Evidence of meeting #122 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was phoenix.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
If I have 20 seconds, I'll redistribute my time to NDP colleagues.
Liberal
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
I want to ask a question about printers and printing services. Recently a decision was announced that Shared Services Canada is looking at saving money by reducing the list of eligible suppliers across government. Obviously, a number of suppliers who feel that they can provide competitive pricing—and have in the past—are upset by the fact that they're not going to be able to bid on this work.
I'm wondering why the decision was taken. I'm also wondering with respect both to the equipment and to the services if you can share in terms of concrete numbers what the savings will be by reducing the number of people and firms able to bid on this work.
Executive Vice-President, Shared Services Canada
I will talk in general about the procurement and turn to Alain Duplantie for the specific numbers.
Shared Services Canada recognizes the importance of SMEs in the Canadian economy, and all of our procurement processes are open, fair, and transparent. For this particular process, we have been through important consultations, starting with two industry days and three requests for information. Small and medium-sized enterprises have the chance to participate in those processes, and one of the five qualified vendors is actually a SME. The other thing is that all the vendors we have worked with confirmed to us that they are using and relying on a national network to deliver those services.
Alain, do you want to answer?
Deputy Commissioner Alain Duplantie Senior Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Services, Shared Services Canada
With respect to the potential for savings, it comes as a result of an evolution of the model itself. If you contemplate the current construct, there are nine active standing offer holders who operate with the support of a set of small and medium-sized enterprises to actually fulfill demand across the country. Requests can go to any of the standing offer holders or their listed suppliers for one-off requirements, such as requirements to supply a printer, for instance, to configure, deliver, install, and service on a one-off basis.
The new construct would add to that dimension. On the one hand, the ability to access a one-off request would continue to exist by way of a catalogue, but the request would go to the top-ranked major service provider, who would operate through themselves and their network of small and medium-sized enterprises.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
When you say “potential” savings, am I to understand there's nothing contractual that guarantees any cost savings for sharing the model in advance?
D/Commr Alain Duplantie
I will just continue to paint the picture. It's not a guarantee inasmuch as it is a competitive model, so if it is the top-ranked bidder who will provide the service, it's on the basis of a set of performance indicators, and it's a competitive environment—
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
There was a competitive process before that, so my understanding of the government rationale is that this was a trade-off in reducing the amount of competition, in the sense that you have fewer people bidding directly on the work in exchange for savings. What I'm not hearing from you is a guarantee of any savings on the other end of this process. Is that correct?
D/Commr Alain Duplantie
Well, let me finish. Here's the next part.
What is not available in the current construct is the ability for a department to seek a departmental-oriented standing offer for a managed service. That would be a competition amongst the three primary standing offer holders, who would then bring the experience of the industry to a department, a building, or a set of facilities to optimize the use of printing, scanning, and printing products across the requirements of that facility with the use of print analytics. That's where the optimization will occur and—
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
I'm disappointed to hear that there is no real guarantee of any lower price. I understand that the idea of the system is to try to produce that, but I have to say that for purchasing out of the catalogue—and this is anecdotal and comes from my own experience as an MP—whether it is Staples or Grand & Toy, I'm often better off going to Staples myself, purchasing something, and then getting reimbursed for my MOB, because the government contracts under which you'd think bulk purchasing would produce cost benefits actually don't. I'm better off as Joe Customer off the street in Staples in terms of my MOB than I am ordering through the government catalogue.
I think it's unfortunate that the ask seems to be to have faith that, at the back end of this process, government negotiation is going to secure lower prices. I would have thought that if we're going to reduce competition and make it more difficult for SMEs to access bidding on these jobs, there would be a guarantee at the outset, from the people remaining on the list, that you would see lower prices for the services rendered. Am I right that I'm not hearing that in what you're saying?
I do hear that the hope is that this new process will generate some savings, but I'm not hearing that it's been negotiated at the outset, as a condition of being on this limited list, that those suppliers have agreed to produce any guaranteed cost savings.
D/Commr Alain Duplantie
That's correct, because it really is in the managed service space that the opportunities for optimization will occur. As opposed to ordering a one-off for the replacement of a printer, for instance, in a building, having a company or a company and their representatives contemplate the requirements of a business as it operates in the facility or a set of facilities to see what they really need is where there—
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Why for that model is it necessary to have fewer potential suppliers? From what I hear in terms of the way the model is working, it's about being more sensitive to the needs of a particular department or unit within government, and fair enough. That's not a bad idea, but why not allow just as many players to bid on that process as we had before? I don't necessarily see the connection between taking on a more sophisticated approach in terms of matching supplies—
NDP
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
Your time is up.
I can give you 10 more seconds to answer, but I'll cut you off at 10 seconds.
D/Commr Alain Duplantie
Thank you.
The desire to go to three comes out of an extensive consultation with industry, a set of requests for information that provided written advice from various components of the industry to inform the strategy.
Liberal
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to go back to the investment in Phoenix. Let me summarize and then, by way of preamble, set the question that I'm going to ask.
I understand the $645-million commitment so far. The biggest chunk is coming in at $431.4 million in budget 2018 and, as I see it, is really focused on three pillars or three initiatives. One is building capacity, two is enhancing technology, and three is supporting employees.
My colleagues and your department have spent a lot of time explaining where we started and where we lost the capacity when the base went back to 550. We are at 1,400 and are going to 1,500, and we're going to support them with sufficient training.
We've spent a little time on enhancing technology and supporting employees, and that's where I want to take the conversation. First of all, can you give me an idea as to what percentage of the $431 million is broken down between building capacity, enhancing technology, and supporting employees? That's question number one.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Essentially, the lion's share would go to the HR capacity. The technological aspect is also considerable. From the $142 million, we spent about $30 million on the technology aspect. We have some assumptions around the $431 million, but that's money to be spent. I'm more comfortable talking about monies that we have spent to date.
On supporting staff, we've been working on a number of elements, particularly the client contact centre that the minister referenced.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
That's where I wanted to go, because I think that was highlighted by the minister in her comments. Perhaps you could also expand on the pod concept. I really want to talk about some of the new features under enhanced technology, including enhanced client contact services.
If you can focus your comments on those three areas, I'll give you the rest of the five minutes.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
I'm happy to do so.
I'll start with the contact centre, which the minister did mention in her comments. To date we have been operating under a model where our client contact centre has been a contract service, in both Toronto and Ottawa, with individuals who are essentially ticket takers. This was set up following “go-live”, when it became apparent that we were not keeping on top of the number of issues and complaints that the staff had. We wanted to make sure that the staff who were trained in compensation work were focusing on dealing with transactions and allowing the service to provide the outlet for complaints and concerns to be registered.
We've realized over the course of the last couple of years that we need to ensure that employees get better service with their first call. The idea is to transition from private sector to public sector. We're more than halfway there in terms of providing new public servants who are brought on specifically for this function to have training on the various systems that are related to pay and compensation. When employees call, they're not just leaving their name, their PRI, and the nature of their issue. They're actually talking to someone who has access to the system, can see where their transactions are, and can provide them with an update in terms of where things are in the system. They won't be able to resolve them, but they'll be able to provide more information than has been the case to date. We feel that will be a bit of a game-changer in terms of client service for staff.
On the technological front, as you know, our vendor is IBM. They have been the project integrator over the course of the last number of years. They are still under contract with us for in-service support until June of 2019. We have moved from a task authorization basis with the contract—i.e., we give them a piece of work, they go and do it, they bring it back, and we sign off or not—to a managed service arrangement on both the technical and functional piece. IBM is taking on more of the risk and responsibility for solving problems without the government prescribing how they get to that solution. They are taking on more of the risk and more of the routine running of pay—365 days, 24 hours a day—and that frees up our crown resources to focus on the more higher-value technical fixes, functional fixes, that will bridge some of the inefficiencies we have.
At the same time, we're looking at improving the training, the mandatory training that's been released by the Treasury Board. We also have a claims office that's up and running whereby people who are out of pocket as a result of Phoenix are able to make claims for reimbursement. We also offered, both last year and this year, up to $200 for tax services to individual employees who were looking for outside third party help to assist them with completing their taxes.
Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
I could maybe add something here.
With regard to the TBD and the $70 million left in departments, which Les referred to, there's a certain amount of work that departments can do. I'll put my PSPC DM hat on, not the service provider side of the equation. We've come to the realization that having our transactions provided to the pay centre on time makes a big difference, and what order we entered them. One of the challenges we've had as a department, which includes my colleagues, has been getting the information to employees about the intricacies of the system. This is where this new training is so important, and really pushing employees and managers to take that training once they understand it.
We just launched at PSPC a special concierge line, which we call “HR resource”, that employees of PSPC can call. Departments create their own place where they can actually help employees navigate the system. Last week we launched the ambassador program, where employees will be on the ground and will be able to help other employees find information.
So there are things we can do outside of the pay centre, outside of the service provider, that can actually help the end to end.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
I have 20 seconds and I just want to make a comment. I hope all the lessons learned and the experience we're getting from Phoenix is actually being passed on to the Treasury Board Secretariat group, because I heard about a kind of arm's-length relationship and I think that's where really the key integration to come over the next period is. As they're doing the assessments, they should do those in partnership with the ones who are dealing with the issue on a daily basis.
On that note, thank you.