From a materials perspective, I know—I was an ADM involved somewhat in the early stages—that the difficult part was getting the departments onside. There was a tremendous resistance: “I've been using Walker”, or “I've been using GEAC”, or “I'm content with my system”, or “Oh, here we go—another centre-driven activity.” There was significant resistance from some of the ministries.
A key thing to get there was to have a successful person, perhaps someone even at an assistant deputy minister level, doing what I would call “leading the charge” and bringing everybody together. It's very important that you get, at the very top—i.e., Clerk of the Privy Council, as you would call him here—someone at that senior level of support saying to the deputy ministers, “This is going ahead. Like it or not, we made the decision. You have to get onboard.”
That message was given, but they had two or three different people who were put in charge before they actually got the right person. In a sense, you need someone very outgoing, very communicative—not necessarily a technical person, but a person who can sit down with the ADMs and the various ministries to bring everybody together and get people onside, saying, “Like it or not, we're going down this path. How can we do it, and how can we do it cost-effectively?” That was the first thing--to get the departments onside and get everybody saying, “Like it or not, we're buying in.”
The second part is the implementation of a whole ERP system. When you're putting in a new ERP system across something as large as the government of Ontario, it is a significant challenge to do it. As Arn indicated, they had program people involved, outside consultants involved, but you also need a fairly high level of expertise within, because—I don't say this too loudly any more, but I used to be with Arthur Anderson—you don't want your consultants basically driving the bus.
I would say in Ontario the biggest challenge early on was getting the departments to buy in.