Government Operations Committee on May 5th, 2016

[Ron Parker]

That's something I don't know.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Concerning the staffing, I understand the difficulty—you've described it very well—with the change of culture when you're bringing in from 4,300 into one. You brought over 6,300 staff. You're supposed to have about 6,000, and you're at 5,800. You're bringing in 6,300 from 43 different departments, but we set it up as only an efficiency of 200 gained; that there's only an overlap of 200 potential positions out of 6,300, from 43 different departments.

Is that correct? It does not seem correct.

[Ron Parker]

I don't recall what the initial starting point of the...was it 6,300?

Over the planning period of the report on plans and priorities, which extends out for the next three years, we're expecting staffing levels of around 6,000. Those are the numbers we're looking at.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm sorry, I know it's very difficult to explain. What is that based on? To me, it just seems incredible that we would combine 43...and I know it's not the same as a takeover of 43 separate companies, but we're combining 43 overlapping departments into one. It just seems odd that we would not find more than 200 efficiencies.

Or are we adding? Is there—?

[Ron Parker]

There are two things. First, the transfer of resources took into account, to some extent, the added responsibilities. We've also seen significant growth in demand. For instance, storage growth is growing at something like 50% a year.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

That's fair.

Just quickly, we talked about security. What do you consider the largest risk? I know we talked about a big hole, and we could actually put the data centre out between Centre Block and the Confederation Building because there is a 10-storey hole there. What do you consider the biggest security....? Is it government hacking from a certain Asian country? Is it physical—hole-in-the-ground, as you discussed?

I know it is difficult to see into the future, but what are you preparing for?

[Ron Parker]

Those are all important risks. There are more than 100 million malicious attacks on the government network a day, and they are growing in sophistication and intensity, so that is a very serious risk.

The risk is also around the human element inside the government—somebody opening an email and clicking on a link that executes a malicious code. That risk is important as well, so I would say the training and education that go along with good data management and good hygiene are very important as well.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I am probably running out of time.

We have discussed funding a lot. We were looking at comments from the minister in February, where she says that it is not the time to focus on cost. You mentioned that lack of funding is a big issue, but at the same time, in an answer to a question, you said you can't prove savings and you can't really determine, going forward, exactly what funding you need.

[Ron Parker]

The transformation plan will bring it all together. It is coming together for the fall. It will bring together the costs, the savings, the benchmarking to industry, and where we plan for our unit costs to be. We will have forecasts of service growth, so we will bring the whole package together.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

You have enough current funding, though. Is that right? Yes or no?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Drouin, go ahead.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here.

I want to start by saying that I really believe in Shared Services. We are all here to make sure that it is a success, and that in four years we can come back here and say that you have met some hard targets.

I know that in 2011 it may have been too much, and it may have been unrealistic. The goals may have been unrealistic in order to reach the email system.

Mr. Parker, you said that it is more complex than previously thought. I want to touch on the impact of procurement. How does that reflect in the RFP, if we are telling the vendor, “Here is what we think we have, but it is not really what we think we have”? How does that impact the email transformation initiative right now?

[Ron Parker]

I don't think that the complexity affects the email project a great deal. The specificity of what was expected to be delivered as part of the email system, be it the security or the other aspects of functionality, was clearly laid out in the contract.

When I think of the complexity, I think of the data networks and the data centres. When you go to one of the old data centres, or go to a pseudo-data centre, as I will call it, you will see that there are wires, servers, and boxes all over the place. Just mapping what is connected to what, how it works, and where those interdependencies are is a very large exercise.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Should your predecessors have focused on consolidating data centres prior to starting the email transformation initiative? Is that what you are...?

[John Glowacki Jr.]

When you go through this kind of exercise, you are always going to do a number of things in parallel. I am saying this because I have done this before, on this kind of scale—not 43 departments, but a quarter million end-users, yes. You don't want it to be a serial exercise.

The idea that there is always low-hanging fruit, targets of opportunity.... We knew we could close some number of data centres in the first year, and that happened. That is how we got to the 80 sites. I will call them “sites”, because in one case we found a server rack in a men's room, for instance. That is not a data centre, by any means.

Then you have others, which really were good data centres in their day. Those obviously take longer. If it is a closet somewhere that somebody shoved a server in, we go for those opportunities much more quickly.

You don't want to wait and say, “Well, we want to get all the planning done to the nth degree” before you take advantage of those opportunities. That is something that the organization has done.

While this wasn't called out in some of the previous reports, unit costs have been reduced for servers, for instance, by 30%, and for storage per terabyte by over 50%. We don't need the next transformation plan. We are achieving those today, but to really achieve the end state we need to revisit our plan, and that is what we are doing right now.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

The other question I want to touch on again is procurement. The rationale at the time was to.... We're telling DND, we're telling all other departments to deal with PSPC, or PWGSC at the time, when it touches procurement.

What's the rationale to still have procurement within Shared Services? I know you may not be able to speak to that, to the prior...but right now, what's the rationale to have procurement within Shared Services?

[John Glowacki Jr.]

There are probably a few points here. The first one I'll start with is, it requires our attention. Just from a pure bandwidth...a very dynamic environment, and you need a certain DM-level engagement every week, and when you're involved in intense periods, almost daily. To try to time-slice that into everything the large organization already has—just pure bandwidth—you end up with a challenge. That's one reason.

The other reason that this works is having a built-to-purpose organization. You want people who really understand this business up through the most senior levels involved in making the decisions. You may not get that in another model and having that procurement authority shared there. There are times we get involved, and while we're making C-level decisions, we're also having to discuss bits and bytes because they directly tie into how the performance of that procurement is going to be conducted. I would dread the idea of trying to do this without the procurement authority.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

What about transparency and accountability?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Drouin, I'm sorry. Hopefully we can get to your follow-up question the next time.

We'll go to Monsieur Blaney.

Five minutes, please.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to go back to what Mr. Parker was saying.

You explained that there were to be three major services: the email system, the data centres and the networks. Things are going well with the networks and the email services. As for the data centres, I see that they are supposed to go from 500 to 7. Is that your objective regarding the IT transformation?

[Ron Parker]

There are more than 500 data centres and we think that ultimately there will be from 5 to 7.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

A lot of information technology projects wind up taking on monstrous proportions. That is a significant challenge, and yet, when one undertakes such a transformation, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The plan is to group everything together to save some money.

I am hearing contradictory things this afternoon. You say that you will have trouble completing the project by 2020, and that in order to do so, more has to be invested. And yet savings were supposed to be achieved. I see that this network represents a $2-billion yearly expenditure. Can you give us a picture of what to expect in the future and provide us with a little encouragement, given that there are large sums at stake? How do you see the project evolving? Will it be completed in 2020 or 2022? How do you see the next four years in financial terms, and what are your objectives?

[Ron Parker]

I think the project will be a success. We have launched initiatives and they are being implemented. It is difficult to say exactly when all of the data centres will be closed, and as I mentioned, we are preparing the staffing plan. We need to assess the workload carefully if we want to reach our goal. This fall we will have a well articulated plan, guided by the perspective of people from the outside. I think that would be the right time to provide an answer to your question.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Fine.

You say you want to bring the number of centres down from 500 to about 7 or 8.

[Ron Parker]

There will be 5 to 7 data centres.