Evidence of meeting #24 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was project.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
I have no personal experience with 1998. It was actually before my time. I can very much talk to 2005.
We did have an investment fund. I think it was $38 million we got to help us do the project. There absolutely were investment dollars put into this. I would say that you certainly have to invest money to make this happen. If nothing more, you need to dedicate some staff to do it, or it just won't happen. So there is a cost to it, yes, for sure.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
On a net basis, are you saying the government saved money in year one?
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
The government actually probably broke even in year one, yes. Absolutely, yes.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
But that's having already created the clusters, so I don't think you could have done it—
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
You're absolutely right, yes; there were two steps. That's why I was very clear in my intro—
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
But you don't have knowledge of the costs of the earlier step to create the clusters?
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
No, it—I have it, actually, so I will find it for you. There is a dollar figure in here in my paper somewhere for the 1998 work. I know it wasn't a huge amount. I certainly have it, yes.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
The other question I wanted to ask was about two dimensions of jobs.
Going back to 1998, because it seems to me like a continuum of time, to what extent were job losses limited to attrition and to what extent were people laid off?
The second dimension of that question is something we heard in an earlier presentation. If you centralize all these many centres around the country—or, in your case, around the province—to one place or a small number of places, are those larger places generally in Toronto or bigger cities, meaning that rural Ontario would suffer most from such a process?
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
As I said—I have the number, by the way, for 1998; there was an investment of $110 million in 1998, it tells me here.
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
That's okay.
Basically, when we started what we called e-Ontario, which is our consolidation, there was attrition, but we committed that during that process we would not be letting anyone go during that period of time. As I said, most of our staff cost savings actually came from fee-for-service conversions.
We were dedicated to continuing to deliver what we call our field services. We would leave the people in place in the field who were supporting all of the offices, whether in Ottawa or Sudbury or wherever it happened to be, so that we would still have that on-site support. We shut down a lot of smaller server rooms around the country. When we consolidated our help desk, we actually had a single help desk, but we had it in three locations, so we had a virtual help desk. It was in Toronto, St. Catharines, and North Bay, and there was actually a small one in Guelph. We left those in place; we replaced all the infrastructure underneath those help desks, but we left the people in place. There was no reason to move them. They were fine where they were. It didn't cost us any more money to leave them in Guelph than it did to have them in Toronto.
We very much worked on the basis that we wanted to keep people in place to support business people where they work, because that's important for us in providing service; where we could make use of technology to allow people to stay where they were, in this case with our help desks in North Bay, St. Catharines, and Guelph, we did that as well.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
Perhaps the displacement would have occurred in the earlier period, when you moved from every ministry to a small number of clusters. Would that be correct?
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
No, our clusters are certainly well spread.
We're a little different from the federal government. We have a reasonable staff presence in Thunder Bay and a reasonable presence in Sudbury. We still have cluster people who are attached to their businesses. Ontario went through this spreading out back in the 1980s and 1990s when a ministry moved. For instance, MNR moved to Peterborough, so we have cluster people in Peterborough supporting that business, absolutely. That did not change at all.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
Are you saying that this whole process, starting in 1998, didn't really have any effect in terms of concentrating employment in smaller places and shutting down units in smaller towns?
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
We really haven't seen that, no.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pat Martin
That concludes your time, John.
Thank you, Mr. Nicholl.
Next is Mr. Ron Cannan.
Conservative
Ron Cannan Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks, Mr. Nicholl. That was very interesting.
From the sound of it, you had noble goals of improved services, lower costs, and accountability. You achieved the lower cost anyhow, it looks like. You said there was $65 million a year in savings—
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
It was a hundred.
Conservative
Ron Cannan Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
It was $100 million? Okay, but was that ramped up over...?
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
It was two years.
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
Yes. It was 60:40.
Conservative
Ron Cannan Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
Then there was the accountability and the improved services aspect. Obviously if our ultimate goal is our constituents—in your case residents of Ontario and in our case Canadians—they have better and more efficient e-mail services.
You mentioned you had seven or eight e-mail systems. Is that correct?
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
Yes.
Conservative
Ron Cannan Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
I was just doing some research, and within the federal government there are over 283,000 employees and more than 200 departments or crown agencies. Right now there are over 100 different e-mail systems for federal government employees.
Look at him; he's cringing.
The federal government's e-mail systems are not fully compatible. While approximately 80% of the departments use Microsoft Outlook, 15% use Lotus Notes and 5% use Novell GroupWise for their entire system. Departments have different versions and have adopted a variety of rules and practices. This results in fragmentations and higher costs and seems extremely inefficient.
You said you weren't there in 1998, but did your colleagues tell you that you had a very similar situation?