I was a deputy minister for 17 years. I never saw management consulting firms get involved in policy development—ever. It's just not their wheelhouse. At least it wasn't, up to the point at which I left government. That's my experience.
Where they have been helpful to government departments and agencies is in management and service delivery. They have global client bases and international rosters of expertise or they're small firms with niche expertise, so they tend to get involved to provide an outside perspective on business processes, governance, organizational maturity, costing and risk management. There is a lot on service issues, queue management, customer relationships, web and app design, security and cybersecurity. I could go on, but basically the wheelhouse is services and management issues. That's where you see most of the activity of the firm.
If I've read the articles properly, about a third of the use of external contractors is in the world of IM and IT, which, as you know, has completely changed. There was no iPhone in 2007, so government has been catching up and keeping up with technology.
You're aware of a discussion that's under way right now about GPT and artificial intelligence. Keeping up with what's happening in technology is one of the bigger challenges for the public sector.