Project Title:
BizPaL - Business Transformation Consulting (BTC) Services
Background:
The Department of Innovation Science and Economic Development (ISED) requires the services of Business Transformation Consultants (BTCs) to provide strategic guidance and innovation advisory services to support decision making, as it relates to the enhancement and evolution of the BizPaL service. The services will be required for a potential period of up to three years: (1) one year contract, commencing from the contract award date as well as two additional (1) year options.
Below is a high-level summary of the BizPaL service:
Canadian businesses continue to indicate that the complexity and burden of government regulation reduces productivity and limits innovation. Doing business with multiple layers of government is not a straightforward task and businesses find themselves spending too much time complying with government regulations, with SMEs bearing a disproportionately high amount of the burden. SMEs have an expectation that governments need to work together collaboratively to enable business to grow and prosper across Canada.
Launched in 2006, BizPaL is an online service that simplifies the business permit, licence and other compliance regulation processes for entrepreneurs, governments and third-party business service providers. The BizPaL service is a unique multi-jurisdictional partnership involving all three levels of government (federal, provincial/territorial municipal) in the delivery of shared services to business. This partnership operates under a shared governance and costing model with a collaborative decision making process. ISED is the steward of the BizPaL service and provides leadership on behalf of the Government of Canada through the National BizPaL Office (NBO) who is responsible for managing the partnership’s governance structure, in addition to being the centre of expertise and development for BizPaL federal content. The BizPaL content is also integrated in each partner’s provincial websites and over 850 municipalities, making it available to 74% of the Canadian population.
The BizPaL approach is to benefit from participating governments and leverage the partnership’s business model and infrastructure to deliver innovative services to business. The approach must be scalable so that it can be applied across multiple levels of governments, allowing them to deliver a service that tackles the complexity of the various regulatory requirements and jurisdictional differences that SMEs need to navigate.
BizPaL is a recognized model for the type of collaborative and client-centred program simplification that is being embraced across government to position Canadian SMEs for success as part of the Inclusive Innovation Agenda. Specifically, BizPaL demonstrates how various levels of government can work together to align complementary programs and streamline requirements, as much as possible to support SME competitiveness. Of note, the BizPaL partnership recently completed a performance measurement initiative that showed SMEs save approximately $173 for every $1 of government investment in BizPaL.
Project Requirement / Objective:
BizPaL’s continued success is contingent on active and sustained participation from the three levels of government that form the BizPaL partnership. In support of BizPaL’s continuous improvement, the BizPaL Steering Committee (SC) membership requires ongoing third-party expert advice to inform decision-making on a strategic renewal and planning for the enhancement and evolution of the BizPaL service.
The proposed resource will provide strategic guidance and recommendations necessary to yield decisions on matters relating to the horizontal and strategic perspectives of the program. (I.e. governance frameworks, strategic innovation, cost models, marketing, client experience, improving or enhancing IM/IT elements of the service etc.) Periodically during face-to-face meetings, the proposed resource may be asked to facilitate or lead those discussions with the partnership network in an effort to reach key decisions.
The BTC will also be required to provide strategic advice to evolve the Information Architecture (IA) of BizPaL through research, strategy, design, implementation and documentation. The work will be conducted on an as required basis to support the evolution of BizPaL and to align it with the goals and objectives of the Government of Canada (GOC) within the context of the BizPaL partnership. The BTC will be responsible for communicating IM/IT concepts to the participating partners of the BizPaL governance.
