MTCU Employment Services Transformation Update

April 18, 2019

In February, the Ontario government announced its plan to transform Ontario’s employment services by introducing a new model to manage the employment services system more effectively to meet the needs of job seekers, businesses and communities.

Today the Ministry of Training Colleges and University (MTCU) announced they are preparing to introduce their competitive process for determining the service system managers for employment services across the province, starting with three prototype communities.

As a first step, MTCU will be engaging interested organizations in an open dialogue, inviting them to bring their perspectives on a future employment and training system to the ministry, through a market sounding approach as part of its plan to transform the employment services system. ‘Market sounding’ is the process of communicating with potential parties in advance of creating an agreement.

The ministry would like to engage with potential vendors to:

Gather feedback and input on the proposed model
Inform MTCU’s early thinking and potential approach to a future system for employment and training
Better understand the current marketplace
Validate its current thinking

To achieve this, MTCU will be hosting a vendor market day on May 15, 2019.

This event will provide interested organizations with more detailed information to help expand their understanding of the transformation, generate interest from the vendor community, and provide interested organizations with the chance to identify opportunities for innovation in the delivery model. Organizations must complete an application to attend this day.

May 16, 2019 has been set aside for MTCU to host one-on-one follow-up sessions, which is also by registration only.

At this time, there is no new information on which three communities will roll out the system first, nor what will be used to define those geographic areas. There is also no information on timelines for the roll out, although ODEN believes that successful bidders could be announced in Fall 2019.

MTCU has released a market sounding document that includes a registration form and pre-event questionnaire for the vendor market day. It is available now on the Ontario Tenders Portal. Members can follow this link to reach the home page of the Tender Portal. You do not require a user login to access the information. Members can find the information under the Public Sector Opportunities heading and click on the Current Opportunities link.

Once there, the Invitation to Market Sounding for Employment Services Transformation can be found under Row 60 – Tender #11235. There are instructions and a separate link at the end of the Tender document (see Published Lots section) that will take members to the application for the Market Sounding day on May 15, 2019. You must click on the print icon on the right of the screen to open and download the PDF document.

All questions regarding the market sounding exercise may be directed to Doris Poon, Senior Procurement Consultant at doris.poon@ontario.ca.

It is important to note that the market sounding exercise is not a formal competitive bidding process. It is issued for information gathering and sharing purposes only.

ODEN has also been informed that there will be information sessions scheduled for the week of April 29, 2019 which will be open to any EO or ODSP employment service providers who would like more information, but are not interested in competing to be a service system manager.

Details for these information sessions are expected next week.

Also see Employment Service notices on the MTCU website posted April 18, 2019, including:

As more information comes available, ODEN will continue to inform our members.

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