The first nine files of this sub-series are non-docket files, dealing with administrative-management issues of the Department of Supply and Services (goals, procurement policy, budget, personnel, etc). The rest consists of records, in departmental jackets, and illuminates minister/deputy minister meetings, minister-executive committee meetings and departmental Senior Management Committee meetings. There are memos to the minister from his chief-of-staff, N. Mulder. When particularly large, especially when they contain supplementary material, the files are in expandable accordion files. They consist of agendas, correspondence, memos, briefing papers, circulars, reports, submissions, occasional clipping, notes and marginalia.
This sub-series reflects Dick's management of DSS, and the government's policies and programs in the area of procurement. The records of the high-level meetings reflect decision-making at the highest departmental level and how these decisions modulated policies, shaped programs and impacted on operations of the department. In their sum, they elucidate how public monies were spent in one of the largest operational departments of the federal government dealing with federal procurement (and the political "regional" aspects of procurement), the major directions in trying to make government operations more efficient (especially in the area of information management) and to improve management overall, the inter-relationship between government and business, the major areas of budget expenditures, the tracking of projects, the assessment of operational activities and so on. This sub-series also addresses issue of personnel and management within the department itself.
In sum, this sub-series reflects departmental operations and the effort to improve them, the effort to improve over-all government performance, self-auditing of expenditures and federal government procurement for its needs.
