Veterans Affairs committee  That's definitely an important part of our work. Our objective, even under the communications policy of the government, is accessibility and transparency as part of it. If Canadians don't know about the services, how can they have uptake?

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. It speaks to what the future will bring, as who would have thought, even five or six years ago, that we would have a mobile app and it would have multiple platforms of use? Many of our veteran clients are of an age that they are savvy about technology. We've talked

Veterans Affairs committee  Our website has existed for many years, but this section of the website was announced and launched on Monday, the 15th.

Veterans Affairs committee  In terms of next steps, the focus group testing is key in order for us to evaluate and get user feedback and become familiar with the online habits of users as to what they need. That's a first thing. This was developed as an information tool. It is interactive, but at this point

Veterans Affairs committee  Okay, thank you very much.

Veterans Affairs committee  I can answer that. To make a request online is absolutely possible. There's a “Contact us” button. If they have a question on anything in particular, and it doesn't even have to be about the web content, we have an information box that comes into Veterans Affairs; it's monitored

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't have statistics with me on the kind of feedback, but anecdotally I can say that we have had comments that it's difficult to navigate. That is part of the information that we have taken. We agree with the ombudsman that this is an improvement; it's probably not as far as w

Veterans Affairs committee  Usability I mentioned earlier. It's an effort across government, actually. One of the elements of web standards is usability, making sure the sites work and serve the needs of the constituencies that visit the sites. That's very important for us. As far as a format for feedback

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm not the expert on My VAC Account—I think Ms. Sinnott was here recently—but I can tell you that the My VAC Account is a secure environment, and to protect the privacy of that client, information is retained in it. In order to respect that secure zone, there's no interconnectiv

Veterans Affairs committee  We don't yet. We will soon, sir. Web analytics are working hard, but we don't have the number in yet, so I can follow up with that.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'd add to Janice's point about needs. What's important for the department, and frankly for other departments, is to respond to the needs of the veterans. How many tools are enough? We don't know in five years if Twitter is even going to exist anymore. It's more likely it'll be

Veterans Affairs committee  Sure.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. The majority of cost was our staff. I don't have the hours broken down as to how many staff and how many hours. That's something I couldn't guess at right now. As far as web development cost is concerned, we had a small contract in the range of $25,000 to $30,000. Obviousl

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely. We have an outreach group, and part of their goal is to make sure that benefits and services information gets out, so we would, absolutely. It speaks to Mr. Stoffer's question as well on remote areas. We have to have other champions, such as yourselves, who have

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, although a slight nuance is that it definitely was the leadership of the ombudsman's office that started the process. They had a tool and they brought it to the department. I want to recognize their leadership in doing that. They shared that they had something they thought w