When we refer to the seven systems, those are really the systems for what we call the general ledger. Those are the ones that can produce, if you will, the financial statements. In government, though, those systems are supported by a multitude of legacy systems, some of which are very old.
We have actually started to do a lot of work on assessing those legacy systems. We probably don't want to get into all that today, but I think the government does have a major investment that it has to make in updating or replacing some of those legacy systems. Many of the challenges that government faces right now, even in its accounting, come about because the systems were never designed to give the kind of accrual information that you need.
In this committee, I think we reviewed, for example, the collection of income tax receivables. The systems in the Canada Revenue Agency were never designed to manage receivables, and we see that in other departments too. So there is a major investment and change that will be necessary over several years—much more than five years—to adapt those systems even to meet the current accounting requirements.
This has to be integrated into that and the change has to be thought out. How are they going to do this overall not just in terms of the accrual part of the appropriations, but in terms of the other management information that's going to be needed going forward?