Achi news desk-
Red tape is making it too difficult for Canadian tech companies to sell to the government, according to a new report from an industry group — and all that red tape is keeping them from a bigger slice of the billions being made spend on procurement.
In some cases, companies find it easier to sell to foreign governments, said Laurent Carbonneau, director of policy and research at the Council of Canadian Innovators, which represents Canada’s technology sector.
Companies want to “sell a good product at a fair price to the government, and they find it very, very difficult to do that because there are a lot of institutional barriers that stop them,” he said in an interview.
Carbonneau said he has talked to companies in the cybersecurity and health technology space that can sell to other countries “without too much trouble.”
“In fact, they do so enthusiastically and they wish they could sell in Canada, but their own governments make it very difficult for them to do so.”
In the cyber security sector, Canadian companies sell three times as much to other countries as they do to Canadian public sector clients, said the report co-authored by Carbonneau.
The email you need for the day’s top news stories from Canada and around the world.
The report, released Wednesday, says procurement from various levels of government amounts to nearly 15 percent of Canada’s GDP.
The federal process has led to scandals like the Phoenix pay system debacle, and it doesn’t serve the government’s own purposes, he said, citing a report by the auditor general that said a third of “government digital applications that are critical to mission” in bad. health.
The obstacles that companies face include the government being too specific about what it is looking for, and a lack of dialogue which means that the companies are unable to ask questions without risking giving’ the best for trade secrets, says Carbonneau.
“When you’ve got a problem solved, it’s very easy to set the specifications for what you need and say, OK, now everyone’s competing on price for this and we need exactly this and nothing else,” he said.
“That’s actually a really bad way to buy software and any kind of innovative product where the parameters could change during development.”
Having a very complex system means that what ultimately matters is “your ability to navigate the system and not what you actually bring to the table.”
The process is also long and cumbersome, meaning companies can be left waiting for months or years, according to the report.
“Layers of bureaucratic approvals, while individually justifiable, collectively extend the process beyond timelines reasonable for commercial entities,” it reads.
Canada could learn from systems in other countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Finland, according to the report.
He suggests that the federal government could copy Finland by creating an agency or using an existing agency to act as a bridge between the government and Canadian companies.
The Government should also “consider a blunt instrument in the form of an ambitious procurement target for SMEs,” he said.
& copy 2024 The Canadian Press
