Micro Procurement and Incremental Innovations
Governments in Canada can drive steady innovation by leveraging and contributing back to open source tools that they are already using. Around the world governments have successfully used this approach to address technological challenges that they are faced with. A large investment in micro procurement could help shape greater collaboration both inside and outside of government.
While it would be hard to argue that “eureka” moments don’t occasionally happen, most innovations tend to occur through incremental change. There’s a long tradition of simply trying to apply one set of tools in a different context. There are a number of patents which have been granted for just this type of situation.
The Government of Canada (GC) is a particularly unique environment. That said, as with every other organization, it consistently need to adapt to new technology. Aligning any new technology to a public sector context will require customization.
If the public sector is going to successfully transition to becoming either a digital government or an open government, implementing an approach that can provide for incremental change is going to be key. We can be confident that what we need today isn’t going to be the same as what we need tomorrow.
It is also important to note that the needs of government are not universal across the different sectors or departments of governments. There are teams and tasks who may legitimately need customized requirements. Not all teams work in both official languages, while others will need to comply with them and provide sign language (ASL/QSL).
Working with open source software (OSS) is one way that we can use the actual needs of public sector employees to drive innovation. Open source allows the public sector to adapt an already efficient tool to one that is suited to meet their specific needs. It could be something like needing to provide accessible interfaces for the public sector, as well as the general public.
With proprietary procurement processes, the government is in a really poor position to negotiate for changes in existing contracts. Often contracts for innovative projects are barely sufficient to complete the tasks at hand, let alone allow for learning and adaptation. Innovative small businesses are often left trying to leverage sole-source contracts to engage with government. With these sole-source contracts, they are structured so that post-launch innovation often needs to wait until the next fiscal year for the next contract.
There is usually a hefty amount of legwork required to set up these contracts by both the client and the vendor; it always seems to take more time than anyone thinks it should to negotiate these, and it is rare for this extra time to be factored into the true cost of delivering the product.
An alternative solution that has already been successfully implemented within some governments is micro-procurement.
Micro procurement is a method used in the European Union (EU) to nudge ahead open source projects through bug bounties. Could the Government of Canada set up a bug bounty program based on the work of the EU? It would be very useful, for both the government and open source community, to have active bugs in the software more quickly addressed. The EU’s program is geared to security, and is awarding close to $40k CDN plus bonuses, for patches to fix active bugs. There is no reason why this would need to be limited to bugs; there is the potential for governments to propose features that would make the software better suit their needs!
Under Obama, the 18F in the USA was experimenting with what they called Modular Contracting, which included a guide to the approach used. They have also blogged extensively on modernizing government procurement, and were experimenting with Micro Purchases. The United States Digital Service is looking to change the culture of government procurement through the TechFAR Hub program. It has principles like this, which are currently inconceivable under existing GC procurement rules:
“Buy small, build small, test, and iterate. Set up each contract for a quick win, then determine how to scale that success or pivot quickly.”
In Canada, we have the BC Dev Exchange in British Columbia. They have flexible opportunities to make it easier to push ahead open source projects, or develop new ones. This could be work on a project started by the government, like BC’s Shiny app, or a more general tool like Rocket.Chat.
The BC Dev Exchange was designed to be easier for both government departments with specific needs, and for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME’s) with useful skills. There is also another option that they are experimenting with alongside government tech teams to ensure that skills and expertise can flow more freely between the two communities. Techies can innovate more effectively if they are simply allowed to talk freely with each other.
It was really exciting to see the Government of Canada set up the GC Dev Exchange in an effort to emulate the success of the BC government. Unfortunately, after a couple failed attempts, this project was cancelled. It is likely that this failed as departments were not willing to invest in this micro-procurement experiment.
In 2018 I put forward ten $10k project ideas that were simple enough and which allow for innovation, using tools the government has already employed. These were just high-level views of what was possible and what would help to better address existing user needs. Unfortunately, it required a champion within government who wanted to experiment with this model of innovation.
The GC Dev Exchange should have been backed by at least a million dollars (in its first year) so that at least a hundred $10k projects could be delivered. This type of commitment would help with improvements in open source, accessibility, security, and most importantly, in starting to build an ecosystem of businesses and freelancers who are looking to partner with government.
If we want to have an innovative government, then we need to be able to respond to the needs of the user. If we can’t address their concerns quickly, they won’t even think about suggesting new features that would help them do their jobs better.
It’s not too late to make projects like this a priority. It is useful to remember that a million dollars is just a drop in the bucket for our current Government of Canada IT spending.
If you like these ideas, who in government should be responsible for seeing them fully realized? If you’ve heard of other ways to set up small agile procurement, please include them here.
We want to know what you think about this series. If you liked this, watch this space for links to upcoming articles.
- Government Procurement is Stagnating Canadian Innovation
- Proprietary Procurement is Stopping Open Innovation in Canada
- Innovation, Procurement and Sustainability
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