Federal Government To Dump MERX

MERX is the MERX Canadian Public Tenders service.  Its where the federal and provincial governments put their RFQs and RFPs and the like, asking private companies to bid on contracts for various goods and services.  Except no more  This notice appeared recently on (ironically enough) MERX:

The Government of Canada is moving its electronic tendering service from MERX to Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders on June 1, 2013.

Starting June 1, 2013, federal government tenders (tender notices and bid solicitation documents) will be published and available free of charge on a Government of Canada Web site on Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders.

As noted, billions of dollars change hands through MERX.  I wonder how viable the service will be without the federal government on board.   And actually, this is a story that has some small news value.  Since MERX is where Cdn governments go to buy stuff from the private sector, it is often the first place where you can get an idea of what they are really up to.