The federal department responsible for "getting the best value for money" for IT contracts has paid nearly $ 1 billion in cost overruns to five companies since 2011.

The Bell, Rogers, Telus, Microsoft and IBM giants received about 1,700 contracts from the federal government in the last seven years, for a total value of $ 4 billion. Of this amount, no less than 911 million - nearly a quarter - were paid extra, according to a document obtained by Le Journal under the Access to Information Act.

These are the same companies that shared nearly half of the value of Ottawa's IT contracts from 2011 to 2017, Le Journal reported this spring.

"Maybe the situation deserves an investigation by the Auditor General," says a public contracts specialist, Stéphane Coudé. He finds the situation "worrying because of the value of the amounts at stake".

Blank check

"The initial value of the agreements is based on the operational needs of the moment," says Charles Anido. He added that the contract amendments are publicly disclosed and comply with the rules in place.

However, Mr. Coudé explains that the famous "options" listed in the contracts can sometimes look like "blank checks" to the giants of computing.

The specialist goes so far as to argue that cost overruns are in some cases "caused by vendor strategies that take advantage of all kinds of bid flaws, to arrive at a very low price."

Failed computer

According to the expert, companies could push up the bill with these "options" after winning a contract by filing a cheap bid.

"Then they bet that they will be able to make additions along the way, and eventually make a bigger sale," he says.

In addition to paying millions in excess of costs, the federal government is accumulating expensive computer failures, which are not included in our numbers.

On its own, the Phoenix pay system fiasco repair will cost taxpayers up to $ 2.5 billion within five years.

Federal IT spending is over $ 6 billion a year.

One-third of contracts are awarded without a call for tenders

About 30% of the 1,700 contracts awarded to five IT giants between 2011 and 2017 were concluded without a call for tenders, reveal documents obtained by Le Journal .

The federal government refers to "special circumstances" to justify the use of a non-competitive process. We quote in particular the intellectual property rights on software, like Windows, for example.

Microsoft (92%) is by far the most likely to receive untendered contracts, ahead of Rogers (60%), IBM (40%), Bell (30%) and Telus (16%).

The department responsible for IT procurement, Shared Services Canada, is familiar with "special circumstances" contracts. Last year alone, this department awarded $ 630 million in untendered contracts, out of a total of $ 1.7 billion.

Essential data

The Journal has tried to find out how many companies have also participated in the tenders won by the five biggest players in the last seven years.

But the federal government does not count the number of companies interested in its contracts, we learned. This data is however essential to know if the efforts which it leads to increase the competition and to realize economies give results, explains the specialist in public contracts Stéphane Coudé.

The Trudeau government is committed to cleaning up the way the federal government contracts.

Knowing the number of bidders, "this is an essential indicator to ensure that the under-spending is the right way," says Mr. Coudé.

Internal emails from Shared Services Canada obtained by Le Journal indicate that the bureaucrats would have "years" to calculate, as we requested, the number of bidders for the 1700 contracts won by the five computer giants.