Government Operations Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2017

[Patrick Borbey]

Yes, we already develop pools. We develop specific pools, working with individual departments or collective departments. For example, if they're looking at bringing in scientific staff, maybe a number of science-based departments could work together. We do that already.

We also have our pool from the post-secondary recruitment program that's established on an annual basis. Some 50,000 people applied last year to this program. We end up with about 6,000 or 7,000 who are deemed to be partially assessed or partially qualified. The managers can draw from that pool depending on the specific needs.

We're trying to be more strategic and have specific career streams identified within that pool so that it's much more precise. We're also looking at being more targeted when we're doing outreach in universities and colleges. For example, right now there's a lot of hiring going on in science-based jobs at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and at Environment and Climate Change Canada. They have some very specific needs. We work with them, and we go to universities like the University of Victoria with their particular needs in mind.

The other thing is that we've done a lot of outreach to universities that have strong indigenous populations because, again, one of our targets is to try to increase the representation of indigenous people in the government. A more targeted approach can also yield better results.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Where do you go, for example.... I think actually, to most Canadians, the numbers of applicants and people you need to deal with would likely be pretty astounding. When you talk about thousands of people in specific streams that you're trying to meet, to most businesses in a riding like mine, which is made up of small and medium-size businesses, it sounds complex. I'm just saying that as some background to folks who may be reading this, who are sort of the ordinary, everyday business people out there trying to grasp the complexity of the situation.

I totally agree. I think when you have an opportunity through our education system, universities and colleges, to work with students and you get the ones you want, who have merit—although not all of them will meet that standard—and have the opportunity not to miss that through not being able to offer them some sort of a conditional opportunity for employment, is that something that...? What do you have to do to start to put that in place or is it already in place?

[Patrick Borbey]

There are a lot more flexibilities already available to managers than they sometimes acknowledge. Our job is to make sure they know what's available to them, what the options are, and that they can choose to have approaches that are much more targeted and that can lead to results much more quickly.

However, our systems are antiquated. We know that. When you're talking about how you sift through thousands of applications and come down to the right people for the right job, that's where we're looking at prototyping right now. We're consulting with both candidates and hiring managers to prototype a new system that would be much more intuitive. We're thinking of something like Amazon: one click, buy. Well, it would be one click, apply. Perhaps the people wouldn't have to apply every time a new job comes up, but their application would be held in the system and they could actually get referrals automatically from our system, saying something like this: “You applied for this job. You're not quite qualified. However, these three jobs have been posted by the following departments. Are you interested? With one click, you can apply.”

That's the vision we're developing. It's going to take us a bit of time. We're going to have some system development issues related to that, but this technology does exist for us to be much more effective. We could take those thousands and we could sift them down to the top candidates who we need, wherever they may be in the country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Again, I will impose my steel-like will as a committee chair.

I'm fascinated with what you said about that technology being available and the opportunities that may derive from that. I know it's in the developmental stage right now, if I understand you correctly, but if you have more information you can provide to the committee, I think that would be extremely helpful for two reasons. Number one, if you can get a seamless transition to getting people who had put in an application six months ago automatically getting bumped into another opportunity, great. Also, it would be fascinating to see exactly how you plan to do that in a seamless manner. We've seen other IT programs and payroll programs in the federal government that haven't been quite as successful as you seem to suggest it could be.

[Patrick Borbey]

Obviously, we are very conscious of lessons learned associated with other systems development. The approach we've taken to develop prototypes is a way for us to ensure that before we go to the market and start procuring this solution, we will have tested it through prototypes. This will allow us to focus the scope of the system project and to a certain extent redo some of the risks associated with that. That's the approach we've taken.

I think we may have a little presentation we could send your way that will describe a little bit what we're doing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much. That would be helpful.

[Patrick Borbey]

It's a work in progress still.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I'm encouraged to hear your words.

Mr. Whalen, you have five minutes, please.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair, and thanks, Ms. Ramcharan, for responding to my earlier question through Mr. McCauley, when he was here.

I'm trying to drill down a bit into the estimates on this, because it says here to “Fund a study”. Okay, I get that. When I look at the appropriations we're voting on, it says that it's to support the Privy Council Office’s information technology modernization, just under $32 million, and to establish the secretariat for national security intelligence, $2.2 million. Then there's actually a negative, so it's a transfer to GAC in order for them to help the OECD do their innovation study.

Is this study you're talking about different? Does it fall under part of the $32 million I mentioned at the beginning? Who are the different deputy ministers, and which departments are involved in this pan-governmental approach to innovation development and implementation you're talking about?

[Kami Ramcharan]

The reduction is for us to move the money to GAC so they can take our money and contract with the OECD. It's our study. It will be our study. It's not GAC's study. We're just using their mechanisms in order to help us do that. It is our study. It's not connected.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

That's interesting. How much is the study going to cost altogether as a project?

[Kami Ramcharan]

About $354,000.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

And it's outsourced to GAC.

[Kami Ramcharan]

It's outsourced to OECD.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Okay.

[Kami Ramcharan]

In terms of your other question with regard to the deputy ministers and the deputy minister committees, I don't know the names, but I can get back to the committee with regard to that.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

That's interesting. If the OECD is doing the study, presumably it will be made public at the end. Will it be available for other departments?

[Kami Ramcharan]

It will be available for other departments to see, and we will be tabling it with the deputy minister committee on policy innovation.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Our committee has heard a fair amount about different management approaches to change management within government. We heard some presentations on an agile approach to technology implementation where projects are broken down to as small as is reasonably possible and as tight a time frame as is reasonably possible. Minister Brison says he's in favour of this approach to change management.

Is PCO attempting to implement an agile approach in its information management and information technology project that we're talking about with the $32 million here? Is this more of a “Here's the project, go out and deliver for the full $32 million” or is it broken down into more iterative pieces with more feedback loops built in?

[Kami Ramcharan]

It's a very good question. The $32 million is not for one project. There's a multitude of projects that we will undertake underneath that. I'll talk to two big projects.

One is the e-cabinet project, and that is where you look at the flexible kind of project management. We have certain deliverables that we want to meet on a regular basis, but we also don't want to lose opportunities as we're going through it. It's looking at the opportunity of what you get to deliver in terms of your overall project charter, making sure you deliver what was expected, and we were very successful in being able to do that in the first year.

Our second year, we're doing the same thing, but we're also making sure we're leveraging the right technologies. We're not trying to expand the scope, because that's where you find your projects can go off the rails. When you try to do too much, you lose sight of what your original objective is. We definitely take a rigorous project management approach to all our IT projects. The big one, e-cabinet, is on track.

Another very large one we're doing is the distribution of tablets. In PCO, we were a department that was very much governed by desktop. You couldn't move, and you didn't have any flexibility with moving to different organizations, taking your material with you, sticking with paper. We started that project last year, and we're continuing it and we're going to finish it this year. We are taking what is, again, very much a project management approach to doing that, making sure we build in pilots. We assess the pilots. We look at what's working well and what's not working well, and we adjust. We don't try to do it all at the same time. We try to roll it out on a systematic basis to make sure we have success at the end of it.

Our plan right now is that we've bought the equipment and we are rolling it out on a pilot basis. We'll come back to the people who are using it to find out what's working well, what's not working well, and where we have to adjust. Starting early in the winter, we'll start rolling it out to the rest of the employees within PCO.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We'll go now to one three-minute intervention.

Ms. Sansoucy, you have three minutes.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

My question is for the Public Service Commission representatives.

You have explained to us how the Public Service Resourcing System is used to staff positions. In November 2016, you issued a call for tenders for online testing services, including tests on this system. What motivated that? Did you have problems with system performance? Were improvements needed?

That leads me to ask how often the system is tested. A lot of personal information is being collected. How is the information protected?

[Patrick Borbey]

Are you talking about our resourcing system?

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Yes.

[Patrick Borbey]

We make sure we meet the highest standards of privacy protection. I can't give you any details on how we do it, but I can tell you that, to my knowledge, there haven't been any problems in this respect.

Is the study you're referring to from 2005?