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.
Liberal
Conservative
Scott Armstrong Conservative Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS
Thank you both for being here. I enjoyed your presentation.
Mr. Gupta, you talked basically about a framework that has been successful in the past or about how mistakes that have been made in the past have led to a successful framework. You talked about the top of that framework being constant and ongoing collaboration between the private sector and the public sector as we move forward in this.
You talked about the outcomes-based approach, having specific goals and about how we have to reach those specific goals within the project. Then you talked about making it work and about how we have to actually make this effective and make it work if we're going to reap the benefits from it and how that's going to require a sound governance structure. Then you talked about the implementation plan of three to five years, and, looking at the size and the breadth of this project, and after listening to your answer to Mr. McCallum's question, I guess that would probably be a little longer for this project.
In one of the answers to the questions you mentioned accountability. You didn't talk about that when you originally presented the framework. I'm assuming that would be under the governance structure. Could you maybe elaborate a bit on an ongoing system of accountability that has been successful in the private sector when these projects have been implemented?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Information Technology Association of Canada
Thank you.
As I mentioned, the way we did a project was to have very clear governance at the outset—the framework as to who does what.
The second piece that goes with that from an accountability point of view is to establish something like a scorecard model. If you have clear scorecards available to the accountable managers across the functions and across, in this case, the same geography as to what output they'd be measured against, those can be tracked regularly, and there is a review process.
Tracking is done not just for tracking's sake; there are consequences of not delivering. If things such as who is accountable and what the consequences are and what you expect out of them as a governance body are known up front, then the model is much more robust in terms of meeting those expectations, because people understand them much more clearly. The last thing you want to do is to have a vague set-up with no consequence attached to it.
Conservative
Scott Armstrong Conservative Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS
With 43 departments and the large breadth and scope of this project, you're going to have to have a lot of the accountability in the governance structure simply because you're going to have so many smaller projects when the big project is broken down into small pieces.
You're going to have to place a lot of emphasis on various types of accountability for various types of mini projects. Would you agree?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Information Technology Association of Canada
Yes.
Conservative
Scott Armstrong Conservative Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS
Moving on, when we break down the main project, one of the projects is going to have to do with collaboration of data centres. We've heard a little about that at this committee for the last several weeks. At what stage in the 10 to 20 years or however long this project will take—and you talked about percentages before—are we going to be looking at the collaboration of these data centres? Can you express that?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Information Technology Association of Canada
Would you clarify the question? There will be a collaboration of these data centres in what context?
Conservative
President and Chief Executive Officer, Information Technology Association of Canada
Depending upon which one you pick first—you have three elements now, with e-mails, data centres, and the network—the easiest one would probably be e-mails in terms of sequencing. The hardest one would probably be the network. The data centre would be somewhere in the middle.
The data centre consolidation really depends upon what is classified as a data centre today. I'm almost afraid to ask the question here. In government, the data centre could be a couple of servers sitting in the closet, or it could be a data centre that is properly breathing and everything else, the way a data centre is. Depending on what you have, on what you find in your investigation process, on what the team finds, they would know best.
So to come up with a number saying that all the consolidation should be done by this time would be a hard thing to do, because I don't know what you have.
Conservative
Scott Armstrong Conservative Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS
In British Columbia they started a project similar to this in 2002. They reduced their data centres from one hundred to two, and because of that benefited from 50% in energy cost savings.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Information Technology Association of Canada
Yes.
Conservative
Scott Armstrong Conservative Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS
That can happen immediately, as soon as you consolidate these data centres and collaborate. Is that a big part of the savings we're looking at?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Information Technology Association of Canada
That is the easiest one to look at. The footprint of consolidation is seen not only with the building but with the energy costs, maintenance, support, security—you name it. All aspects have to do with cost and are of immediate net benefit to the project. There's no doubt about it. That's a measurable. You're paying the bills, so there's nothing artificial about it.
Conservative
Scott Armstrong Conservative Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS
For companies who have done this in the private sector and who have completed this project, have they started to move forward in the next steps? Once Shared Services Canada has reached the end of this project, what are we seeing down the road for what we have to do next in the terms of data management?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Information Technology Association of Canada
I don't know what the next step would be, but the question that's always on the table for government to consider is that government should do what they do best and let the private sector do what they do best, which is manage the technology, and deliver the latest technology, and allow governments to deliver the services.
To that extent, you need to build some level of sustainability into the model. You should not have a discussion in 20 years on what we do next in terms of either reconsolidating or doing something else. The current project plan should build out that it is an evergreen process so that you have a sustainable model to always bring in new technology and upgrades.
The Chair NDP Pat Martin
Thank you, Scott. You're well over your time already.
Thank you, Mr. Gupta.
Alexandre, five minutes, please.
NDP
Alexandre Boulerice NDP Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC
On this side, there's always a concern about ensuring that people are getting their money's worth when the government undertakes expenses. This is a considerable project, and it involves a lot of money and contracts. Our experience in Quebec has shown us that the multiplication of contracts and the loss of internal expertise can often lead to collusion. To reward friends, for example, they're given contracts, but there isn't really work being done. A situation where the mass is so sizeable can open the door to this kind of gift, which doesn't really correspond with the objectives of the project.
Do you think there is a risk of this becoming an open bar? We're dealing here with the IT sector and not construction, but the same type of situation could occur in the context of this megaproject.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Information Technology Association of Canada
Thank you.
The risk is always there, depending upon how you plan it. The risk is always there. It really comes down to the execution of the plan, which pieces of the competency you must keep within the government and which things you could get outside. A certain level of competency you have to keep within the government to make sure that you don't expose yourself to those undue risks.
NDP
Alexandre Boulerice NDP Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC
As for the exploding costs of these megaprojects, it might have seemed like a good idea in the beginning, but some skidding can lead to a loss of control and, in the end, astronomical costs. The gun registry is a good example of that, in my opinion: it was supposed to cost $2 million, but it ended up leading to colossal amounts.
You said earlier that, in your opinion, multiplying contracts, assigning smaller, more specific tasks, would make it more possible to maintain control. Is there something else that the government should do to prevent an explosion of costs when it comes to Shared Services Canada?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Information Technology Association of Canada
Thank you. I will answer this question slightly differently.
It is not something you're doing new: you have an existing cost that the government is already incurring in running its IT and delivering the services, right? So the issue is where you go from here. Unlike a new project, which you have never done and is a new cost—understanding that there could be overruns and everything else—a replacement cost comes into play, in that you're replacing something you're doing today with something different.
Having said that, I will also go back to my previous point, which is that it's very important to have the financials of these projects—one, ten, fifteen, two hundred—whatever numbers they are, very well defined and measured very regularly in terms of where they are tracking to. Otherwise, you wouldn't really know how they are doing. You cannot wait until the end to say, “Whoops, we had 10 times the cost.” That would not be.... It has to be tracked regularly.
NDP
Alexandre Boulerice NDP Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC
Shared Services Canada will have a number of different clients, including organizations, agencies and departments.
In your opinion, will a centralized agency be in a position to respond to the various needs of these different clients?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Information Technology Association of Canada
I believe the overall IT needs to be centralized. There is no other way to move forward for any institution. For any institution of any size and scale to have completely separate organizations running IT infrastructure is, in today's technological sense, really unheard of. So in that sense, consolidation is absolutely critical to be efficient and effective.
