Government Operations Committee on May 5th, 2016

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

So we are talking about 6,000 employees and a $2-million budget.

Mr. Parker, I would have liked your presentation to contain an answer to Ms. Ratansi's question. She was talking about a type of strategic plan or roadmap.

We know that your organization was created in 2011, and the plan was that you reach your objectives by 2020. For all intents and purposes, we are at the halfway point. You seem to be telling us that it will be difficult to reach the objectives by that date. Can you give us some idea of where you are at in the conversion? Can you give us a picture of the remaining steps and the challenges you must meet?

[Ron Parker]

There are three big projects in the email transformation system. This project was supposed to end in March 2015, but I do not know exactly when it will be complete. The next steps for the migration of the departments have yet to be negotiated with the supplier.

As for...

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

Excuse me, but I think that the email system is one of the three axes. You mentioned 52,000 emails. What does that represent? Is that a third, a half or three quarters of your mandate?

[Ron Parker]

There are approximately 500,000 mailboxes.

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

So we are talking about 10% of mailboxes that have actually migrated to Shared Services Canada.

For instance, are parliamentary mailboxes—mine is P9—now with Shared Services Canada?

[Ron Parker]

Parliamentarians are not covered by our service.

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

So, for the first part, involving email, you are about at 10% of completion.

[Ron Parker]

Yes.

As for the networks, we have just begun implementing the new networks. Despite a six-month delay, I expect to meet the 2020 deadline.

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

You say that you expect to meet your objective for the networks?

[Ron Parker]

Yes.

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

And at this point, what percentage of completion have you achieved?

[Ron Parker]

This has just begun.

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

We are in 2016 and all of the networks have to be put in place over the next four years. As for the cost of the networks, are things going equally well?

[Ron Parker]

Yes.

The biggest issue is with the data centres. We have gotten behind on that part. I don't yet know our percentage of completion, because there is still some work to do with the process and the assessment of the business clients' needs. We are currently working on the planning stages to give us some idea of when that part of the project could be completed.

As I mentioned, it is not just a matter of time, but also of funds. With more funds, we can make more rapid progress, but with fewer funds, we move forward more slowly.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I'm sorry, Mr. Blaney, we're out of time. I hope we can get the answer to that question in the next round.

Mr. Weir, please, you have seven minutes.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thank you very much for the presentation. I was struck by its fairly optimistic tone about the work that Shared Services Canada is doing. You could look at other sources that would suggest it's been a huge boondoggle. I suspect the truth probably lies somewhere in between, but to shed some light on that truth, I was wondering if you could speak to the top three or four mistakes that you feel were made by the organization, perhaps by your predecessor.

[Ron Parker]

There are a number of lessons learned that I draw out of the experiences we've had. First, culture change is a big part of what this project is about, and you can't underestimate it with 43 different departments coming together, with 43 different ways of operating, and 43 different ways of thinking. It's an issue.

Second, and this flows from the Auditor General's observations as well, you need solid benchmarks at the start of the exercise to gauge your progress and to know what infrastructure you're inheriting. The estimates of the funding that was being spent on the infrastructure were rough. What the assets were, to a large extent, was not completely known. The service levels that were coming with the equipment were not established. In some cases there were services, but in a lot of cases there wasn't a benchmark to start.

A third lesson learned, that I can see is that, in these types of exercises and projects, it's important to invest at the outset. I'd over-invest in training people getting ready for the transformation. I'd over-invest in the tools and the processes to make sure you have all of the equipment and tools you need to jump-start and make sure of the service levels to clients. As Mr. Blaney was saying, the service levels had suffered, and you want to put safeguards in place to make sure that doesn't happen.

Finally, I'd take more time to plan to get into a deeper level of detail before launching the projects, and that's why what we're doing now is so important. We're looking at what the realistic procurement times are and what the times to do the projects are in cooperation with partners. It's an open dialogue we have. We need to know what their readiness is to move into a new data centre. They need to invest time and resources on their side to do that. In addition, for us to have all of the equipment there, the networks in place, and the security in place, is a major exercise is orchestration. Those are some of the key lessons I take out of it.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Okay. It seems like one of the major potential cost savings with Shared Services is this consolidation of infrastructure with moving from a large number of data centres to fewer data centres. I wonder if in doing that there's any risk of increased vulnerability to attacks, or natural disasters, or other kinds of outages.

[Ron Parker]

I'm going to ask John to respond to that. He comes from the private sector and is deeply involved in these types of transformations.

[John Glowacki Jr., Chief Operating Officer, Shared Services Canada]

There's always the “putting all your eggs in one basket“ vulnerability you have to gauge, and I would address this in two ways. Our enterprise data centres are truly 21st century data centres. We have begun to take people on tours in our enterprise data centres to help drive this point home. When they come from their departments, what we ask them to do beforehand is visit one of their data centres, some of which go back to the 1950s, and then come and take a look at ours. The difference you'll see are various types of passive defences on the outside, double walls that are heavily reinforced, all sorts of security protections, etc. From a physical standpoint they are solid defensible structures.

The other part of this is that we continue to revisit our strategy. IT is a very dynamic environment. You don't set a plan once and then stay the course for 20 years.

One of the things we are taking a look at is the point you were alluding to, which is our sustainability. In this day and age, we may not be looking at bombers coming across the horizon, but there are threats out there that are determined, and a small group of people could do a lot of damage. We don't want to have a smoking hole incident that cripples the government, so we are looking at what I refer to as “the bunker”. This is not something that's documented yet. We're still in the early stages. Our data centre team is looking at options, but it's this idea that of the data centres we have, there will be one that is bulletproof and a hole-in-the-ground kind of thing. We would back up the most critical systems from the other data centres to make sure if something really bad happens to most critical systems, we can still cut cheques, we can still collect revenue, and we can still govern and provide those services to government.

That's something that is a work in process, but what I can say is the data centres we are moving to are absolutely 21st century world-class data centres, and we invite the tours.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Do you have another point on that?

[Ron Parker]

Well, I think if the committee would like to come and do a tour of an old data centre and a new data centre, it's that hands-on feel that really gives you a sense of what this transformation is about. It would be great if you could find the time to do that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

A very short question, and hopefully a short answer.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

I was just going to ask about the rationale for shifting from traditional phone lines to VoIP.