Government Operations Committee on Oct. 20th, 2009

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

I'm out of time.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

Madame Bourgeois.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Charette, there are some things I would like to come back to. In your opening statement, you talked about the broad directions you are taking at Treasury Board Secretariat in respect of large projects. One thing you said is that you prefer smaller projects; you don't want large projects. I also noted that this policy will come into effect in 2011.

Have I understood this correctly?

[Corinne Charette]

Not entirely, and I will clarify it for you. The policy has been available to the community since 2007, but implementation of all components of it is being spread out until April 2011, because there is a major effort in the community and at the Secretariat to develop investment plans.

We are therefore asking the communities to start planning the investments they have to make in major projects, and in particular IT projects, and to present us with a somewhat more comprehensive picture. We are also asking them to spread their projects out over a period of time, essentially so they can evaluate them in terms of risk and their organizational capacity. The tools have been distributed and the departments are already starting to use them.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Okay.

We have a billion dollar project in front of us. You say you prefer small projects rather than large projects. A draft solicitation of interest and qualification has just come out. So that means you are giving large projects the go-ahead. Can you explain this?

[Corinne Charette]

I understand that it may look that way.

Are you talking about Secure Channel, the Voie de communication protégée, or about GENS or SREG, Government Enterprise Network Services?

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

I am talking about GENS.

[Corinne Charette]

GENS and Secure Channel are two different things. This summer, Public Works made a request for information to the supplier community concerning updating telecommunications services. Secure Channel is not in that procurement basket; it has been in place since 2006, since it was last renewed, and it is used by 129 agencies.

GENS is a procurement system that is to replace 124 telecommunications in the various departments and agencies in Canada, for both telephones and telecommunications, but it is not Secure Channel. It is a consultation.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Is the draft solicitation of interest and qualification a consultation?

[Corinne Charette]

It was a request for information. There was a consultation, and the final procurement has not yet been submitted. My colleagues at Public Works will be able to tell you more about it.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

In June we were told, and it was proved, that the consequence of the GENS project will be that a number of small and medium enterprises in Canada and Quebec will disappear. Has Treasury Board Secretariat done a study on the impact this large information technology project would have on the Canadian and Quebec economy?

[Corinne Charette]

We have not done a study of that nature. However, we are currently studying the community's need to migrate to more modern networks, if you will. It would not be desirable to consider that as a large project, because that is not the case. A series of projects in departments and agencies will be coming out of GENS with the aim of migrating their networks to the new generation; that will essentially activate part of that procurement.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Mr. Warkentin, for five minutes.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Thank you very much. I appreciate the time.

I appreciate the witnesses' time as well this afternoon and the testimony given thus far.

There are a number of things I want to talk about. I think we're looking for a little bit of additional clarification with regard to Secure Channel. I think there have been some discussions here in terms of when this happened, but the history might be important for us.

My understanding is that by March 2006, over $600 million had been spent. At that point, the overruns had taken place. It was some time ago.

In the review by the Auditor General, a number of things were identified as concerns, and concerns that she had relating to any program that was to be developed. She said that prior to this going forward, there had never been an agreement among the different departments as to what types of benefits would be provided by Secure Channel, to whom, and at what cost that would come forward. There was no indication as to what the budget would be in terms of the full life cycle costs of the program and how the departments would split those up. Also, there was no business case to identify the source of funds that would be used to sustain the ongoing provision of the service.

I know that when we came into government there were large concerns amongst many people in the House of Commons. We'd seen a number of different boondoggles related to large technology projects. Secure Channel was one, but that wasn't the biggest. I think the long-gun registry was something that a lot of people hearkened to, and a lot of folks out there were very concerned to see the escalation of that particular program and how the technology just got completely out of hand.

In 2007, our government announced something called “the executive dashboard”, which had a number of different components. I think members of this committee would be very interested in understanding a little more about how the executive dashboard ensures that these types of things don't happen any more and about what you and your department are able to do as a result of these new tools to ensure that these questions are answered, such as who's going to pay and what benefits are being provided.

We look at GENS, which is being proposed right now. It is going to be a program that many different departments will have an option to utilize. Are these questions going to be answered before the execution of this, and do these tools ensure that?

[Corinne Charette]

Absolutely. That is a very good question. Thank you.

The executive dashboard is definitely a key tool in oversight and monitoring. We are in the process of really consolidating information so that in the spring of 2010 we can have a first view of a number of projects across government on the same consistent basis, and certainly the ones that we would consider bigger and more risky. There is a lot of activity going on.

Certainly following projects from a risk, scope, schedule, and budget perspective are all key elements on the dashboard. In IT, there's an old adage, that what gets inspected gets corrected. Really, the dashboards have already proven successful for that reason, because those dashboards will highlight to people outside the project team, within the department, at Treasury Board, and so on, the status of the project.

So there's no question about it; that is something important that we are spending a lot of time on. In fact, Val's team is spending a lot of time on that area.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

The difficulty with any department, as it is for any company or anybody who's considering buying into a network or into the provision of a service without seeing the full scope of it, without knowing the full costs, is that it's tough to say, yes, we're going to buy into it. So as it relates to Secure Channel, many of the departments said, “Well, we thought it was going to provide a different service than it did, and in the end it's costing us more than what we thought.”

Do we have some assurance that those issues are going to be resolved, so that when a large service is being contemplated, such as a GENS, there is a costing, there is a commitment from the different departments, and the commitment is based on information that can be related to what the end result or the end service is?

Do we have some assurance that Secure Channel, which is only being utilized at 50%, which isn't a cost-recovery model, won't be replicated in other technology services?

[Corinne Charette]

Certainly it would be our objective to avoid overcapacity in any IM/IT solution. It's just not a good value-for-money approach.

Certainly departments, because they are accountable for their IM/IT investment spend, do have to be able to project the estimated costs with the greatest degree of certainty. They have limited funds, and they're making difficult priority decisions, so we are working with the community towards doing exactly that. And the business cases, if they are done at the right moment with the right information, will help us to do that better.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

Considering the number of questions we've had, there seems to be an issue around simplicity. We had asked that you provide us with a flow chart, and I was looking at what the Auditor General had asked for.

You stated that the accountability was really the departments' accountability. But the Auditor General believes it is the Treasury Board's accountability. As it says, “Before recommending that the Treasury Board approve an IT project....” Since you do approve it, it would be helpful for us, when you're presenting your flow chart, to show us where, at what portion, you approve or disapprove or challenge the department, to make us familiar with how that flow takes place, what template you use for a business case, and how well that business case is there.

I know it's the departments' job to do it, but how well do you challenge them that they have the capacity, the human resources, etc., to do it? As Ms. Coady and Madame Bourgeois were asking, where is that accountability? What are we doing? How are we following that bouncing ball?

So it would really help us to have that, and I hope we can get something from you.

You have 30 seconds to say a final word, if you have one, before I go to our next set of witnesses.

[Corinne Charette]

Madam Chair, thank you.

We will come back with a flow chart that shows, for those projects that require Treasury Board approval, the moments at which we do provide approval and challenge and at which points of the process we can inject oversight and so on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

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

Madam Chair, there's other information that I had asked for as well--who developed the tools, and the cost....

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Yes, that's right; you'd asked for a breakdown.

What we will do is send you a letter so that we have everything covered in that. We will send a reminder.

Madame Bourgeois.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

I would like to know what a large project is. It seemed like we were not using the same terminology. What is a large project, to your mind? A billion dollars, or a million dollars?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Okay.

So you will give us the parameters that you use as well.

Thank you very much.

We will turn now to our next set of witnesses. They are from the Department of Public Works and Government Services.

Welcome, Monsieur Chénier, chief executive officer; Mr. Rath-Wilson; and Madame Renée Jolicoeur.

Mr. Chénier, you have some opening remarks? Oui?

Can we shave it down to seven minutes maximum?

Thanks.