Government Operations Committee on May 10th, 2018

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

I think you've nailed the two issues.

First of all, it's not good for Canadian dollars that we lose that expertise. It will cost more to build ships if there's a gap in production. It will take longer, because we'll have to ramp up the expertise as we move on to the next ship. It's certainly not at all acceptable for people and jobs, so we recognize these gaps.

I think, Michael, you're probably in a better position to talk about that, but what I will tell you is we are working with both shipyards on the gaps both on the west and east coast. I'm working to find creative solutions to help address this issue.

[Michael Vandergrift]

Absolutely. Thank you, Minister.

We are working on both yards. This is an acute issue at both yards, certainly. In Vancouver we're looking at issues. For example, could we start early work on the JSS as a way to fill some of the gaps? That's an option that's being looked at quite closely right now.

On the east coast, there's the question around the number of AOPs, for example. It's five or six under the contract. We'll be making a decision around the AOPs and how we manage that. Of course, trying to make sure the surface combatant project moves on schedule is key to this as well. We're definitely engaging with experts trying to figure out what the available options are to fill these gaps. It is an acute issue.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

I look forward to seeing progress in this. When I say west coast, I say west coast on purpose. It's not just Vancouver, but my riding in Esquimalt, as well.

In addition to that, as part of the shipbuilding strategy, we said there would be additional work available to other shipyards, including shipyards like the Davie shipyard. Can you give us an update on the progress on negotiations over icebreakers, which would keep workers working in Quebec as well?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

In seven seconds.

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

We're still in negotiations. We recognize the expertise of the workers at Davie. There's really nothing more to update you on. We're still at the table.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Minister, for giving us this extra time.

Committee members, the department officials will stay for the second round. I'll suspend the meeting for two minutes.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Welcome to the department officials.

Madam Lemay, do you have any opening remarks? No.

I'll start off with the first round of questions.

Ms. Mendès, you have seven minutes.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Folks, sorry, before we go, I'll need five minutes to do the votes for all the things that come before us. Thank you.

Go ahead. You may start.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

I can start the votes, or do you want to—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

No, no, you have to start asking the questions.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you very much again for staying with us.

I'm going to refer to this article that was published yesterday by Mandy Kovacs. She reported on the consultation you've undertaken at Shared Services—a very wide consultation of 2,500 people, if I understand correctly.

Mr. Parker, I would appreciate if you could share with us the results of that consultation. What does it say about the progress you've been making in implementing the mandate of Shared Services Canada and the improvements that have been accomplished so far?

[Ron Parker, President, Shared Services Canada]

The article was dealing with the employee morale. Is that the right article?

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

It's not only with employees: “its own employees, other Canadian government employees, young federal public servants, industry representatives, and the general public..”.

It's not just—

[Ron Parker]

We've done a lot of surveys and consultations, so I wanted to make sure I was on the right subject matter.

That was an important part of setting the stage for development of the new plan for SSC. There are many components to that, including a Gartner report, those broad-based consultations that included employees, the general public; it included departments and partners. We used that input to reformulate the plan and reset SSC. That reset was announced in the budget.

Those consultations and the outcomes are resulting in an opportunity to put in place the foundations for the success of the department. They span from the adoption of cloud computing, accelerating the cloud computing adoption; deepening the cyber and IT security investments in collaboration with TBS and the Communications Security Establishment; making sure that our current operations continue to function well, so benefit payments to Canadians are not impeded and all of the services that depend on the IT infrastructure continue to operate. It's to provide the opportunity—and this is really important—to get a baseline of the asset holdings of Shared Services Canada, because a physical inventory was never passed along at the inception of Shared Services Canada. A physical inventory will tell us exactly what we're managing, what needs to be renewed, how it's connected.

All of that is fundamental to keeping—

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Is that ongoing?

[Ron Parker]

—the IT infrastructure in sound shape going forward.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Is that physical inventory ongoing?

[Ron Parker]

We will be launching a project to do that physical inventory over the next year or two. There are tens of thousands of assets that need to be examined.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

I can imagine, yes.

Is this throughout the public service?

[Ron Parker]

It's throughout every building that exists where public servants are, especially data centres where there are servers to compute storage networks, including anywhere there is a local area network, a connection to a department as well. It's a vast exercise.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

That is massive. It's quite a massive exercise.

I think one of the other things that the survey came out with is that there's a certain preoccupation with the turnover in terms of managers, that one of their wishes would be the stability of the management teams.

Could you address that, please, for us?

[Ron Parker]

Turnover is one aspect, especially for morale overall. It has been an issue. Overall at Shared Services, turnover rates are very similar to the rest of the public service, but being a new department, even after seven years, in relative terms it's still a new department. Stability matters tremendously.

In terms of addressing it, we are providing training opportunity for leaders, for managers to improve communications. We're improving training and development opportunities for employees, communicating more with them about the direction, and listening to them, and their concerns especially.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Has there been any work done with regard to comparing what Canada has been attempting to do with Shared Services and work in other jurisdictions that would compare to ours? I wouldn't talk about the United States. It's way too big, and it's so huge it's difficult to compare it with them. Australia or even the U.K. would perhaps be more comparable. Have you done any kind of comparison with them?

[Ron Parker]

One of the aspects of the report that Gartner did was a comparison with selected countries. They found that what we're undertaking is unprecedented across governments in the world. At the same time, they also endorsed the direction, the model that has been adopted, in terms of having a unified approach to the IT infrastructure for the government.

I can also say from a security point of view that the feedback we get is that almost all countries are extremely envious of the efforts that have been made, because we have an ability to bring together all the networking of the government and to monitor and control the accesses to the Internet and we have very good visibility into what's coming into the Government of Canada network and what's going out. That's a security stance that doesn't exist anywhere else.