Thank you Mr. Chair.
My name is Borys Koba, and I am the chief information officer at Citizenship and Immigration Canada. I appreciate the opportunity to provide opening remarks to this committee on this subject.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada has accepted the three specific recommendations directed to it in the OAG report, and an action plan has been provided against each of those recommendations. I would like to point out that in paragraph 1.46 of the OAG report, there is an acknowledgement that, and I quote, “CIC has completed a comprehensive review of its IT infrastructure; however, it has not reviewed its applications at the same level.”
CIC agrees with this assessment, and, at a high level, CIC's plan is to do the following: (a) develop a more detailed inventory of CIC's application systems, including information on items such as the current technology environment and options for system rationalization; (b) integrate the information on application systems and IT infrastructure using a portfolio management approach, which will include an integrated risk assessment as well as criteria for the prioritization of investment decision-making; and (c) refine and extend existing departmental planning processes. CIC has completed an integrated corporate plan for 2010-11 that reflects departmental business priorities. One of the components of this document is the IT investment plan, which will be extended into a multi-year IT investment plan over this coming year.
Mr. Chair, for a number of years, the cornerstone of CIC's long-term strategy for its aging IT application systems has been the development and implementation of the global case management system. I am extremely pleased to indicate that exactly one week ago, on May 25, GCMS release two was put into production operation for the citizenship line of business, on plan.
The next major step is the implementation of GCMS release two to the first mission, Port of Spain, on June 30, to support the immigration lines of business. GCMS is planning to complete implementation in all missions by March 31, 2011.
With this success, CIC is now able to start more detailed planning for additional functionality, to support business requirements, and for decommissioning many of the current legacy systems.
CIC has continued to invest annually in IT infrastructure upgrades based on technology evolution and technology aging. In the application system area, in addition to the investments made in GCMS, CIC has been investing in updating specific legacy systems, usually based on risk and the costs associated with technological obsolescence.
Some examples over the past five years include updates to the technology environment in the Montreal call centre, which cost over $4 million; re-platforming of the case processing centre application, at over $1.5 million; and current upgrades to the departmental HR and financial systems, at over $1 million. It is recognized that these investment decisions, while necessary, have been made on an individual basis. Hence, we have the plan to develop an integrated portfolio approach, as recommended by the Office of the Auditor General.
My final remarks deal with the current legacy systems, especially the operational ones. They continue to operate at a very high level of availability and continue to be updated to respond to changing business requirements, such as the recent imposition of visa requirements for Mexico, the special processing in support of the Olympic Games, and the information system requirements in support of the Haiti crisis.
In summary, CIC accepts the OAG recommendations and believes the action plan will allow us to significantly improve the decision-making process related to IT investments and associated risks in the department.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.