Government Operations Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2013

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Okay, so the administrator you're talking about would actually be from the client department.

[Liseanne Forand]

There is a bit of a shared responsibility, because the client department has a chief information officer who is responsible for working with the management in that department on the information management.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

I'll go back to my original request. Since you are not prepared at this point in time to provide a definitive answer to the committee, would you commit to providing a follow-up response to the chair?

[Liseanne Forand]

Mr. Chairman, I will commit to providing a response to the committee concerning the process that is used when records are deleted from accounts.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

I appreciate it very much.

You did indicate to the committee that you have some knowledge of the Treasury Board or the government-wide requirements for the retention and management of electronic records. Would it be your opinion, based on your knowledge of those requirements, that destroying e-mails 30 days after they are generated would be in compliance with the current requirements as established by the Treasury Board or government-wide directive?

[Liseanne Forand]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would simply say that my understanding, as a deputy head who is accountable for information management within Shared Services Canada, is that there is a requirement for every public servant to ensure that records of business value are retained, consistent with government policy. Records management systems, programs, and software are used for that purpose.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Byrne. Your time is up.

I will remind members that if more detailed answers are required, they can be sent to the clerk, who will in turn forward them to all committee members.

Mr. Trottier, you have the floor for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to get back to the subject of the estimates. I know Shared Services Canada hasn't been around a long time, but I always appreciate looking at the departmental performance reports, which came out at the same time as the supplementary estimates (B). You were formed in 2011, and I'm looking at the departmental performance summary table, which is on page 12 of the English version. It shows a ramp up in actual spending from $622 million, in 2011-12, to $1.38 billion in the following year. In the planned spending for 2013-14, you're planning to go up again, and then we start to see a decrease in spending.

At the same time, though, I notice that the actual spending for 2012-13 was considerably less than the planned spending that would have been approved in the estimates, a difference of almost $100 million, from $1.47 billion, which was planned, and the actual spending came in at $1.38 billion. So actually it's more than $100 million. Can I infer that the planned spending will be replanned or adjusted further downwards, that we'll see even further savings? Part of that question is, what is the baseline? Given that you're ramping up and then starting to take costs out, if you look at pre-Shared Services Canada, before the formation of Shared Services Canada, did you ever have a chance to measure the overall spending in all of these 43 client departments? So how is the new level of performance different from what it was before the formation of Shared Services Canada?

[Liseanne Forand]

The question of the baseline of spending in IT infrastructure before the creation of Shared Services Canada is a complex one. I would say that the best attempt made to identify what it was, was in fact through the exercise to transfer those moneys from the 42 departments to Shared Services Canada. The amount in the first year...and recognizing, as you probably have noted in the various materials, it was made up of both appropriations and revenues.... We were transferred appropriations, and we weren't transferred the authority for the revenues, but that was part of what was transferred from departments. The closest they could come was the amount that was transferred to us for our first year, which was in the area of $1.8 billion.

Our appropriations have been going down from the very beginning, given that as a result of the 2012 budget exercise in our first fiscal year, we in fact turned back $75 million worth of those appropriations. And this year it will be $104 million, and next year it will be $150 million. So in fact, notwithstanding the actual spending numbers that are there, the actual spending numbers are due to things like, for example, in our first fiscal year we were able to have a carry-forward of $55 million from the previous year, based on unspent moneys by the previous departments. That gave us a little bit extra in that first year. We received some additional moneys for things like salary settlements and those sorts of things. So there have been little increases, or increases this year, as we've noted, for IT projects that were undertaken by other departments. Any increase that's happened in our appropriations has been due to projects for which we received particular funding or through carry-forwards.

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

I realize it's not a straightforward answer. But your colleague Mr. Long mentioned $99 million per year in savings. You mentioned $1.8 billion in appropriations. There was an overall spending level that was considerably higher than what Shared Services Canada is looking to spend. We're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, especially over a 10-year timeframe. That would pay for some Champlain bridges and all kinds of other interesting projects for the Government of Canada.

You talked about the three big areas: data centre consolidation, e-mail consolidation, and networks. In terms of priority or dollar value, where are the biggest savings coming from?

[Liseanne Forand]

I would say that the e-mail system is out of the gate first, and it will generate a significant savings as early as 2015. Proportionately you might say it's a large savings because it's about $55 million out of an original spend of somewhere between $104 million and $124 million, depending on whether you're counting all of the IT security that goes along with it, so it's a big proportion.

However, the data centre consolidation, as Mr. Long mentioned, will also generate a $99-million per year savings over time, but on a bigger base. The one thing that I would mention about that, Mr. Chairman, is that it's generating a $99-million saving even as it is increasing storage by seven times, sevenfold, even as the security posture of those data centres is increased, so it's hard to do apples to apples in these sorts of calculations.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you, Mr. Trottier. Your time is up.

This brings us to the end of our testimony today, as we must keep a few minutes to adopt the votes. This is our last meeting on supplementary estimates (B).

Thank you very much for making yourselves available to appear, and for your testimony.

I will now suspend the meeting for a few minutes. We will return with members of the committee for the adoption of the votes.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

We will now resume our meeting. There are a number of things to take care of before we finish.

Let us move on to the adoption of the votes. This is our last meeting for our study of supplementary estimates (B). I will put all the votes to a vote. There are about 10.

CANADIAN HERITAGE Vote 95b—Public Service Commission.............1

(Vote 95b agreed to on division)

PRIVY COUNCIL

Vote 1b—Program expenditures..........$1,067,755

(Vote 1b agreed to on division)

PRIVY COUNCIL Vote 10b—Transportation Safety Board of Canada...............$863,222

(Vote 10b agreed to on division)

PUBLIC WORKS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

Vote 1b—Operating expenditures..........$78,964,148

(Vote 1b agreed to on division)

PUBLICS WORKS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES Vote 5b—Public Words and Government Services—Capital Expenditures..........$86,042,148

(Vote 5b agreed to on division)

SHARED SERVICES CANADA

Vote 15b—Operating expenditures..........$110,999

Vote 20b—Capital expenditures..........$5,752,330

(Votes 15b and 20b agreed to on division)

TREASURY BOARD Vote 1b—Treasury Board Secretariat—Program Expenditures..........$5,264,377

Vote 15b—Compensation Adjustments..........$94,092,664

Vote 1b and 15b agreed to on division)

TREASURY BOARD SECRETARIAT

Vote 20b—Public Service Insurance..........$918,264

Vote 25b—Operating Budget Carry Forward..........$275,000,000

Vote 30b—Paylist Requirements..........$955,000,000

(Votes 20b, 25b, and 30b agreed to on division)

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Shall supplementary estimates (B) 2013-2014 be reported to the House?

(Motion agreed to)

I will report to the House.

In conclusion, there is nothing left on the agenda. Nothing is planned for Thursday, December 5? Unless otherwise stated by the committee, there will be no meeting on that day. We will therefore reconvene in seven days, on Tuesday, December 10.

The meeting is adjourned.