Evidence of meeting #136 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was services.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Before getting into some additional questions, just to clarify this so it's clear to me what we will get back in response to what I asked previously. With the federated, trusted digital ID there's a privacy analysis and whatever you have with respect to a privacy analysis, the committee will get.
In answer to my last question and recommendations you would make, Mr. Benay, you suggested that the biggest challenge you face is the need to adjust frameworks rapidly. Mr. Snow, you were nodding your head when Mr. Benay said that. You used the word “nimble”. You acknowledged in your opening remarks that the Office of the Privacy Commissioner has mentioned reticence with respect to using privacy as a barrier in comparing the two. Privacy obviously might stand in the way of doing some of the work you want to do, but for good reason. In other cases, maybe bureaucrats are flagging privacy as a concern, but it's not a real concern or it can be met through other means and it shouldn't be a barrier as it goes.
Has work been done in your office to analyze legislative things—you don't want to call them barriers—that might in your view, or your office's view, need to be addressed to do more digital innovation?
Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
We've committed to doing a two-year study within TBS on legislative reviews for digital service delivery. We did an assessment of 11 departments, and I believe we found well over 150 possible—and I do want to highlight “possible”—legislative impediments.
We also found a lot of existing data-sharing agreements among the departments. Now we have to sift through those as well. Work with the Privacy Commissioner's office has started in sharing the plan. We do have some form of assessment of that.
Liberal
Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
Eleven core service departments. It's a front-line set-up.
Liberal
Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
I believe the number is 187, but we'll confirm that.
February 19th, 2019 / 4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
I will validate that, but I do not believe the list has been shared, but the project intent itself has been shared, yes. We've not finished the work. We're at year one of two right now.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Okay. Would you be able to share that list so I have a better understanding of what—
Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
Absolutely.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
You can share that list with us. I would encourage you all to share with the OPC. That would be very helpful.
Mr. Snow. I park in the city of Toronto. I don't know if you've ever parked in the city of Toronto. I think a lot of people have come before us and have said that a lot of the questions with respect to digital government, about building trust and getting Canadians or citizens to trust us—I think a big part of the answer is not a politician selling it, as far as it goes, but building services that work for citizens, such that they want to keep using them. I like parking in the city of Toronto. It's easy to do. I understand the app for this was developed by a San Francisco company. The app is then licensed by the city of Toronto. I even like getting a ticket in the city of Toronto, because it's so easy to dispute the ticket, as I can do so online from the comfort of my own home.
As a citizen, the way I park in the city of Toronto and how I dispute a ticket in the city of Toronto, I want that at all levels of government. I trust in the system, as far as it goes, with respect to parking in Toronto.
CDS, you've listed a few projects. Is there a project that I can walk up and down the street, saying this is just like parking in Toronto.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Digital Service, Treasury Board Secretariat
Not quite yet.
CDS, being fairly young, is also walking before it runs. The citizenship examining schedule is the closest to that. The process before was that you would get a letter in the mail that looked like a summons. It was scary and it was written in “policy-eese”, and somewhere near the bottom in small print was some instruction about where to send a letter if you wanted to reschedule. The team that worked on the project talked to people who were caught between taking their citizenship exam or attending their daughter's graduation. People would try to make it. We're going to the place where now.... The the first thing the team did had very little to do with technology, but to simplify the letter. The the first words at the top of the letter were changed to, “Congratulations, you're one step away from becoming a citizen of Canada”. Just that content design change was enough to change the experience for lots of people. Then, here's the URL, you go there, you go online, you pick other dates that you're available on, you hit submit, you receive a confirmation soon thereafter. The experience is considerably—
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Is there an open call—we've got a Minister of Digital Government. That minister presumably tells her colleagues that, if they have a problem and they want digital services or service standards to be improved, they should come to her office or to CDS and they'll try to tackle the issue for them.
Does that happen?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Digital Service, Treasury Board Secretariat
I haven't spoken with Minister Philpott about that particular approach. Over the last 18 months, CDS has literally had hundreds of conversations with offices in departments and agencies all over government. We listen to a lot of requests, many of which are not necessarily in our wheelhouse, but we try to redirect and help folks in other ways.
We have a set of criteria that we use to evaluate the opportunities and figure out where we can have the most impact and do the most reusable work.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
In a previous report of ours on the Privacy Act, we recommended a standard of collection and retention of personal information based on necessity and with proportionality. That may be a very large question for you to answer in the limited time I have, but I would appreciate a more fulsome answer—in writing if you don't have a full answer now. Is that a problem in your view? If so, why? And if it isn't a problem, then that makes my life a lot easier.
Executive Director, Information and Privacy Policy Division, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat
To speak to the Privacy Act review, I know that the Minister of Justice, in her response to this committee, acknowledged that the government was going to undertake a review of the act. It is a complex endeavour, so an issue like that is something that's still under consideration. That work's ongoing.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Less so about government efforts to undertake a review, but if you've got 187 barriers, as far as it goes or whatever word we want to use to describe it, would necessity and proportionality as a standard get in the way of what we want to do?
Here's a way of thinking about it. Ann Cavoukian was before us and said that privacy and security and privacy and services can go hand in hand. They don't have to be at odds with each another, but sometimes actually they are when we talk about data minimization, because sometimes we want to collect more information to provide better services, but if we have less information, we can't provide the same level of services.
Therefore, it's a question of necessity for the government service, and that question of necessity might mean data minimization, which might actually mean that we don't provide the full suite of services that we may want to in providing the best services we can.
Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
We'll get back to you officially with an answer in writing.
The immediate reaction I would have for you is that we would take that kind of an issue to our architecture review board, as we're designing the services and as we go through, so that as we see a trend, we then apply a standard. That has not necessarily gone through the architecture review board, at this point and at that level of granularity, but we'll look to it and get back to you with a written answer.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Zimmer
Thank you, Mr. Erskine-Smith. We're at time.
I'll go to Mr. Kent for seven minutes.
Oh, Monsieur Gourde, go ahead, please.
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lévis—Lotbinière, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to give Mr. Snow an opportunity to answer my earlier question about the 15% to 20% of Canadians who don't really use digital services. I'm curious as to how we could educate them on the issue, even encourage them to use the services more.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Digital Service, Treasury Board Secretariat
The easier to use and, obviously, the more secure those services are, the more folks will use them, I believe.
In some ways, this is also due to how long it takes to do this kind of work, a question of—if I may borrow a Canadian expression—skating to where the puck is going and not to where it is. Availability of connectivity and so on is only getting better, not getting worse. Again, services will always be multi-channel, for as long as there are people who can only access services—even countries with incredibly high rates of digital adoption for their government interactions, like Denmark, which is at 90% plus, they still continue to provide services through alternative channels when people cannot or will not participate. However, you can incentivize the use of digital services and thereby move more people into that experience, if they find it acceptable, but it has to be usable.
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lévis—Lotbinière, QC
You raised an interesting point when you mentioned the security of digital services We talked about the ideal situation, but there is a dark side as well. We can't forget that cyber-attacks are on the rise. Just yesterday, I received yet another fake alert. I got a message on my phone that was supposedly from my bank asking me to provide my personal information, and yet, I've been dealing with the same bank for 45 years. As Canadians' digital footprints inevitably grow, we'll see more and more people trying to use that information to scam Canadians and get money out of them.
Will we see stronger safeguards? Although we want to streamline the process and make it easier for people to access services, we may also be making it easier for scammers to take advantage of Canadians.
Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
To be direct, I would say that we're looking at every facet of the issue, together with the enterprise architecture review board. We want to make services easier to access, yes, but we also have to ensure people's information is secure. I can tell you the problem is the subject of intense discussion among the members of our governance team, which we set up 12 months ago.
I'll let my colleagues at the Communications Security Establishment field some of the more technological questions.
I will say, though, that the scale of public education initiatives is growing. Countries like Uruguay have literally brought iPads into people's homes to educate them, show them how to interact with the government and explain what to do and what not to do—if their mobile device is hacked, for instance.
As society moves farther down the digital path, initiatives will have to include an educational component. That's already happening all over the country, both provincially and municipally.
Conservative