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.