Public IT Tenders in Québec: Why You See So Few of Them

Nadia runs a 22-person software development and application support firm in Laval. She sees very few public IT tenders, and the ones she sees draw a crowd. Both impressions show up in the figures, and they share the same explanation.

We looked at 15,906 information processing and telecommunications contracts awarded in Québec between 2021 and 2025: software upkeep and technical support, licences and subscriptions, development and professional services, hosting and cloud, telephony and telecom links. The buyers are health network institutions, Québec government departments and agencies, universities and large cities.

Most contracts do not go through a call for tenders

Across all the sector's contracts, 23% go through a call for tenders. That is the smallest share of awards made by tender of the eight sectors we measured. In civil engineering, the share put out to competition reaches 86%.

76.7% of the sector's contracts are awarded by mutual agreement.

Computer hardware, which we measure as a separate class, is in a comparable but not identical situation: 27% of its contracts go through a call for tenders. Information processing therefore goes further still.

The competition figures that follow all bear on that share put out to competition, or 3,711 contracts. It covers public calls for tenders, calls for tenders by invitation, which are addressed only to the firms that were solicited, and purchases made through a mandated body or a group of organisations.

What gets awarded directly is mostly what is already installed

The sector's direct awards are first and foremost software upkeep and technical support, licences and subscriptions. In other words, the renewal of systems already in place. Development, integration and professional services, by contrast, go through a call for tenders more often.

Among the sector's direct awards that declare a reason on SEAO, 61.0% cite an amount below the public tendering threshold, and 17.4% cite one of the exceptions set out in law, such as a sole supplier or urgency. That share is read on the 59.4% of direct awards that actually declare a reason; the rest publish none.

When a tender is issued, it is often contested

A tender in this sector receives on average 3.9 bids. That is the second highest figure of the eight sectors we measured, behind civil engineering and its 4.1.

The average covers two different realities, though. The median is 2 bids, and 34.5% of the sector's tenders receive only one. On public notices alone, that share drops to 20.4%. Calls for tenders by invitation, which are addressed only to the firms that were solicited, are far more often uncontested. The average is therefore pulled upward by a minority of heavily contested notices.

For a firm hesitating to invest several days in a response, that is the nuance that matters: notices are rare, and they are not all worth the same.

What the price gaps say

The median gap between the two lowest bids is 13.8%. In civil engineering, it is 7.8%.

Among tenders with at least two opening prices published, 26.0% are decided by less than a 5% gap. In the others, the distance between the two best prices is 5% or wider.

That fits a market where the object of the contract is rarely standard. Two firms pricing the same development mandate do not count the same number of days, and comparing prices does not mean the same thing as in a resale market.

What this changes for your next bid

Watching published notices shows you only a small part of the sector. Most contracts are awarded without a call for tenders. Those contracts appear on SEAO when they are awarded: there was no tender to watch for. Building business development on published notices alone means looking at less than a quarter of the sector.

And not every notice is open to you. Among contracts put out to competition, some are by invitation: the notice exists, but it is addressed only to the firms that were solicited.

The decisive moment often comes before the tender. When a contract covers the upkeep, support or licensing of an existing system, the question of competition is largely settled by the initial choice of that system.

When a notice does come out, expect company. 20.4% of the sector's public notices receive a single bid, but the others often draw several.

Method

These figures are measured from the open data of Québec's electronic tendering system (SEAO), covering contracts awarded between 2021 and 2025. A contract is counted once, whatever the number of lots or amendments.

The class "information processing and related telecommunications services" is the one the public body declares itself on SEAO when publishing its notice. We do not recode it.

The share put out to competition covers public calls for tenders, calls for tenders by invitation, and purchases made through a mandated body or a group of organisations. All the competition figures on this page, number of bidders and price gaps, are measured on that share, or 23% of the sector.

The breakdown by type of service, upkeep and licences on one side, development and professional services on the other, is read from the wording of the notices, which follows no imposed nomenclature. It describes a tendency, not an exact measure.

The price gap is measured on tenders that received at least two published total amounts. They represent 65.3% of the sector's tenders that received at least two bids. Unit prices, which are not comparable with one another, are excluded. SEAO does not publish the evaluation method used: our measure therefore describes how dense price competition is, without distinguishing an award to the lowest price from a quality-price grid.

Sources

Further reading

This analysis is part of our sector series, published from our corpus of Québec public contracts. The full set is gathered in our data and analysis.