Government Operations Committee on Oct. 20th, 2009

[Corinne Charette]

I believe that business plans are being prepared, but they are not necessarily finalized. The procurement is not finalized, either. Over the next year or two, we would expect to see an overall plan, together with individual plans. These would reflect departmental migrations from existing technology to something procured under the GENS supply arrangement. Once procurement is completed, it will take some time to finalize plans based on cost inputs.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Is that the type of business plan we will be able to see at committee? What is being brought forward?

[Corinne Charette]

It certainly could be. GENS will have a number of business plans. There are 124 networks across many departments, and they won't necessarily all migrate at once. In fact, it would not be advisable for them to migrate all at once. If two or three departments decide to migrate together—if they're co-located in a building, for example—then it would make sense for them to say that they have these facilities that cost this much, that they plan to go to the new system, that these are the anticipated costs and the migration costs, and that they will migrate over 12, 24, 36 months, according to their situation. We would expect to have those plans. They are necessary to operate in conformity with our new project management framework and suggested times.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Madam Coady.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Thank you, and I appreciate both of you being here today.

I know these are difficult questions for difficult issues. I'm continuing with questions on accountability. That will be something your department would be very involved in. You talked about the Treasury Board Secretariat's oversight function. I'm going to talk specifically about that function. These are going to be direct questions, and your succinct answers will be appreciated.

First of all, I was a little astounded to hear that, even though the Secure Channel overruns went from $96 million to a $1 billion, the best we can do is a template of tools. We got into a $1 billion challenge, and all we have is a template of tools that really isn't required. I'm going to ask you, who developed this template of tools, and what did it cost to develop?

[Corinne Charette]

I'm sorry. Who developed these tools?

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Who developed them, and how much did it cost to develop the template of tools that you're now discussing as part of this program?

[Corinne Charette]

I'll ask Val to answer that question.

[Valerie Wutti]

Some of the tools were developed by my team in consultation with the IT community in Ottawa. I couldn't tell you an exact price because I didn't price it out as to how much for the business case.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Did you use outside consultants for this, or did you use internal sources?

[Valerie Wutti]

Mostly for the business case and project management charter, those were internal resources. For the independent review program we used a lot of external resources—

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Could we get copies of or can we know or can you tell us or table what exact costs were involved in the development of these tools?

[Valerie Wutti]

Sure.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Okay. Rather than just go around that a little bit, who holds the ultimate accountability for this? You've given a suggested template of tools now. Even though we're talking about billions of dollars, we have a suggested template of tools, but who holds the accountability function?

I heard you talk earlier about being invited to sit on the steering committee and so on, but we're talking large sums of money and we need some accountability here. That is really where the oversight function falls. So who holds the accountability of the spending and the issuance of ensuring that these tools are being utilized effectively?

[Corinne Charette]

Madam Chair, in answer to the member's question, accountability, according to the Federal Accountability Act, definitely rests with the deputy ministers in each department. It is their accountability to follow policies and ensure compliance with Treasury Board policies, standards, and guidelines.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Okay. So the whole oversight process you have—even though we talked about it at the very beginning. There's an oversight function by the Treasury Board?

[Corinne Charette]

Yes.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

You're clearly saying that the utilization of the template of tools and the accountability function rests solely with the deputy ministers. That's what I'm hearing you say.

I'm going to turn to Service Canada, who handles tens of millions of transactions, as you know, from CPP to employment insurance. They stopped using Secure Channel. As you know, they had several series of crashes; they had a lot of problems and issues. One of the concerns around this is, who covered the cost of these problems? They actually had to go out and do some additional work, as you know, under Secure Channel, but we're not quite clear on who covered the cost.

I'm sure the deputy minister was quite involved in this from that oversight and accountability process, but we're not quite sure: was the administration drawn from the EI fund, or how were they actually covered?

[Corinne Charette]

To be honest, I can't say that I have the exact way that each department funds their part of Secure Channel. What we do have, and would be happy to share with you, is the allocation of Secure Channel costs across each of the departments. All 129 departments actually use different components of Secure Channel. Certainly HRSDC is one of the major users and we know what their share of the overall cost is. What sources they fund their share from, I'm sorry, I don't have that answer.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

I guess my question goes to the point that Service Canada stopped using Secure Channel, so they had to develop another mechanism and means. How is that funded now that they're outside of Secure Channel and they stopped using it?

[Corinne Charette]

I'm sorry, Madam Chair, I have to correct the member.

Service Canada is an active user of Secure Channel today. They did momentarily stop for a very short period of time. To my understanding, it was less than three months. They have been and continue to be an active user of Secure Channel.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

In those three months they had to have an alternate system, and my question goes to how it was funded. When they had to go out and use a separate service, how did they fund that service? Was it drawn from the EI fund or was it drawn from other sources?

You're not able to tell us at this point?

[Corinne Charette]

I don't have the details of their specific funding. However, they did not go to an external service.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

They used internal services?

[Corinne Charette]

That's right.