Government Operations Committee on May 5th, 2016

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

My good friend Mr. Weir took my question on the phones, and that was a great answer. Thanks.

Are there any areas with Shared Services that should be shaved off, perhaps, and sent elsewhere? One thing I notice is you're developing video conferencing. The people we spoke to on Tuesday, the Canadian intergovernmental secretariat, are also developing that, so we have overlap.

Considering the huge priorities you have, these things seem pretty minor. Are there areas like this that should perhaps be contracted out, sent back to another department?

[Ron Parker]

I think you touched on one issue that John raised, the interdependency. Video conferencing is tightly linked to bandwidth, the end-point connections in the departments, and the management of all that is, I would say, quite a client-specific set of activities. We have all of the partners on the video conferencing systems that we have, and it's been, actually, a great story—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

So you're answering yes. I don't want to interrupt, Ron, but you've answered yes.

Just as a quick question, are our contracts with our—?

My time is up?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Erskine-Smith, welcome to our committee. You have seven minutes.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thanks very much.

I want to pick up on some of the comments about this survey and communication with departments. You mentioned that there's a 58% satisfaction rate, 2.79 out of 5. You mentioned timeliness as one of the concerns.

I haven't seen the survey, and I don't know whether anyone else has seen the survey. Would you be able to provide a copy of it?

[Ron Parker]

Absolutely. I'd be happy to.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Perfect. In terms of the feedback on that survey, you mentioned timeliness as a concern. Could you walk through some of the other concerns? Did certain departments come forward to you directly and say, we have these concerns? If so, what were they?

[Ron Parker]

We have the results by department. I don't recall off the top the specifics. I think timeliness is tightly linked to service delivery and service management and being able to provide solutions and design in a timely basis. Those are the kinds of issues that underpin those responses.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

You mentioned part of the problem as being that there were no service-level expectations between Shared Services Canada and departments.

Has that been resolved? Is it being resolved?

[Ron Parker]

That was one of the issues the Auditor General highlighted. We are in the process of setting those service-level expectations at the enterprise level.

In the report on plans and priorities we have outlined a number of very quantifiable targets. As our service catalogue fleshes out, we will be providing service-level expectations for each of the services that we provide, at the enterprise level.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Is there an expected timeline to have that rolled out and completed?

[Ron Parker]

The services will be added to the catalogue over time as they mature. I think it will extend past December 2016, but I'm expecting a large of portion of them will be done.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Other than timeliness, are you taking any steps to react to the results from the survey, to respond to the concerns of departments? If so, what actions are you taking?

[Ron Parker]

John, do you want to—?

[John Glowacki Jr.]

Actually, we are in a couple of ways. This goes back a little to a previous question about authorities. We have a number of governance reviews. One is a monthly operations meeting. We go through everything. Another one we have is what we call the account management board. This is one in which each week we go through a certain group of accounts. Customer organizations are looked at. The account teams come in, we have all the ADMs there, and pertinent staff, and we go through these results as part of that review for each account. What are the hot issues, particular projects?

One of the important things here is that...the results are important, but it's the fact that we now have this process. We didn't have this process before December. This was a big milestone for us, getting it in place.

When you get into this business, one of the things you really want to embrace, and there's a formal framework for it, is continuous improvement. You're never done. It's not a matter of 2020 or 2016, it's “what have you done for me lately?” every year.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I asked for the survey itself, but of course you'll provide the summary of the results of the survey to the committee. Thanks very much.

With respect to IT budgets for departments, I don't know what the explanation is and I'd be interested, but I understand that for Employment and Social Development, 70% of their IT budget is with Shared Services Canada; for Immigration, it's about 25% of their IT budget.

I'm new to this. I don't know whether you could shed some light on that and on whether you're looking to increase your contracts with departments in terms of that budget share. I understand that the RCMP have had issues and that others have had issues.

Could you speak to that?

[Ron Parker]

I'd have to understand a bit better the data you're referring to. I'm not sure what it is. I'd be happy to have a look at it and get back to you.

[John Glowacki Jr.]

I was just going to say that the figures sound like total IT spend of their budgets, not what we spend, but—

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

No, it's of their budget. For Social Development Canada, of their IT budget, 70% is spent with Shared Services contracts.

You have partner departments here. If Social Development Canada is spending 70% of their IT budget with Shared Services, and Immigration 25% of their IT budget, and the RCMP and other departments negligible percentages of their total IT budget, is that something you could comment on?

[John Glowacki Jr.]

We'd like to take that away to better understand exactly what you're addressing. A more general answer would be that we are getting more demand from pretty much all of our customers, and I think that's part of the answer to the question. Despite some of the mythology, the fact of the matter is our revenue is going up because more demand is out there.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Great.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Very good. Thanks very much.

With respect to revenue, and turning briefly to cost savings, the AG noted there's no “consistent financial practices to accurately demonstrate” that Service Canada was generating cost savings.

Are those financial practices being put in place? Have they been put in place?

[Alain Duplantie]

Those practices are partially in place at this time. The department has worked carefully at the onset of an expenditure cost management framework. It's one that would take into account a costing centre of expertise within the department—guides and protocols, and pricing strategies—so services delivered on a cost-recovery basis are well calculated, taking into account the total cost of the service with an understanding of the unit costs, so that departments that are availing themselves of the particular service understand what they're buying and what they're paying for. We have work to do. We've priced out five services so far. There's another 19 services that need to be priced out, but those are services that are subject to consumption and revenue collection. There's work to be done on the part that is fundamentally the mandate of the department, but not subject to a cost-recovery mechanism.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, I want to interrupt for a moment. I apologize in advance for giving you short notice on this—and I just want a quick answer, I don't want a long debate on this. Should you feel you've gained enough information from today's meeting to draft and present a report, I will excuse the witnesses now because we have to get into instructions for our analysts. If you feel there are more witnesses you want to bring in for this particular study, then we will continue, and I'll get maybe two more questions of five minutes each. We can always, as Mr. Blaney had recommended, bring back these gentlemen in the fall for an update, but if you want to continue on with this particular report, so we have a more comprehensive study, I'll get into two more questions.

For the government?

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Question, or do we want...?