Oct 24 2002

Gov't jobs may go south

Murray Mandryk
Leader-Post


The Saskatchewan government is considering an exclusive "strategic partnership" with a Texas-based company proposing to "coordinate or deliver" all government information technology services, says Information Technology Minister Andrew Thomson.

And Thomson is making no apologies for any loss of government jobs that might occur, or the fact that the NDP coalition government is pursuing this deal with only the U.S. business software giant EDS instead of allowing local Saskatchewan IT companies to bid on the proposal.

"There is a lot of pressure on us in terms of the budget," Thomson said in an interview Wednesday, adding that he expected to have a preliminary proposal from EDS in December.

"It's one of the consequences of a growing wage bill -- particularly in the health sector."

While acknowledging that the strategic partnership might mean the elimination of some of 325 government jobs in information technology -- an issue that Thomson and his coalition government have already raised with the Saskatchewan Government Employees Union (SGEU) -- the minister insisted that the proposal shouldn't be characterized by job loss or even as a privatization of government services.

"I want to make it very clear that we're looking at this as a privatization deal," Thomson said.

But the minister admitted it might mean some lost government jobs -- or one-time government IT jobs now being performed by the private sector.

The Saskatchewan Party Opposition -- which first raised the prospect of EDS's proposed takeover of Saskatchewan government IT during Wednesday's meeting of the legislative Public Accounts committee -- said "privatization" is the only way to describe such a plan.

"The better line is, they've hired a Texas-based company to privatize government jobs in Saskatchewan," said Sask. Party critic Carl Kwiatkowski.

"H. Ross Perot (American billionaire, independent presidential candidate and EDS founder) would be proud."

Kwiatkowski said the Opposition has little problem with the coalition government privatizing IT jobs to cut government expenses, but said the Sask. Party has big problems with the government not tendering such a plan.

"It's completely incomprehensible than they would be doing this without tendering," the Carrot River Valley MLA said. "Now anybody can walk in and propose a contract and they (the government) just take the first contract through the door? I wonder what the private IT companies in Saskatchewan think of this deal."

Thomson acknowledged that EDS officials -- whom he says he met with "three or four times" -- did approach them with the idea of the strategic partnership as a way to increase the government's information technology capacity, streamline IT service and increase EDS's own capacity in Saskatchewan.

But the minister argued that there is no need to put this proposal to tender because "we shouldn't be re-inventing the wheel."

Thomson said before any deal is signed he will have to be satisfied that the government will be getting better IT services at lower costs, that it will lead to significant economic development and that Saskatchewan IT companies will continue to have access to significant government work.

The minister said his government has learned valuable lessons from its $60-million-plus investment in Information Services Corp. (ISC) and won't be making similar mistakes here.

But Kwiatkowski said the parallels between the EDS proposal and ISC are frightening.

"This is a lot further along than anybody thought," added Kwiatkowski, who brought the plans to light during Wednesday's public accounts meeting when he got John Law, the government's electronic service delivery coordinator to confirm that he, Crown Investment Corp. (CIC) President Frank Hart and Deputy Finance Minister Ron Styles were currently having with high-level talks with EDS officials about IT service delivery.