Government Operations Committee on April 30th, 2013

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Then I guess there's a process question behind that. When the main estimates and the projected spending for the year are put together, why is there a difference between those two numbers?

[Alex Lakroni]

When we do the main estimates, not all the approvals are in place. The programs are project-driven, and often the projects need requirements to be approved and well defined. The timing is not necessarily conducive to having all the items in the main estimates. Sometimes you have budget items that come after main estimates, so sometimes they are reflected in the RPP and sometimes not. I will sum this up by saying that it's timing.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you.

Bernard, you're well over your time.

Next, we're going to Mathieu Ravignat.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to ask you some questions about one program in particular: the Integrated Relocation Program.

Every year, 15,000 to 20,000 federal employees are moved under this program. The single contract has always been awarded to the same company since 1999, in spite of the investigations and the warnings given by the auditor general of the day. By limiting participation to a single contractor since 1999, the government has deprived many Canadian relocation management businesses of the opportunity to try to obtain this contract.

Since the contract is ending in November 2014, and given that it takes several months of organization among the various departments, have you received any instructions or heard any rumours about the minister's intention of implementing an open tendering process?

[Michelle d'Auray]

Thank you for the question.

A competitive process will in fact be implemented for relocation services.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you.

I am going to yield the rest of my speaking time to Mr. Blanchette.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

I would like to thank our guests. We are always very happy to meet with them.

I will begin with Ms. Forand.

I would like to take a look at how the budget has changed. The first year corresponds to 2012-13. We are now in the next year. This shows something significant and substantial: the shift of investments between operating expenses and capital expenditures or, if you will, votes 15 and 20. That is the most striking thing in your budget.

Can you explain what is going on, exactly, and where you are going with that?

[Liseanne Forand]

In fact, I think we addressed the question of capital spending the last time we appeared here. I think we said that it seemed very low for an organization like ours.

As you know, we got our financial appropriations for the first time on April 1, 2012. We inherited the capital budgets that the 43 departments had previously established. Those departments had established the operating budgets and capital budgets based on their projects and plans. Obviously, that did not entirely correspond to our own projects and plans, since there are two components to our mandate: an operating mandate and a transformation mandate.

We therefore examined this question over our first year, and this year we made what is probably only an initial change in this respect. We set the level of our capital spending at what is in fact a much higher level: $176 million for the coming year, representing about 10% of our budget. We think that is a more appropriate amount, given our mandate.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

When I asked the question, I was not meaning to criticize. I was actually persuaded that there was under-investment in this respect.

However, to increase that investment by nearly $100 million, cuts had to be made elsewhere. What transformations have you made to recover the money and reinvest it in capital assets?

[Liseanne Forand]

Obviously, our large transformation projects are only just beginning.

We have nonetheless been able to achieve savings or adopt efficiency measures during our first year. We have found ways to reduce our operating costs on all kinds of points and in all kinds of areas. I can give you all kinds of examples, but I am just going to take one that is a little simplistic to start with. The projects we inherited from our partner departments quite often overlapped. For example, there were perhaps 10 or 12 videoconferencing projects in the various departments, or 10 or 12 projects for transitioning to a wireless network for various department. We combined those projects and we are doing them one time only for the 12 or 13 departments. That means a single project management team, for one thing. That is one way we are making savings.

I am skipping over a lot, but we have had examples like this throughout our activities. That has enabled us to do this transfer of operating funds to capital funds.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

I would like to move on to something else right away.

You talked about telepresence and mentioned that an additional $20 million investment would be allocated to that.

Could you explain the broad outlines of that investment? Are these specialized lines? How are you going to operate? What kind of services are you going to offer to the departments all across Canada?

[Liseanne Forand]

Thank you for the question.

This is something we have been looking at since the 2012 budget. You may recall that already, in the 2012 budget, there was reference to the government's desire to expand the use of telepresence and other technologies of that nature.

From the outset, following our typical methodology, we wanted to do an inventory of everything that existed in the government. We went to look in all the departments to see what investments had been made and what assets we had. We discovered that a lot of investments had actually been made in the Government of Canada in the area of videoconferencing and telepresence, but those investments had been made in isolation. For example, there might be several videoconference rooms, but people did not know where they were. The people in the various departments could not make common use of the available rooms.

So we have proposed to organize the use of all of this equipment that was available to us a lot better. For example, we are going to prepare a government-wide directory so that people can easily see where the rooms are located, who they belong to and how they can use them.

However, there are gaps to be filled. Some departments are not very well equipped. We might be able to add more equipment in some places or some cities in Canada. We have proposed to use this $20 million to fill the gaps discovered. For example, since the departments whose headquarters are located outside the national capital region use videoconferencing and telepresence much more than the other departments, we are going to make sure they have the resources they need.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you very much, Madame Forand, and thank you, Monsieur Blanchette.

Next, for the Conservatives, we have Dan Albas.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Chair, I'd like to thank our witnesses for being here because I'm new to this committee and certainly appreciate hearing your testimony.

I'd like to focus today on Shared Services Canada, so I'll be directing the majority of my questions toward that, Mr. Chair, but thank you for your willingness to discuss these things with us.

Now, 89% of your budget is dedicated to IT and infrastructure. Can you please illustrate your consolidation and standardization goals again?

[Liseanne Forand]

Yes, indeed, the vast majority of our budget is dedicated to IT infrastructure in one form or another. In fact, Shared Services Canada was created to bring in greater standardization, greater consolidation. A basic fact, perhaps not exclusively with respect to IT but it certainly applies to IT, is that complexity and diversity drive costs, so from the outset our objective is to simplify and to standardize wherever we can.

As you know, we have the three major programs of standardization and consolidation. Regarding the single e-mail system, obviously when you move from 63 e-mail systems to a single e-mail system, you will find efficiencies and a more effective program.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

On the e-mail, are you on track right now for implementation of the new system? Do you have an idea of a date when it will come into effect?

[Liseanne Forand]

Thank you for that question.

We've been working very hard on the consolidation of the e-mail program over the last year. We are now very much on track. We're in the final stages of a complex procurement process that began with an extensive period of industry engagement, so we spent quite a bit of time working with industry at the very front end. Then we did what's called a collaborative procurement process, which is that we pre-qualified a number of suppliers and then we worked with them to elaborate the request for proposals document to make sure we were identifying the right things in terms of what needed to be in the RFP.

We're now at the tail end of that process. We are in the evaluation phase. Once that phase is over, we'll be seeking contract authority and our objective is to have the new e-mail system in place and operational by 2015.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

When you use the term complexity, I simply look at a fairly new organization, 20 data centres, 43 different departments or clients, so to speak, each with their own needs, coupled with growing concerns about cyber-security. It's a big portfolio, I would say.

When a government website is put up, would that be done through the individual department, or is that something you would have a say in through collaborating with them and then presenting that forward? Is that part of the consolidation effort?

[Liseanne Forand]

Thank you for that question. That speaks to the division of responsibilities between Shared Services Canada and the departments. Shared Services Canada's responsibility is the infrastructure. It is really the foundation on which either applications are run or the business of the departments works. In the example that you've given of a website, we are responsible for the networks and for the foundation, for the infrastructure that they would be based on. But the department would be responsible for identifying their needs with respect to the website and for doing all of the work that's required to reflect that department's presence on the Internet.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

The reason I raise this is that obviously, it's difficult for a single MP to meet with 43 different departments on this. I've had a constituent raise concerns that if the government were not to take a systematic approach to accessibility.... For example, this gentleman is blind. There are certain software systems that are inexpensive, but it can be difficult if the programming isn't done correctly. I would just pass on that concern, because there are some people who have the means to afford some of the more expensive programs that allow more complex websites to be analyzed.

I would pass that on. Hopefully you can collaborate with those 43 departments, because I think accessibility is important.

What does telecommunications modernization involve, and what's the status of that particular work?

[Liseanne Forand]

Thank you for that.

That's another one of our major programs. Right now, the Government of Canada's networks.... I'm not a technical person, but I tend to say it looks a little bit like a bowl of spaghetti. There are over 50 wide-area networks, so each department has a wide-area network. Within individual buildings there are local area networks. If you have eight departments in a single building you'll have eight local area networks. We have 485 different data centres, places where we keep our servers and our data storage, so those have to be all connected to the various departments whose data they store. All of this is done separately for video, for data, and for voice. It is a great big ball of all sorts of networks that interconnect each other.

That's obviously not optimal. It's not efficient. It's not inexpensive, and it's not as secure as it could be, because the more of these things you have, the more exposure and vulnerability you have. Our objective is to work over the next few years to build a single network backbone for the Government of Canada to secure the perimeter very closely, to limit the number of connection points that we have with the Internet so as to limit exposure there as well, and to provide modern networking capacity for all departments. That means converged voice, data, and video through one single network, which is already being implemented in some departments.

Again, it's to simplify and standardize.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Given the complexity, that simplifies it.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate their testimonies.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Your time is up. Thank you very much.

Next, for the Liberals, we have John McCallum.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

My first question is on the employee relocation contract. I'm wondering if you can tell us when the request for proposals is likely to go out.

[Michelle d'Auray]

Thank you for the question.

We are working on that and we have not yet set a specific date, but it will be within the timeframe to allow for the transition.