Government work doesn't find you. It gets posted in three main places — and the companies that win watch them as a habit.

CanadaBuys is the federal government's posting site. If you want to sell technology to federal departments and agencies, this is where their opportunities appear. Set up an account, save your searches, and check what lands in your categories.

MERX is the workhorse of the broader public sector. Municipalities, school boards, hospitals, utilities, and crown corporations post here. For an Ontario technology company, this is often where the most relevant opportunities show up.

The Ontario Tenders Portal — also known as Jaggaer — is where the provincial government posts. Ministries and provincial agencies run their procurements through it. If Ontario is your market, you need a presence here.

The portals are the easy part. The habit is the hard part. Winning bidders check weekly, at minimum. They read the full tender documents before deciding to bid — not the summary, the documents. And they track deadlines in one place, because opportunities don't wait for anyone's inbox.

Nobody wins work they never saw. The portals are free to watch. The only cost is the discipline of looking.