Evidence of meeting #26 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was savings.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
Very good.
I have a question on a different topic. Your report speaks to the opportunity to take advantage of what you call “green IT practices”. Could you elaborate on that?
4:05 p.m.
Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Green practices is one of the requirements that the Government of Canada provided to us. Specifically, this requirement deals with hydro and the source of hydro: where is the power being drawn from?
For example, hydro power, perhaps from Quebec, is considered to be of much lower green impact than hydro created with fossil fuels, so one of the considerations as you design the actual data centre strategy is where the facilities should be located and where the power would be drawn from. That definitely will be an input as you consolidate these 300 data centres and the thousand points of presence.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
You're saying there's a clear opportunity to have a much better or much lower environmental footprint through this process.
4:05 p.m.
Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Sure, and that's one of your requirements, so as you design the actual architecture for a data centre and you enter into this journey of consolidating facilities, you will end up there, because that's one of the conditions you're using in doing it.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
You're done? Thank you very much.
Mathieu, you're next, for the NDP. Thank you very much.
February 13th, 2012 / 4:10 p.m.
NDP
Mathieu Ravignat NDP Pontiac, QC
Thank you for being here.
From reading the report, it seems that you underestimated the skills and expertise of the public sector's IT professionals. What is your honest opinion of the skills of public servants working in IT in Canada?
4:10 p.m.
Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Our mandate was not to comment on the skills of the IT professionals within the Government of Canada. What we will say, though, is that the structure that is in place, this federated model that's in place, has resulted in performance ratios, and we do quote that in one of the pages here. It's what we call the “server-to-FTE ratio”: how many servers does one FTE professional support? I think it's something like 16, or just below 16:1, in and across the Government of Canada. Performance ratios vary greatly across the departments, but we believe that the structural challenge is leading to some of this, rather than skills per se. We were not engaged to comment on the skills area.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Mathieu Ravignat NDP Pontiac, QC
Mr. Chang, I really want to believe you, but your report stresses that one essential success factor stems from having an official plan that all parties would subscribe to in order to deal with human resources considerations. Were you consulted for the development of an official human resources plan?
4:10 p.m.
Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers
No.
One of our recommendations, and one of the critical success factors in this journey, is to have a human resources plan. We clearly recommend that as one the next steps.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
4:10 p.m.
Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers
To me, on the human resources, a significant portion of the IT spent.... Of the roughly $822 million spent on IT that we highlight there, almost half is human resources. Just under—
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Mathieu Ravignat NDP Pontiac, QC
Mr. Chang, how do you know that it isn't worth spending money on human resources?
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Mathieu Ravignat NDP Pontiac, QC
You said that a human resources plan is essential to ensure cost reductions. How do you know that these costs are not justified, that we don't have competent IT professionals in the public service?
4:10 p.m.
Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Again, we were not engaged to comment on the competency of IT professionals in the Government of Canada. We acknowledge that human resources are a critical component of IT service delivery, and that any time you make a transformational program or take up this type of journey, it's critical that you involve those folks who are affected by it. We strongly recommend in our report that you should have a human resources plan to address that requirement.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Mathieu Ravignat NDP Pontiac, QC
Furthermore, you said that we could contract out, about 54%. When we outsource to a third party, don't you think there's also a risk that we'll see expertise that currently exists in the public service disappear?
4:10 p.m.
Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers
We were very careful to ensure that what you're describing as expertise, architecture, or key decision-making types of functions remain within the Government of Canada. That was one of the requirements given to us, so when we did the analysis, that 54%, as mentioned earlier, really includes the commoditization on utilities that is potentially available in the marketplace.
4:10 p.m.
Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers
The other thing that I just want to point out is that the 54% you're talking about is a potential end state somewhere into the future. You're going to get there very slowly. There are going to be some bundles that are 5% or 10%.
I think one of the members here mentioned email as a service that potentially they might want to look at. It wasn't part of our study, but these are all discrete service bundles that you can look at. I think it's very important to emphasize that this is not a big bang. It's a series of gates that—
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Mathieu Ravignat NDP Pontiac, QC
Mr. Chang, I need to interrupt you so I have time to ask my last question.
In this study, did you compare the average salary of private sector technicians with public sector technicians?