Madam Chair, when the contract was put in place, it was given the scope to take the whole period of what we thought the transformation would require--five years and maybe even a bit longer--so that it didn't restrict us from accessing that resource. At the same time, the contract specifically provided that if we had needed to re-profile it and accelerate work, that was envisaged and authorized to take place. If we look at the general view about what the transformation would cost over five years in the budget of 2005, a provision of about $90 million was made for that period. It was provisionally allocated to take place at about $20 million or $25 million a year over four years.
As we got into it and understood the magnitude of what needed to be done in the early years in order to be able to reap the benefits of transformation--the government, as the minister has pointed out, is a very complex and large organization--we prepared business cases and received Treasury Board approval to spend $76 million of the $90 million in the first two years. That's a signal that showed it was necessary to build up the transformation in the first two years in order to be able to reap the benefits later.
Of course, A.T. Kearney advised us during that period in making a number of changes. To describe a bit about what they did, they had over 60 people, consultants, on our premises through long hours over a six-month period. They brought in experts, including from their European and U.S. operations, without charging us for travel, in order to advise us. What they contributed to us was the very complex analysis of what the government is spending--because the systems are not there to tell us that--in order to be able to analyze how to improve procurement. For $20 billion of spending, 12 million transactions, 51 departments, they built the analysis. They gave us guidelines and helped us consult with specific departments to see what the pattern was in those departments. Then they helped us shape our strategies for 11 major categories of goods and services that covered almost $4 billion of government spending. There was an enormous amount of value obtained.
I should also point out that this kind of transformation work is very hard to undertake with our regular staff, who have, at the same time, every day, to process thousands of transactions.