Government Operations Committee on Nov. 27th, 2014

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Do you know where you're going to put 30 more seats in the current chamber?

[Nancy Chahwan]

Yes. I'm sure you're happy with my answer. Yes, we do. We have been working very closely with the House of Commons, Mr. Chair. We have tested some mock-up desks to make sure that they fit. We are also working to make sure that the desks are connected electronically. We expect that everything will be in place before the fair representation act is in force.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Okay. In the opening remarks we heard about accommodation requirements for crown-owned buildings and the accommodation portfolio, departments' existing fit-up budget, and about how the fit-up budget is ongoing and it replaces the annual requests for incremental in-year funding.

What's a fit-up budget versus in-year funding?

[Alex Lakroni]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the question.

PWGSC remains committed to providing cost-efficient accommodations to the public service. The current methodology was deemed to be a bit complex, not integrated. We had adjustments for price and volume. What you see in the supplementary estimates is an adjustment to the methodology to have it more integrated, to seek funding for the fit-up as well as for the repair and the recent adjustments of capital.

I'm happy to explain the details.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

What's the difference between a fit-up...? What is a fit-up budget? What does that mean?

[Alex Lakroni]

Go ahead.

[Pierre-Marc Mongeau]

Thank you for the question.

The term “fit-up” in English translates to “aménagement” in French.

When we rent a building, all the owner provides is the shell, the carpet, the washrooms and the doors. The fit-ups refer to all the work the department asks us to do so that it can fulfill its mandate. It refers to things like furniture, temporary partitions and new offices for certain activities, be they conference rooms or closed offices. The fit-ups refer to all the improvements we make to the rental space.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thanks to both of you.

Ms. Day now has the floor for five minutes.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As you know, there were a number of problems related to the census and the new census methods.

Shared Services Canada is requesting $10.7 million for the planning, design, development and testing of questions, systems and processes for the 2016 Census of Population.

Why is Statistics Canada not paying for all the costs of conducting the census?

[Elizabeth Tromp]

I'm going to ask Peter Bruce to answer that question. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Peter Bruce]

Thank you for the question.

The $10.8 million being requested by Shared Services Canada this year is to set up the infrastructure needed. Our role in the census program is to provide the telecommunications infrastructure, as well as the data processing and storage infrastructure, just as we do for all departments and all Government of Canada computer systems.

The cost of providing all the necessary census infrastructure leading up to 2016 is currently estimated at $27 million. And obviously, that does not include Statistics Canada's costs.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Will there be a return to a long census form, so that researchers, Canadians and various groups can have access to the data and information they need to function?

[Peter Bruce]

Thank you for the question, but I don't think I am the person to answer that.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

What responsibilities will Shared Services Canada be given and when will they be carried out?

[Peter Bruce]

The work is already in progress. We have begun setting up the core infrastructure at our data processing development centre to make sure it will work. We expect the production infrastructure to be in place by mid-2015.

Delivering all the infrastructure needed for a census is a huge undertaking. It takes time as well as a trial period, prior to implementation, to successfully bring together all the data collected throughout the process.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

I think everyone has realized the impact of the budget cuts as far as the long form census is concerned. Working with the new system is incredibly challenging.

Shared Services Canada is asking for $1.8 million for additional costs related to providing core IT services to client departments and agencies.

Which client departments and agencies are involved? It appears on page 2-83 of the supplementary estimates. What is the reason for these additional costs?

[Manon Fillion, Director General , Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Finance, Shared Services Canada]

Thank you for the question.

That $1.9 million is actually for transfers from partner organizations, mainly Environment Canada for weather services renewal, and a small amount for the Department of National Defence. There was an $865,000 transfer for Transport Canada, and amounts for Industry Canada and Infrastructure Canada.

Those amounts are separate from the $18 million in voted appropriations and the $38 million in transfers because that money had already been appropriated to those departments for the initiatives in question. So it does not represent new funding but, rather, transfers between departments.

That is why the amounts for these projects appear separately.

I'm not sure whether that is clear.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Your time is up, Ms. Day.

Mr. Trottier now has the floor for five minutes.

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

I want to ask some questions of Shared Services Canada. I'm glad you were able to come here today.

I know this is still a fairly new initiative in the overall scheme of things. I believe that in your remarks you said that Shared Services Canada was put into action three years ago, and I would say it was long overdue. I've worked with some large corporations the size of the Government of Canada which took on these kinds of initiatives even 10 years ago, so better late than never. I'm glad we're actually making some progress.

Some of the savings you identified in your remarks were very significant; $150 million a year is very significant for Canadian taxpayers.

You mentioned the data centre consolidation initiative, in particular, going from 485 data centres down to seven. I didn't hear any associated savings in your remarks. You mentioned significant savings in other areas. Is it because there aren't any dollarized savings with that initiative? Can you describe why there is not a dollar figure associated with the data centre consolidation?

[Elizabeth Tromp]

Thank you very much for the question.

The transformation plan, the seven-year journey that we are on to consolidate, is being funded with our existing levels. It takes money to achieve this. It takes money to migrate, but we are managing that from within. We are not showing savings at this time because we are still in the process of executing that plan. It is a multi-year plan.

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

From some previous meetings we've had about Shared Services Canada, I know that some of the savings associated with data centres are hardware savings. It's also real estate. You also mentioned energy savings. Large, modern data centres actually consume a lot of energy.

Have you done some work to identify energy savings and to what extent does this help the Government of Canada reduce its carbon footprint?

[Elizabeth Tromp]

Thank you very much for the question.

You're absolutely right that, first of all, the closure of data centres is going to have an effect, as will moving to brand new enterprise facilities.

I'm going to ask Peter Bruce if he has anything to add on the issue of the data centre consolidation and savings in that respect.

[Peter Bruce]

Thank you very much for the question, Mr. Chair.

Essentially, what's happening in the shift from 485 data centres to seven or fewer is that power consumption becomes much more dense, but the use of that power becomes incredibly more efficient. I can't tell you in kilotons, but there is a significant improvement in the carbon footprint for the amount of data processing that we need to do in the Government of Canada data centres.

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

Thank you for that answer.

I know another benefit of this data centre consolidation is improved data security. Can you describe the risks we currently have with these 485 disparate data centres? Now we can minimize the risk by going to seven data centres.

[Peter Bruce]

I think it would be easy to understand that it's not only cybersecurity, but for 485 data centres you also need to have physical security. You need to have security personnel for all of those locations. Obviously, cybersecurity becomes easier when there are fewer data centres to manage and protect.

On top of that, when you're moving to state-of-the-art data centres and you only have seven, you can invest in properly securing those facilities. Essentially, modern data centres are almost lights-out operations. There's a very limited requirement for people to actually go in to most modern data centres.

We're hoping to achieve significant improvements on all of those fronts. Certainly, our threat profile is at much higher risk today than it will be in the new model.