Government Operations Committee on Oct. 17th, 2017

[Dan Murphy]

I don't think the current structure at Shared Services will lend itself to producing new services because the conflicts are so high. I think what you need to do is create another small, very small, organization, an agile organization, and that would be not more than 10 people. With five or six people, I rolled out effectively a million-dollar-a-month run rate business, a high-speed network. It took a couple of years, because I was in that organization, but if I had a small team, a very skilled small team that had authority to the right level to clear the path, then we could move pretty fast. Shared Services is in this conflict, though, where they have competing interests. They're well positioned to keep the lights on, but I don't think they're well positioned to create new services.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Could we set up an agile team to start tackling some of those, whether it's the email transformation or the others, and tackle it bit by bit over the years?

[Dan Murphy]

Yes, there's a very small subset of services that are holding up the whole line.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Getting back to procurement, we look at something like shipbuilding at $60 billion, $50 billion, and you talk about $500,000. The RFP is going to be 40,000 pages long, and we're still going to get sued because we left something out.

[Dan Murphy]

Yes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

How do we use agile to address issues with procurement? The ombudsman report for procurement just came out. If we don't have enough details, the losing bidder sues us—i.e., you weren't fair. How do we use something like agile to get around that or address massive projects like the shipbuilding or purchasing—

[Dan Murphy]

The shipbuilding ones are a little tougher, because there's a certain amount of capital commitment that's required to build a ship, but in most technology projects there's not a huge commitment of funds, especially these days, with the services that are available monthly, by the hour, or by the minute. You don't have to spend millions of dollars to get things done.

The focus needs to be around value. How do we create value, and what does value mean? You need to work backwards from there. You start with value, and then you say, who's this for? And then after that it's, okay, so what's our capability and capacity? Can we actually do this? You have to start small, and you have to start incrementally. This program is not going to happen fast, but it will create value immediately. It just won't do it on a large scale. It needs to be scaled, but capacity needs to be built first—in education, understanding, and leadership capability.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

You mentioned that Cisco started with $500,000 projects.

[Dan Murphy]

Yes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Do you know what they're at now? What would you suggest for government if we could wave a magic wand and we could roll out agile today? What would the value be at for government?

[Dan Murphy]

Yes: $250,000 to $500,000 over a 90-day period and not more. Not more than that because you can't spend that much more in 90 days. What can I do in the next 90 days that produces value? That doesn't mean I'm going to produce a requirements document or an RFP or some document or study. We're going to implement something in 90 days. We're going to implement it with 10 people. We're going to implement email with 10 people and see if it works, and see what the issues are. The issues quickly rise to the surface when you start to implement.

The standard approach—and I've been in this situation—is a team of people sitting around in a room, going, “I wonder what we really need there. I don't know, but we've got to get it done. We have to finish this document by the end of the month. Okay, well, let's put something in.” They fill it with assumptions, and the first test of assumptions is at implementation, which is too late, because the implementation is always after contract award.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

In your experience, have you seen other governments, whether provincial, municipal, or out of country, successfully using agile, or a version of it ?

[Dan Murphy]

Most countries around the world now are starting.... Well, a lot of them have already been at it. The U.K. has been at it for four or five years. The U.S. has been at it: same thing.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

With regard to the U.S. or the U.K., where did they start? Was it a whole-of-government rollout, or did they focus on one department? I'm just trying to think of how we would do it with ours.

[Dan Murphy]

TBS brought over Olivia Neal from the U.K., who did a lot of work on theirs. They set standards and stats for project management and portfolio management. That was good, and it's good that they brought her in, and it's good that they are starting. However, I think the starting point is executive leadership, education, and understanding so that they get their head around what this is, because it's a change in how you approach a problem. If you don't understand how to approach the problem in a different way, you will drop back to the “how” we're going to do this, and all the details. Then you're into multiple documents that nine times out of 10 are not correct, and they are expensive when they are not correct.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Who's the gold standard right now? Is it the U.K. or U.S., or who?

[Dan Murphy]

The gold standard in the world is Amazon. Amazon has 1,000 teams.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Sorry, I mean for government.

[Dan Murphy]

For government, the U.K. is pretty good. Estonia is small, but Estonia is quite exceptional. They have looked at everything from policy down, and it's been a very pragmatic outcomes-based approach. Estonia is a good one to look at. They are going to be at the “forward 50” show, FWD50. Someone from Estonia will be presenting.

The thing is that it's really doable, and it's a systemic solution that needs to be applied. It's going to take some time. It's an evolution, it's not a transformation. A transformation, again, is that with “we're going to do a big project”, just don't go there. That would be my recommendation.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

With government there are big projects.

[Dan Murphy]

Yes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Do we just break them down and break them down to a slew of small ones?

[Dan Murphy]

Yes, break them down until they are $500,000 or less.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay. Thanks, Mr. Murphy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We have to stop it there. Again, I'm giving a little more latitude, but I'm sure these questions will continue.

Mr. Weir, it's up to you.