Information & Ethics Committee on May 10th, 2016

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

You snuck that one in there on me, Daniel, and that's okay.

We'll go to Mr. Saini for up to seven minutes, please.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you very much for being here.

Madam Paquet, I have a question regarding your opening comments.

You said that the GCDOCS tool has evolved, and you said that it would be a full cost-recovery model. When I look at the Public Services and Procurement Canada's 2013-14 figures, 998 requests were made, and the total revenue generated was $40,591.

Can you just explain to me how this will work in terms of full cost recovery? How do you expect to pay for the system?

[Sarah Paquet]

Thank you for your question.

When I talked about cost recovery, that was really for the system. As I said before, to maintain the system, we have to assume the costs of maintenance, technical support and service provision, which includes the ongoing development of the solution. We have to make sure that Shared Services Canada installs the solution in the data centre and stabilizes it. That is a constantly evolving job because the solution has to be improved, tested, developed, and so on.

During the 2015-2016 financial year, we reached an agreement with our partners to distribute these costs per user. Basically, the costs that I mentioned earlier for the 2016-2017 financial year, that is the $125 per user for Shared Services Canada partners and $95 for those who are not partners, are the real costs that our clients pay to the program to use the GCDOCS solution.

If I understood your question correctly, you were referring to the number of access to information requests. That is a completely separate budget. I hope that answers your question.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Yes.

The second question I have is, in your opening comments you said there are now 11 departments and agencies on the platform. Can you give me some examples of which agencies are on the platform?

[Sarah Paquet]

The first department to join the platform was Public Services and Procurement Canada. Eleven other departments and agencies have also joined the platform.

[Simon Fradette]

Public Services and Procurement Canada was the first department to join the platform last December. Other departments and agencies followed, including Veterans Affairs Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Shared Services Canada. There is also the Public Service Commission of Canada, the Canada Revenue Agency, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and National Defence. These are the largest organizations in our group of 11 clients.

[Sarah Paquet]

Let me clarify the information that Mr. Fradette has just given you.

You have to understand that some departments and organizations, such as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and National Defence, have only signed up a small part of their workforce to our platform. That is different from Public Services and Procurement Canada, which signed up all 13,000 of its employees. Correct me if I am wrong, Mr. Fradette, but I believe that the Department of National Defence and the RCMP took 500 places on the platform. Departments like that are getting used to using the tools and defining their future needs.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

That was part of the other question I had.

With different departments on the system, obviously there's going to be a different amount of information that can be shared on the system. If 11 departments are on the system, will you be able to normalize the time frame so that you will be able to answer an access to information request in a reasonable amount of time?

[Sarah Paquet]

You have to understand that each department has its own set-up on the platform. For example, if I am researching various documents requested of me under access to information, I will only be able to do that research inside my own department. In other words, even if we all use the same platform, the information will only be available for someone’s own department. In that sense, this is not increasing the time required to process an access to information request.

[Jennifer Dawson]

If I might add, I think the value of GCDOCS and of having very solid information management is that we can find the information that we're looking for more readily because it's well structured and faster and because we have a better capacity to search. The information is in one place.

GCDOCS is not only a repository for documents; it's also used to store information such as emails that show progression on a file. It can have other digital information, such as diagrams. It's really one place to search for information using a well-functioning tool that helps us to better gather up the definitive records in response to a request. We can be more responsive. There are many steps in the access to information process, and gathering up the information is the first and important step, but there are other steps in the process as well.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Each department will still have to answer its own requests, then. The time frame will not be normalized, so each department could potentially take a different amount of time to answer different ATIP requests.

[Jennifer Dawson]

We're currently all subject to the same 30-day limit. That might be a question that comes forward as well, but I would anticipate that we would expect a common standard of service and delivery from departments and organizations across the board so that Canadians can anticipate when they'll receive the information they're requesting.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Just to follow up, do you think that a proactive publication regime would help the system in terms of speeding up requests for information?

[Jennifer Dawson]

Certainly we should be making every effort to look at how we can use proactive publication to better share information. For example, in my own department we recognize that we receive requests every month for the lists of briefing notes that have been provided to the deputy minister and to the minister. Recently we took the step of proactively publishing the titles of those briefing notes so that requesters now.... Frankly, usually the first request is for the list of notes and the second request is for the notes of interest. Recognizing that we have a request of that nature every month, we're trying to be proactive to provide the list, which will facilitate a faster turnaround on the information that people are looking for.

If we can identify other types of information that we can share proactively, I think that will improve our ability to serve Canadians through ATI.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

Excellent.

Thank you very much, Mr. Saini.

We now move to the five-minute round.

We'll start with Mr. Jeneroux, please.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Thank you, everybody, for being here today.

Thank you to Ms. Dawson for being back again, twice in a row.

Going back to Mr. Brison's comments at the beginning, he mentioned the change in the fee structure. You've also mentioned the change in the fee structure, but that it's also open if we, as a committee, decide to go back and say that it doesn't work based on all of the expertise that we've heard.

I guess I'm trying to get a sense of how this is being looked at within the department. Do those who work closely with you see this as a pilot project, or is it full steam ahead and this is what's going to happen?

I'm trying to get a better sense from your team.

[Jennifer Dawson]

In terms of the interim directive, we are applying it now.

Going back to your earlier question, I apologize that I didn't have the numbers at hand, but the amount of fees that we had been collecting were in the range of about $57,000 annually, so given the costs associated with processing, we're anticipating that it is going to be helpful to the system to introduce these changes right now and we are moving forward with them.

That said, again this is captured in a directive, and it is possible to change course if there's something that proves to be wrong with this approach. What I would say is that the feedback that we've had from external stakeholders has been positive to date in the initial responses that we've had.

We're moving into new territory, and the feedback that we gather will grow, but in terms of the internal implications, we think they're manageable, and the external feedback so far has been positive, so that seems to be the track that we're on.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

In terms of the feedback, are people reaching out to you and saying this is wonderful? You mentioned you have a survey on your website; how is that feedback being received to date?

[Jennifer Dawson]

In terms of feedback, some it was frankly my observation of public reaction through the media. The media are one of the clients of access to information service. It is an important staple to that group.

In terms of the feedback on the consultation website, we're in the early days of getting feedback, so I wouldn't want to mislead you by saying that we've received a very large number of comments. However, the comments that we have received have been very thoughtful, and they also lean towards the elimination of fees.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

If we could talk about GCDOCS for a second, I'd like to ask about November 2015. I see you cringe a little at the November 2015 date. That's when GCDOCS was seriously affected by an equipment failure at the Aviation Parkway data centre. It affected a number of websites at the time.

Is that something that we have since mitigated? I haven't heard of anything since then. Is that something that we're confident is not going to happen again?

[Jennifer Dawson]

Sarah and I are looking at each other because that's an area where Shared Services Canada could probably better address your question.

We haven't experienced anything of that nature since that time, but neither Sarah nor I have details on how Shared Services Canada has responded.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Okay.

Also on the theme of GCDOCS, you talk about some of the new functionalities and how exciting those will be. I'm trying to get a sense of what the hurdle is for that. It has been a bit of a conversation with a number of my colleagues here.

Is it largely a financial hurdle to make these new functionalities available? You mentioned space on the platform at one point. I'm not an IT guy, so I don't really know what that means. Are these certain things that could be mitigated or be more helpful with more investment?

You have about 20 seconds for a quick review of that.

[Sarah Paquet]

Thank you for your question.

Departments have to be properly prepared. To that end, we are working with our partners so that they can develop their migration plan and their documentation plan. In that way, their migration to GCDOCS will be more successful and the access to their information will be easier. There has to be preparation, and that is what the program is doing with the various departments.

We are working in parallel with our infrastructure service provider, Shared Services Canada, so that they can support us and provide us with available space on the platform as and when our needs become clear.

This work is really being done with our clients and our partners through constantly evolving discussions. By considering the needs of the departments and our ability to respond to them as the solution evolves, we decide our priorities together, so that the money allocated is well spent.

Currently, we have to be fully prepared in order to provide the solution as it is intended and in order that departments can benefit from it and move forward. The fact that we have succeeded in having a program in a modern and successful data centre has been very well received in the community. We are seeing people wanting to invest in the system much more quickly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

Okay. Thank you very much.

We now move to Mr. Long for up to five minutes, please.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and welcome back. I knew if I wore this shirt that I would probably be noticed and get to ask my questions earlier this time, so thank you.

I've been asked by my side to concentrate on times, timelines, timeliness, or lack of timeliness, an aspect we've certainly heard about in a lot of cases over the past few months. We've had witnesses who talked about the culture of delay and said that government departments are laggards.

I was just reading up last night on some information you certainly know from the Library of Parliament's submission, entitled “Review of the Access to Information Act”. It says that during 2013–14, 998 requests were in progress. Of these, 828 were completed during the year. Of the completed requests, 73% were released in whole or in part. More than 255,000 pages were reviewed and 175,000 pages were released. It says that 55% of the requests required extensions.

To Ms. Paquet or Ms. Dawson, could you just tell me about the extensions, how long the extensions were, and what happened there?