You're correct, there is obviously merit in consolidating e-mail, both for those who work within the government—thus making it easier to communicate between public servants and departments—and for those outside of government who are looking to contact people who work in the public service. There's currently no standard for e-mail across the Government of Canada, making it very difficult for ordinary Canadians to find the people they need to contact and for public servants to do their work.
There should obviously be a standard e-mail system that's more easily accessible. Shared Services Canada has a mandate to ensure that the most efficient e-mail system is in place for all of government. Most departments implemented their e-mail solutions in the late eighties and early nineties, at a time when there was little consideration of or opportunity to share common solutions. As you know, a lot has changed since then in the area of IT.
These e-mail systems that we have right now in the Government of Canada are not fully compatible either. While approximately 80% of departments use Microsoft Outlook, 15% use Lotus Notes, and 5% use Novell GroupWise for their e-mail systems. Departments have different versions and have adopted a variety of rules and practices. This results not only in fragmentation, but also in higher costs to the individual departments.
We know that e-mail consolidation is the smart thing to do and is considered a best practice by industry and governments alike. The operation of multiple e-mail systems across the government also means that departments are negotiating and maintaining separate licences and have their own technical support teams in place. This duplication is very costly and it's unnecessary.
Having so many e-mail systems also means that e-mail is less secure than it should be. It's imperative that the Government of Canada move to a single standard for e-mail.
Shared Services Canada will move the government to one e-mail system. As I indicated, not only will this save money and make it easier for Canadians to reach federal government employees, but we quite simply can't continue to maintain the duplication, the inefficiency, the low interoperability, and the suboptimal economies of scale and fragmentation that arise from each department managing its IT infrastructure independently. This is why Shared Services Canada was created.
E-mail will be our first transformation area. The goal is to consolidate into a single e-mail system both for internal government and for interface with businesses and Canadians.