, likely, the ongoing benefits modernization program.

Content of the article

Content of the article

“We haven’t heard anything specific about whether we’ll see mandatory open source, whether we’ll see a change in the regulations that currently favor vendor ownership of IP… We haven’t heard anything about interest in putting in place specific controls on IT spending,” Clarke said in an interview.

“We’re likely to see more ArriveCan-style disasters, we’re certainly going to see more projects doomed to failure,” Clarke added.

Ukraine has better (digital) services than Canada and is fighting a war

She noted that Canada lags far behind other countries when it comes to providing online services. For example, despite a promise last year that it would now be possible, Canadians still can’t apply for a passport online.

“Ukraine is a great example of a country that has invested heavily in building a smart digital infrastructure, working with local companies and using state funds to stimulate demand and competition in the local IT services market,” she said.

“Ukraine has better (digital) services than Canada and they’re at war. It’s kind of crazy.”

The authors also noted that government spending on IT services grew rapidly between 2017-18 and 2021-22. Spending on software licensing increased by 50 percent to $1.08 billion, while spending on IT consulting services increased from $1.17 billion to $1.82 billion.

Content of the article

The study, which is currently undergoing peer review, estimates that some federal departments are so dependent on IT consultants that they employ more of them than their internal IT staff.

For example, the study estimated that in 2021-2022, the ratio of independent IT workers to in-house IT workers was 151 per cent at Public Services and Procurement Canada, 131 per cent at the Canada Border Services Agency and a whopping 109 per cent at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

The authors write that the figures point to a “striking imbalance” and over-reliance by many government departments on external IT services.

“This ratio would be unthinkable in other core public sector work categories such as policy analysis, program evaluation, or communications, and is particularly striking given the central role that the IT function plays in delivering critical public services in the digital age,” the report says.

Clarke also noted that public service IT salaries are “ridiculously low” compared to the private sector.

The paper’s authors propose a number of solutions to fix federal IT services and procurement, although achieving them will take many years.

Content of the article

In the interview, Clarke highlighted two urgent changes that need to be implemented as soon as possible.

The first assumes that the government should set a maximum IT contract threshold of $2 million per year and a maximum contract duration of three years, with no possibility of extension.

“One of the most urgent things we need right now in Canada to get us going is spending controls,” she said. “Rules for the Treasury Board that say you can’t get money for a project if it exceeds our thresholds that we’ve put in place.”

The second way is for public services to hire “proven technology leaders” who have successfully designed, developed, and launched a product on time and on budget, and immediately promote them to management positions.

“If you don’t give them power, they’ll just get kicked out along with the other government house elves and they’ll leave because they’ll feel completely unfulfilled and they could make a lot more money somewhere else,” she said.

Clarke also warned that oversimplification, such as abruptly cutting spending on IT consultancy, would land the government in similar trouble.

Content of the article

[email protected]
Domestic Post

Get more of the National Post’s in-depth political reporting and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin break down what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here.

Our website is the place to go for breaking news, exclusive features, long-form features and provocative commentary. Bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter Posted here.

Content of the article