The McGuinty government is tightening its belt and that means some changes in the way it handles consulting contracts.
From now on, consulting services will be open to a fully competitive and transparent process. That means that the government and all its agencies will no longer allow sole-sourced contracts for consulting services.
Under the new rules, the Ontario government and all its agencies–that includes Hydro One, Infrastructure Ontario and Ontario Power Generation–will not pay consultants for any hospitality, incidental and food expenses. Expenses related to flights, train and car travel and hotel rooms will continue to be reimbursed by the government and its agencies.
The new rules take effect immediately and include consulting services for policy, communications and IT projects.
According to the government of Ontario website, the province has been cutting back on consultants for a while now. Consulting expenditures in 2001/02 were $656 million and have been reduced to $389 million in 2007/08-a reduction of 41 per cent.
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Yes… but that only applies to the provincial government. If you want to see a sole sourcing process in action for a large investment of hundreds of millions of dollars check out the City of Ottawa and the redevelopment of Lansdowne Park. The Council stopped a competitive design & development process to negotiate with a consortium that submitted an unsolicited proposal. The Council will vote on whether to accept or reject the proposal after the consortium and city staff finish negotiations. In the meantime the city and consortium are unable to discuss the negotiations, including the criteria against which the proposal is being evaluated.