Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses.
Before I start my questioning, I'd like to table the following document, in both official languages. It was acquired through the access to information project. I'd like to hand it over to the clerk to distribute to all the members. This has to do with the briefing that was provided to the minister on February 18 vis-à-vis the status of the Phoenix implementation.
To the witnesses, thank you very much for your testimonies. A large business transformation enabled by technology, such as the Phoenix implementation, usually has a very structured implementation approach when it's being led by one of the five large implementation organizations. There have been a number of discussions around the challenges, such as oversight and culture, but I really want to focus on the activities that happened prior to that, what in the terminology of large business transformations is called, “go live”.
By way of background and transparency, I was a management consultant for 25 years. I've implemented a lot of large business transformations enabled by technology, so I'm very familiar with the process that Phoenix went through.
As part of the go/no-go or go-live decisions, traditionally there is a call, or there is a sequence of go/no-go decisions being made. During that process, the readiness assessments of the project from various aspects are reviewed, such as project management, the ability to see the “go live,” as well as the transition and stabilization.
Policies such as security, access to the information, processes—whether the processes are being redesigned—technology such as the functionality of the system working properly, and people, training, and whether the organization restructuring was completed..... There are two other elements that I haven't heard much of. One of them is the implementation of a rollout strategy, and the other one is the contingency plan.
As far as implementation of a rollout strategy is concerned, traditionally, either we have a phased approach, or we have what's called a “big bang” approach.
During a phased approach, a pilot project is launched for a specific department to make sure all the functionality works. From your testimony, it looks like that pilot was skipped, or that it was decided not to proceed with it. Therefore, as an implementation strategy, it was decided that all functionality, all sides, or what's called a “big bang” approach would be taken.
When an organization chooses to go with a big bang strategy or an implementation strategy, the huge risk as far as system implementation is concerned is if something goes wrong. Hence, the concept of a contingency plan, which is basically, “How do we roll back?” and in the case something goes wrong, “What is our recovery strategy?” plays a huge role in that.
During the readiness assessment review that was done, was there ever a recovery strategy or a contingency plan discussed? If it was discussed, what was it?