Special Initiatives
Formative Evaluation
As outlined in the 2011-2012 annual report, an independent evaluation was carried out on the effectiveness of the Office during its first three years of operation. The evaluation was consistent with Treasury Board requirements to periodically assess the value for money of federal programs.
The evaluation concluded that there is an ongoing need for the services being provided by Office of the Procurement Ombudsman (OPO) and that the mandate has been implemented as intended. The report highlighted three particular areas where additional analysis should be undertaken:
- increasing the extent of use of OPO Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) processes such as making it compulsory for government departments to participate in an ADR process once it has been requested by a supplier;
- assessing the advantages and disadvantages of expanding the mandate of OPO; and
- assessing the most appropriate communications strategy to maximize awareness of OPO among suppliers to the federal government.
Work in these areas is at various stages of completion, with the analysis of our communications approach being recently completed.
Communications Assessment
We assessed whether our current communications strategy had been effectively designed to maximize awareness of OPO among suppliers. The resulting report confirmed our suspicions supplier awareness of our Office and services continues to be low. We are pursuing several initiatives to address the report's suggestions including: making greater use of our website and social media; increasing our presence on websites and in publications of other procurement-related organizations; and dedicating additional internal resources to the identification and management of events designed to raise awareness of the Office among Canadian suppliers.
Moving forward in 2013- 2014, we will continue our work in the areas identified in the evaluation report. Continuous improvement in the way we work and promote our services will help us better serve suppliers and our stakeholders.
- Date modified: