Thank you for your question.
As I indicated in my opening remarks, 100% of the IT operating and salary budgets for PCO's e-mail, data centres, and networks used in the processing and storage of up to secret level information—not including top secret, but up to secret level information—has been transferred to Shared Services Canada. PCO will continue to manage e-mail data centres and networks used in the processing and storage of information above the secret level.
In addition, PCO will continue to deliver application and database maintenance and development services as well as to distribute computing services. You might ask what this means. That would include things like the help desk, desktop support, and peripheral support. Peripheral supports are the little bits that go with your computers—the mouse, keyboard, printers, external USB hard drives, scanners, digital cameras, and things like that.
In terms of managing our applications, PCO right now has a portfolio of 160 applications, which contains a mixture of commercial off-the-shelf software that many of us are familiar with as well as in-house-developed applications and systems. An example of an application that is managed by PCO is the cabinet papers information system, which is required to facilitate the control, preparation, distribution, and return of cabinet documents.
Clearly PCO will be working very closely with Shared Services Canada to coordinate the delivery of services now in the Shared Services Canada portfolio through a business arrangement to ensure that accountabilities related to the ongoing delivery of the affected e-mail network and data centre services are clear and that expectations and commitments on the part of both Shared Services Canada and PCO are well understood and documented.
This arrangement will foster close collaboration between the two entities and ensure that the Prime Minister's Office, our portfolio ministers, and PCO itself will receive sustainable, timely, and cost-effective e-mail, data centre, and network services in support of existing and new IT-enabled business processes.