Meeting: January 21, 2012
On January 21st, 2012, the Media Club of Ottawa and Algonquin College School of Journalism presented a half-day workshop at the Algonquin Campus by Marion Soubliere, author of Getting Work with the Federal Government: A Guide to Figuring out the Federal Procurement Puzzle.
Members of the Media Club, non-members and students took part in a highly informative presentation, and got an insightful look into the federal government’s procurement process. The content of the workshop provided a valuable toolbox to help writers, journalists and other communicators understand the process by which government departments and crown corporations buy services, and to get access to valuable information
The government is moving away from doing communications internally in favour of contracting out, said Marion. Then she noted that 20 percent of civil servants ñ the boomer generation of bureaucrats – will be eligible to retire this year.
Marion provided participants with tips on how to update a profile at least every three months to avoid having it removed from government files because it has been inactive, offered a helpful chart with examples of average per diem ceiling fees that writers with different years of experience received for various writing contracts, and demystified some government jargon and terminology.