Contracts, Flat-Foreheads and Ghosts

Yesterday when I was watching the news, lo and behold, there was another story about the e-Health imbroglio. This time it was about a consultant not having a contract setting out terms and deliverables. Why was this raised? Well because she had completed the work and then it was identified that she couldn't get paid because no contract existed between e-Health and this individual.

Cut to the final scene....after multiple emails back and forth between senior level people, it was finally decided that as she had done the work, regardless of whether a contract existed she was to be paid.

This is a regular practice in private sector and I'm sure that if one looked hard enough (or maybe even not so hard) you'd find it in public as well. And the pitfalls are enormous.

I have been decrying this for years (and have a flat forehead from banging my head against the wall) trying to get people to understand the massive risk undertaken. For example, if there is no contract, there is no confidentiality. If there is no contract, intellectual property is swinging in the wind. If there is no contract, if the services/goods do not perform what they were supposed to...too bad, the organization is on the hook to pay. If there is no contract, the organization maintains all the liability associated with the performance of the goods and services....And so on.

I have seen the bad and the ugly of this situation. Now on the other hand...many contracts are way too onerous and take too long to negotiate, about piddly, non-meaning things, which are in a contract just because (perhaps to make sure lawyers get paid). So simplification of contracts should occur too -- shouldn't be a one size fits all scenario.

And what other lesson was learned by this most recent issue at e-Health? That talking to colleagues is better than emailing, because emails can come back to haunt you!

If it would look bad in a headline...don't do it!

"I think there's less than meets the eye and less than meets the headline with respect to the story."

...Colin Powell

For years, whenever someone asked me about a potential ethical dilemma, I always gave the same advice:

1. Because you are asking me about it, means that your gut is telling you that it is inappropriate so .... follow your "gut"
2. If you wouldn't want to see it in a headline...don't do it!!

Interestingly, the retort I usually got back from the latter usually was "Well, that's unfair, because headlines are taken out of context." Well duh...no kidding...that's the point...there is generally no context to news stories.

Which brings me to the "scandal" around E-Health Ontario. I know there are two sides to this story -- Sarah Kramer was brought in to kick start an organization that had woefully gone off track and spent hundreds of millions of dollars with nothing to show for it. She most assuredly was given short timelines to begin showing results, so perhaps shortcuts were taken. To follow pure public procurement rules/procedures results in onerous delays, which is why we often see the government's not achieving as much (or much of anything) as they should -- although they can always say ..it was a fair/open and transparent process-- but at the end of the day..the process may not demonstrate value for money.

So understand, I'm not defending Ms. Kramer (and btw I don't know her), but what I am saying is there is a lot more to this story than is written in the media.

So that brings me back to the headline issue. You see if Ms. Kramer had stopped for 1 minute and asked herself that question, she would have ensured that there was a significant amount of documentation for sole-sourcing -- explanations that were bullet-proof (perhaps there are, but you figure, if there were they would have been made public by now). So the headlines of "untendered, multi-million dollar contracts" could have been quickly addressed with this type of document/business case/justification.

But that wouldn't have gotten rid of the issue of expense claims by the consultants, the coffee and muffin and the now infamous Chocobites. Interestingly, a number of years ago, one of my staff was travelling and tried to expense a $1.50 coffee at the airport. I didn't allow the expense, and the rationale was this...if you were in the office at that time, would you have gone down to Timmies and bought a coffee, or was there a coffee machine in your cubical I wasn't aware of? Needless to say, there were never any such claims made again.

I have travelled on behalf of clients and when I do my expenses, number 1, line up with their specific corporate policy. Secondarily, I don't expense coffee or anything below $10 actually, and if I have a glass of wine at dinner, I don't expense that either -- it is my choice -- a want not a need! And in fact, if I am working for a client in the Toronto Area, I only charge for parking...no mileage, no meals -- and my rates are significantly below those charged by the E-Health consultants -- and I consider myself to be very good at what I do...

So shame on the consultants for expensing these claims, and shame on whoever was reviewing the invoices for allowing them (not to mention the one where the consultant supposedly billed for consulting to herself -- error or not, it should have been picked up by somebody). Perhaps these expense claims never made it to Sarah Kramer, but inevitably the buck would stop at her door.

The travesty began when someone agreed to a contract that allowed for these claims to be made...disbursements in professional services can cost more that the per diem rates...but many corporations fail to put a lid on disbursements when negotiating this contract.

So remember -- no headlines please...if individuals dealt with corporations money as if it was their own..there would be peace and harmony for all :)