Mr. Chairman, first off I will speak to the incentive part of it. Approximately 25 years ago, we standardized on HP equipment at the data centre. We have been operating almost exclusively with their equipment since then. This purchase was specifying Hewlett Packard equipment only. So there was no incentive on the part of HP to avoid going to public tender because we wouldn't have accepted anything other than HP equipment.
With respect to the timing, timing was less than an issue here than the Member was indicating. The real rationale for us going sole-source was again the fact that Hewlett Packard was the only supplier of 80 percent of this equipment. So under the contract regulations, that was justification for a sole-source contract. There is no other supplier.
Probably from an operational review, there is a great deal of advantage to us in having one supplier for this equipment, having the order placed with one group that is then responsible for supply, installation, troubleshooting, warranty, configuring of all of these individual pieces of equipment to work together as a total system. It was important for us that even the small pieces of equipment that were part of the order were installed by the same people who were installing the large pieces that we had to get from HP. This is a highly complex system and it will take Hewlett Packard factory-trained software engineers and hardware engineers to install it and get it functioning in our environment. So that was a primary consideration for us.
There is a time pressure with respect to the Health and Social Services project. They do have scheduled, for the consultants that are working to develop their system, for the end of this month and the system has to be delivered and installed in time for them to do that, but that was less of an issue at the time the tender was put out than the other points that I have raised.