"During 2009 the ministry spent over $20 million buying IT services from vendors. We audited the ministry's processes to buy IT services and our findings were not encouraging," acting auditor Brian Atkinson said this week, as he released a report detailing the findings of recent audits of several government agencies.
His report urges the health ministry to set up a process for debriefing companies that make unsuccessful bids about how they ranked, as well as an appeal mechanism to deal with vendors' complaints.
"When vendors do not know their evaluation score, they perceive the evaluation processes as not fair or competitive," the report said.
"Lack of fair, competitive and transparent processes, or a process that is perceived to be not fair and competitive, increases the risk of loss of public confidence, reputation and future access to quality services."
Some requests for proposals put out to shortlisted suppliers lacked description of the ministry's complete evaluation criteria for awarding the work, the auditor also found.
"The ministry did not always document its evaluation of the proposals consistently," said Atkinson.
The auditor noted there's already been movement in areas of concern, with the ministry reporting that its IT policy manual has been updated as of April.
But he also cited the ability of IT vendors to hire or assign staff to ministry projects.
"The vendor managers often hired individuals from their own organizations for these projects. The ministry needs to ensure that its own employees are the ones making the decision to hire employees of IT vendors," Atkinson said.
Brenda Jameson, chief operating officer for the ministry's health information solutions centre, said there is always a government staff person present in interviews to bring on project staff.
Jameson said the ministry was satisfied that the auditor's report didn't call into question the overall fairness and transparency of the system.
In contrast, a 2009 report by Ontario's auditor general portrayed eHealth Ontario as an agency with little accountability that circumvented procurement policies.
"Yes, there's always room for improvement," she said.
"But for the most part we were pleased that the auditor confirmed that we had open, transparent processes and that those aren't an issue for us like they are in some other jurisdictions."
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Angela Hall
Quelle/Source: The Regina Leader-Post, 05.06.2010
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