Government Operations Committee on March 12th, 2015

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

You have two and a half minutes, Mr. Ravignat.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Okay.

My questions will now be for the Shared Services Canada representatives.

When a system is centralized, concerns are raised in terms of security, information loss and a reduction in service quality. I mainly want to talk about security.

I know that Bell was awarded the private contract. What mechanisms are in place to ensure that Bell is working with the departments to ensure the security of Canadians?

[Kevin Radford]

Thank you for the question.

I'm assuming that we're talking about the email contract with Bell?

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

That's correct.

[Kevin Radford]

With respect to the email contract and all of our contracts, we have implemented a supply chain integrity piece and all of our procurements are subject to a dual process that allows us to look at security from a procurement perspective. In this particular case, we've actually looked at over 2,100 different procurements and Bell was no exception in the contract associated with the email transformation initiative.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

In the call for proposals for that contract, was there clear criteria with regard to what level of security was expected from the company?

[Kevin Radford]

Absolutely.

As we involve these new sourcing contracts or as we build our new infrastructure, we are ensuring that we are working closely with the Communications Security Establishment around standards, with the RCMP around physical security standards, and of course, we are building security into our designs.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Okay, I think that answers the question.

Back to PWGSC—

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

You have 10 seconds.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Okay.

There's a lot of asbestos being found in public buildings. How much money have you put aside to clean that up? It's about the security of our public servants but also others who rent these facilities.

[Pierre-Marc Mongeau]

Thank you for your question.

Every year, we prepare a review of all elements related to asbestos in all our buildings where we have identified the presence of that product. Asbestos is not present in some recently constructed buildings.

So we have a five-year program to identify all asbestos components, and we are reviewing that program. We also determine what work related to asbestos needs to be done in our buildings. So we are making those estimates on a building-by-building basis. When we carry out repairs, we can estimate the required amount of money. I can tell you that the amount is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you very much, Mr. Ravignat. Thank you, sir. Your time has expired.

The next five minutes are for Mr. Warkentin.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Radford, thanks so much for being here and bringing the submission on behalf of your colleague. Mr. Radford, the email transformation initiative is happening. My understanding is that it's quite a complex and significant project. In terms of that ongoing project I'm curious as to what the expected ongoing cost implications would be to this new system compared to the system that we had, the fragmented system that existed prior to that. Is there any indication as to what the ongoing resulting costs will be comparatively to what existed prior?

[Kevin Radford]

Yes, I'll give you a quick update on the status of the email transformation initiative, and then I'll turn it over to my colleague to give you more precise information around the costs.

With respect to the email transformation, we already said that it's a Bell CGI contract. It is a project that we are currently using with wave zero in our own organization. We've migrated 4,100-plus users. We are ensuring that service is of a sufficient standard from a client satisfaction, a user satisfaction, server perspective for ourselves before we launch with our partner departments.

With respect to savings, we have booked $50 million in savings by the end of this fiscal year in accordance with the consolidation of the 63 email systems, which were referred to in our opening remarks, with the launch of this particular program.

I'll turn it over to Manon.

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

This initiative will generate $50 million in savings. We are monitoring closely the financial benefit regarding this project.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

These are ongoing savings every year, this $50 million of savings?

[Manon Fillion]

Yes, and they're going to start as of April 1.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Wonderful, that's great.

In terms of the move from land-lines to other types of phones, either cellular or VoIP, what is the expected savings with that transformation? Second of all, are there any concerns in terms of the security and the integrity of those protocols? Is there any concern about the security of those conversations that are being taken with cellular phones versus a land-line?

[Kevin Radford]

Mr. Chair, thank you for the question.

I'll respond to the security piece first and then turn it over to my colleague for the specific savings associated with the telephony modernization projects. As we move forward with respect to security we have established a security operation centre. This is a 24-7 capability that looks at all of our intergovernmental networks. It looks at all of our infrastructure and it does continuous monitoring and vulnerability assessments. We also have put in place an incident recovery team and an incident response team that's available to all of our partners should some type of security event occur.

With respect to the security of the telephony service itself, we work closely with our Communications Security Establishment. They recently launched a standard for land-lines and for traditional land-line architecture, but also for the voice over IP implementations. They made recommendations up to protected B conversations, and they asked for our partner clients to mask those conversations because telephony security is only as good as the point-to-point interface. I don't want to get too technical, but what it means is that if I'm on a land-line and I'm calling you on a cellular phone the security is really only as good as the cellular phone. That is what we've done with respect to security and with respect to savings.

I will turn that over the Madam Fillion.

[Manon Fillion]

For VoIP cellular and unused lines, because we had lines that were not used, we have targeted $28.8 million in ongoing savings from those two major initiatives. It is going to be completed this year, so we will return $28.8 million to the fiscal framework for these initiatives.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

You have one minute.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

With one minute, I will move on to our colleague. I was going to go into some Public Works questions, but it is going to take more than a minute.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

That's fair enough.

There will be one more round for the Conservative Party.

Mr. Brahmi, you have five minutes, please.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the officials for explaining these various expenditures to us.

To help people understand, I would like to point out that supplementary estimates (C) is the third request you are making in addition to an initial budget that was established for fiscal year 2015-2016 and that mainly covers the early-2015 period. The idea is to explain the figures a bit, so that Canadians can understand what you are asking them in terms of budget increases.

I see that the department is requesting an additional $17 million to cover expenses associated with the acceptance of bank cards. I'd like to understand what that is about. Why was that additional $17 million not set out in either the main estimates or the two other supplementary estimates? What part of that increase covers additional fees for new banking software that would make it possible to accept a new payment technology? People may be wondering. What portion is intended for new equipment to allow presumably more transactions to be processed?

Could you explain to us a bit more why you are asking for new investments that were not planned until now? More particularly, I'd like you to reassure Canadians that the additional money will not be going into the pockets of the banks to make them even richer. The Canadians we meet daily tell us that they are paying too much in bank fees and that interest rates on their credit cards are too high. How can we assure them that this money is well invested and is not being used to generate profits mainly for banks?

[Alex Lakroni]

Thank you for the question.

There are several parts to your question. I will try to respond to each of them.

Can we predict certain increases? We can plan, but it's difficult to be exact because it's not easy to predict what department will increase its expenditures, how many Canadians will use the technology or even the Internet, or pay in a different way. We have models, but the projections they generate are only right to a certain point.

I have an example for you. Electronic transactions have increased by about 75% in two years and will continue to increase. That has a number of benefits. From 2012-2013 to 2014-2015, revenue across the federal government went from $2.7 billion to $4.7 billion.