Evidence of meeting #62 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 contracts.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Denis Blanchette NDP Louis-Hébert, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
You mentioned a list of savings you had committed to achieve. Are you going to table this list?
NDP
Denis Blanchette NDP Louis-Hébert, QC
Excellent.
When you made your savings commitments, you did not yet have an overall picture of your activities, something that you still do not have, moreover. Obviously, some things are easier, such as IP telephony. This is useful when you want to get off to a fast start. However, as far as the rest is concerned, you need to have a more in-depth knowledge.
The Plans and Priorities Report does not really show any staff reductions, something I'm quite happy about. I imagine that you are focussing more on maximizing contracts with outside firms.
I would like you to tell us about your approach with these outside firms and compare this with how you deal with internal employees. Are you going to draw more heavily on your internal employees or are you going to turn to consulting firms?
President, Shared Services Canada
Thank you for your question.
As I mentioned earlier, we believe that we must find the right balance between using our internal employees and contract employees, or using employees hired for a set period of time. As Mr. Westcott mentioned earlier in answering another question, this is one of the areas we want to examine. Indeed, we want to know what the right balance is in this field, what are the jobs, activities and fields where we will always want to use government employees, and what are the fields where we need to call upon industry, as it is always better to have the best tools available for reasons of flexibility and modernization.
We intend to do an analysis of everything that we've inherited. In addition to all of the contracts, we have also inherited a certain number of contract employees. At times...
President, Shared Services Canada
We do not have the exact number, but we think that we are talking about approximately 1,700 contract employees.
President, Shared Services Canada
We want to know what these people are doing. Some of these contract employees were hired on an individual basis, but others come with services that we have purchased. For example, a department may, because of its small size, ask a company to provide the complete service for one of its programs. In such a case, we will buy everything as one piece: the staff, the equipment and the software. Some of these 1,700 contract employees come from arrangements that the departments have inherited. Others are people who work on slightly more specific projects.
We therefore want to analyze this number. We want to know where these people are located and what they do. We need to decide whether we want to continue on this basis or whether we would prefer to take a different approach, if we are not talking about permanent positions. For example, we need to determine whether it would be advantageous to use term staff as opposed to contract employees. We want to do a complete analysis and plan our human resources in a comprehensive fashion, as recommended by the Auditor General in his recent report.
NDP
Denis Blanchette NDP Louis-Hébert, QC
That is excellent.
We dealt indirectly with the Secure Channel Network, which is relatively expensive. Are you going to trash it and start over with something else or are you going to continue using it? What is your game plan for this project?
President, Shared Services Canada
We have already made substantial progress in this area.
I will ask Mr. Westcott to provide you with a brief update on the issue, as he sits on a deputy minister committee in charge of supervising this project.
Chief Operating Officer, Shared Services Canada
Thank you, Mr. Chairman,
About four years ago, the Treasury Board Secretariat, in conjunction with a number of interested departments, went down the road that said that the secure channel, as it was originally conceived way back in 1999 and 2000, really was not serving us well. Therefore, we had to pursue other avenues that were less expensive and more consistent with the way things work today. We then went through a series of evaluations and RFPs and that sort of thing, and essentially ended up with two solutions to replace the secure channel.
One of those solutions uses what's called a broker service that facilitates people so they can use their own credit cards and the credentials they've established with the banks as a means of identifying themselves, which we would honour. That's one.
Then there was a second initiative that essentially said we would issue, using less expensive technologies, a credential that's issued by the Government of Canada, therefore allowing for choice. That process is now just about finishing its implementation phases. The departments have almost completed that. They will be done by the end of December, and the contract with Bell will cease at that point, so it will be replaced at the end of December.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pat Martin
Thank you, Mr. Westcott.
Thank you, Mr. Blanchette.
For the Conservatives, Mike Wallace.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank our guests today. It sounds like things are progressing quite well. I know that last year we had you here at committee and you were brand new. I'm not sure if you knew exactly what was going to happen in the year—
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
—but you answered the questions and we made a commitment to opposition members that we'd have you back in a year to see what progress had been made. I really appreciate this.
Because I get excited about numbers, I'm going to ask you some questions. I'm really excited about what you sent me, but I had no idea of how to understand it, so I thought I'd ask you a couple of questions about that. This is all submitted by Q, so we have Q2 and Q1, whatever the quarter is.
What's the difference between “Submitted” and “Added”? I have Q2 of 2011 and 2012, and we'll pick on IBM. The reference number is there and then it says “Submitted”, and then for Q2 two pages later, it says “Added”. What's the difference? Is that an addition? I have no idea what that is. Can anybody answer that question for me?
President, Shared Services Canada
I don't think we can. I think it has to do with how the data is stored, but we will absolutely answer that question and provide the information to the committee. As you can tell, this list was run off automatically from our contracting lists. These contracts are all made available through proactive disclosure in any event, so I don't know if it has to do with how they've organized their stuff.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
I have another question, then. If I look at the reference numbers, in Q2 and Q3—I'm sorry to pick on IBM here, but IBM has the same reference number—in the one for Q3, it's $37 million, and in Q2, it's $32 million. It says “Rental of Software”. So in that quarter, is that what we paid them, or is that a cumulative piece? That's what I didn't understand.
Gina Rallis Senior Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Services, Shared Services Canada
Thank you for the question.
What we proactively disclose is the amount of the contract, so it's not in terms of the actual drawdown from an expenditure. We have an obligation to post all contracts over $10,000. As we indicated earlier when we were looking at the contract that was Bell and that had $406 million, that was a multi-year contract.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
So when I see a reference number that is the exact same, is that the same contract? There are two different final numbers here: $32 million and $37 million.
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Services, Shared Services Canada
Thank you for the question.
As the president indicated earlier, these contracts were onboarded from the 43 different departments as they were doing individual contracts. We actually started having contracts under Services Canada at the first quarter of this fiscal, so what you're seeing are contracts that the 43 different departments had put in place for IT infrastructure support. There are numerous contracts with IBM because IBM, amongst other things, provides mainframe support in some of our data centres.
One of the pieces of work that we've been undertaking with vendors is looking at opportunities to consolidate where it makes sense.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Do you have a consolidated report or do you expect someday that if...? IBM is in here under different reference numbers doing different things all over the place. If I add up, as a stockholder of IBM, how much money the Government of Canada is spending, do you have a report that says we have x dollars in contracts with IBM, OpenText, or whoever it happens to be? Is there an actual report that lists that out? That's my first question.
Under the new system when you guys are fully under control, I'm assuming that, as was asked before, the list may shrink, but are you going to guarantee us that there is still an opportunity for SMEs to be involved and not have the IBMs of the world taking over the situation?
President, Shared Services Canada
Thank you.
Well, this is a report that came off a database that's organized by quarter. The database can be organized by supplier. It could be organized by category as well. We have the ability to look in the aggregate. We do not issue reports to that effect. We do the proactive disclosure in the same manner as any department would do, but we can look in the aggregate in terms of individual suppliers if that's what we want to see.
