In Ottawa, of course! Everywhere you look there is that well recognized Canada logo on a sign in front of a gigantic building full of civil servants. However, the Canadian federal government is not a monolithic entity: it is made up of three distinct types of organizations: departments, agencies and crown corporations. 
Government departments are the largest organizations. They report directly to a cabinet minister in parliament. These are the departments that people think about when they think about the federal government: National Defense, Finance, Health, etc. They have tens of thousands of employees and budgets in the billions of dollars. They buy every type of hardware, software and IT service imaginable. Because of the volume of procurement, departments are bound by Treasury Board’s rules for project funding and governance.
Most departments have a number of subsidiaries. They are known as agencies, boards, commissions and councils. These units have a specific mission, are sometimes temporary, and the organizational structure varies from the parent department. Resources are sometimes shared, including procurement and IT, and their operating independence varies a great deal. It takes some research to know how much collaboration and oversight actually takes place. The needs of the agencies tend to be very specific.
The third group is made up of crown corporations. They report to a department, but tend to attract less scrutiny from parliament and the media, and therefore enjoy greater independence. The Treasury Board offers a broad set of guidelines for crown corporations, which means they follow many of the same rules as the rest of the federal government. However, that is not always the case, and the business practices vary from one crown corporation to another.
What can complicate matters is the presence of Public Works and Shared Services Canada. These two departments take the lead in optimizing the sharing of resources across departments in order to drive down costs. The accelerating trend towards consolidation and sharing has been a great opportunity for some vendors, but has left others, especially smaller suppliers, out in the cold. Thus the importance of partnering, or at least being friendly, with the leading vendor in your area of expertise.
Useful links:
- Listing of Federal departments, with related agencies and crown corporations, grouped by Minister portfolio.
- Listing of Crown Corporations.
- List of everything with links to the website. The top level civil servants are usually named on the website.
- GEDS – Government Electronic Delivery Service GEDS is the best way to find a phone number, office location and sometimes an email address for government employees. By browsing around, it can also give you the organizational hierarchy and the names of decision makers.
Now, the hard part:
Once the prospects are identified, it is a matter of matching your product or service to their needs, making contact, and then articulating the value in a way that makes sense to them. In this age of austerity, there is ample talk of cutting costs and saving money, but financial considerations and improved productivity messages do not always resonate with civil servants. The public service is interested in providing better service to citizens, reducing operational risks, and fulfilling any legislated missions. Primordial is aligning with the priorities of the current government, which can include cost cutting, but even more relevant are the immediate concerns of cabinet members and the Privy Council. More specific to IT suppliers, the message is more likely to resonate if it is on trend with the current government thinking around technology: cloud computing, shared services, software reuse, and making better use of previous investments in ERP systems.