The Supply of Policy and Management Consultancies to Canadian Federal Departments: New Evidence on Contract Size, Type and Structure

Abstract

The use of external consultants in government has been an increasingly important focus of attention in many countries, including Canada. Numerous studies were undertaken in the 1990s and 2000s as legislatures and their accounting arms became concerned with this practice but they yielded little information on key questions such as the average size of contracts and their dispersion. Utilizing a new federal government dataset compiled from data released since the creation of the Federal Accountability Act in Canada, beside the increasing demand for consulting services, we find a trend emerging in supply whereby a small group of companies have began to dominate federal government management consulting in terms of the size of contract awarded. However the vast majority of contracts remain small and medium-sized and often involve repeat services, resulting in a complex system of consulting activity and impacts across different units.