The public sector is not the private sector!

By : Pierre-Antoine Ferron

M.P.A., D.P.A., B.A.

The author has been a civil servant in the federal, municipal and provincial sectors in Canada for 40 years.

Note : My opinions are personal and do not reflect the opinion of my employer in any way.

When you enrol in public administration courses, you learn pretty quickly that the public sector is not the private sector and the key differences. The private sector has only one objective: profits, while in western democracies, the public administration exists to administer laws and services voted by elected officials.

This fact entails putting in place strict regulations and controls to ensure equity, transparency and accountability (the latter especially to ensure public money is well spent) that the private sector (and the population in general) has scant knowledge of.

Putting these necessary controls in place inevitably results in labor intensive efforts for governments, hence delays in planning Requests for Proposals (RFP’s) to take into account parameters that the private sector simply doesn’t have to take into account.

Unfortunately, public procurement is rarely taught in universities.

Public procurement in democracies is ruled by a set of common principles detailed in the table below.

Public procurement general principles

All government procurement is public

Reasons

1. Giving markets an even chance to bid

2. Reducing corruption and collusion

3. Transparency (accountability)

Government procurement should not be directed towards specific vendors

1. Giving markets an even chance to bid

2. Reducing corruption and collusion

3. Transparency (accountability)

Government RFP’s are contracts that supersede any vendor’s contracts

1. Enforcing laws and regulations

2. Enforcing sovereignty

3. Promoting interoperability

Government shall not use contractors to write RFP’s

1. Giving markets an even chance to bid

2. Reducing corruption and collusion

Now in the last decades, new and additional government procurement principles have been proposed in several governments and by standards organizations and implemented at varying degrees (or not at all) by democratic governments for the following reasons :

1. Reducing corruption and collusion in public markets;

2. Improving transparency and public accountability;

3. Promoting national sovereignty;

4. Reducing risks coming from increasingly active foreign adversaries.

Emerging public procurement general principles

Implementing affirmative disclosure of government contracts (Global Open Contracting Principles)

Reasons

1. Reducing corruption and collusion

2. Transparency (accountability)

3. Monitoring contract overruns publicly (transparency)

Signing Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA’s) with vendors during RFP processes should be the very rare exception

1. Giving markets an even chance to bid

2. Reducing corruption and collusion

3. Transparency (accountability)

Public policies should translate automatically into public procurement standards

1. Giving markets an even chance to bid

2. Enforcing sovereignty

3. Promoting interoperability

For IT: Open Source industries must be considered in all procurement RFP’s

1. Enforcing sovereignty

2. Promoting interoperability

3. Giving markets an even chance to bid

RFP’s should be neutral (no vendor’s solutions names) and based on internationally recognized standards

1. Giving markets an even chance to bid

2. Governments should make procurement laws that allow for public negotiations with vendors

3. Giving markets an even chance to bid

Including contract clauses barring foreign adversaries under state sanctions to bid on public RFP’s

1. Enforcing sovereignty

2. National security

RFP’s should aim to resolve problems through solutions, not the reverse

1. Solve identified problems

In the next article in this series, I will examine the common problems faced by governments regarding procurement and possible ways to solve them.