About Us

Office of the Procurement Ombudsman

Promoting Fairness, Openness and Transparency in Federal procurement.

• Fairness: Providing equal treatment to all current and potential suppliers;
• Openness: Providing all potential suppliers with the opportunity to submit bids for government procurement;
• Transparency: Providing information to Canadians in a timely manner that facilitates public scrutiny of the decisions made and action undertaken.

Our mandate

The Office of the Procurement Ombudsman (OPO) is an independent organization with a government-wide mandate to improve fairness, openness and transparency in federal procurement. The position of Procurement Ombudsman was created by amendments to the Department of Public Works and Government Services Act enacted pursuant to the Federal Accountability Act which received Royal Assent on December 12, 2006. The Procurement Ombudsman's mandate is to:

• Review the practices of departments for acquiring goods and services to assess their fairness, openness and transparency and make any appropriate recommendations to the relevant department for the improvement of those practices;
• Review any complaint with respect to the award of a contract for the acquisition of goods below the value of $25,000 and services below the value of $100,000;
• Review any complaint with respect to the administration of a contract for the acquisition of goods or services by a department, regardless of dollar value;
• Ensure that an alternative dispute resolution process is provided, if requested and agreed to by both parties.

The Department of Public Works and Government Services Act also specifies that the Procurement Ombudsman must also perform any other duty or function respecting the practices of departments for acquiring materiel and services that may be assigned to the Procurement Ombudsman by order of the Governor in Council or the Minister.

Our commitment

• Independent - operates at arm's-length from other federal organizations;
• Unbiased - neither a lobbyist for suppliers nor an apologist for federal organizations;
• Helpful - shares best practices and demystifies the complexities of the procurement process;
• Knowledgeable - understands procurement policies, procedures, trends and good practices;
• Responsive - addresses the needs of suppliers and federal procurement communities; and
• Part of the solution - identifies systemic concerns, and makes balanced and useful recommendations to strengthen federal procurement activities.

The following framework depicts the context within which the Office of the Procurement Ombudsman conducts its daily operations. The guiding vision and mission statements rest upon three core interrelated pillars (Educate, Facilitate, Investigate) that form the basis of OPO's activities. It is important to note that the three pillars are interdependent, and each is linked to multiple aspects of federal procurement. For example, up-front education and facilitation activities may lead to a reduction in the number of complaints and investigations. Conversely, investigations and facilitations can also lead to the identification of best practices and lessons learned that feed back in to the education pillar, bringing the process full-circle.