Week Five

I was not able to complete my department consultation this week. The staffs I had to meet with are not available until next week because of tight schedules. Nonetheless, I am hoping to meet them next week to complete my consultation and start working on a draft proposal for the surveillance policy. The draft policy will not have a private impact assessment (PIA) done because PIA’s are not mandatory for video surveillance according to the FOIP commissioner. PIA is more of a due diligence; however, if a municipality or public body has a big project to undertake, then conducting a PIA might be a reasonable way to go. An example of a big project could be expecting tens of thousands of people to attend a BVJ event for a couple of days on a city facility which has surveillance cameras, or having a hockey fest on Whyte Ave in Edmonton where you could expect tens of thousands of people attending. In such cases, a PIA can be considered to assess any privacy concerns for this time period considering the number of people that maybe attending for this period.

I started working on reviewing the purchasing policy this week. I examined the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA), and the New West Partnership Trade Agreement (NWPTA).



The AIT was the federal level agreement, TILMA was the trade agreement between British Columbia and Alberta, and NWPTA is built on TILMA and it includes trade agreements with Saskatchewan.



The main focus of these agreements is to achieve two main things for the West and how trade should be conducted. They include reducing to the minimum or eliminating trade barriers between these provinces, as well as ensuring that goods and services that are procured above the dollar value of $75,000 and construction projects that are above $200,000 are open to all businesses in these provinces to ensure healthy competition.

The reason why these agreements are important to municipalities is because they are part of the entities categorized into what is called municipalities, academic institutions, school boards, and the health sector (MASH), and these entities have to adhere to limitations for procurement in accordance with the above Trade agreements.

I examined some purchasing policies of some municipalities in Alberta. I looked Spruce Grove, St Albert, Grande Prairie, Edmonton, and Red Deer. Some had detailed procurement procedures, while some had some uninteresting and bland, should I add, policies. Nevertheless, what stood out to me was the sustainability purchasing protocol that some municipalities had. That was quiet interesting. I am curious as to if Camrose has a sustainable approach in its purchasing protocols at the department level. My curiosity arises from the fact that the city was very involved in the Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI). Hopefully, I get some answers when I conduct a department level consultation. As well, I contacted some colleagues with AUMA and other capacity interns working on policy reviews for some tips - they were very helpful. I am still waiting for a response from AUMA.

I hope to gain some knowledge, when I hopefully complete the review, on the following: the tendering and bidding process involved in the purchasing process, centralized or decentralized, the considerations—price, warranties, quality, durability-- that are made in the purchasing, council deliberations on large purchases, how adjustments are made in the operating analysis budget for projects overruns, and how corporate credit is used and other payments made during transactions. Ideally, I look to gain a fairly decent working knowledge of municipal purchasing process. Purchasing, in my opinion, is an activity every business has to engage in; therefore, the more exposure I have with this process at the municipal level, the more informed and adept I will be if I ever get to be involved in procurement in my future career at the international level.

I consulted with Diane, head of finance, this afternoon about the purchasing policy. Our discussion exposed areas of the policy that needed some review. Internal controls for purchases and the approval process were areas of concern. As well, some other areas of interest were how department heads could find alternatives to move money between projects, and how corporate credit cards could be better used and the limitations on them could also be reviewed. Doug Campbell (fleet management) and Diane Hansen (materials management) are staff I will be talking to next week. I also learnt not to try to reinvent the wheel but rather look at existing policies by other municipalities to help shape my review.