Evidence of meeting #15 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 procurement.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Okay, that's great.
How much do you think the SSC issues that we have are because of various departments protecting their turf? I can imagine Transport Canada and everyone else is all of a sudden being told these people who you've groomed are no longer under your control; they're now slid over. Was that a huge part? Is that just part of the planning disaster?
4:15 p.m.
As an Individual
I'll give you an example. When SSC approached me about moving over my email people as part of the transition after SSC was announced, I met with them and told them that I had two people who did it and a 0.5 contractor whom I would hire when we had changes. They didn't believe me. They said every other department had at least 12. They asked where my other resources were that I was hiding and didn't want to give them.
At Transport Canada, as I said, I was very proud of them. We had the best, but we didn't have a lot of them. We gave what they did and how they did it. I didn't have a choice. Maybe large departments could hide that a little more, because there are a lot more IT people. I didn't. When our people transferred over, they were good.
All CIOs believed in shared services. They really believed in the concept. Where the concern came is that, as a CIO, you're accountable for the line delivery. I remember briefing my executive on SSC at a committee meeting, and one of our senior aviation people stood up and said, “Chris, how can guarantee the services will be maintained as they are today”. I said I couldn't. I was no longer accountable nor had the authority to do that. Yet all our other services ran on this. How would you delineate? How would you do that? How would you do the right governance around that? The question needs to be addressed to do that.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
4:15 p.m.
As an Individual
When I was writing my notes here, I was going to talk a little about people being a bit scared or apprehensive about speaking truth to power, based on where they are in their career progression or what it might mean to their organization. I didn't put that in.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
We're probably running out of time.
I have a quick question, just getting back to procurement. Mr. Drouin talked about it before.
One of the things we heard before was why Shared Service wanted to keep the procurement. A big one was security, to make sure everyone was buying the right system, the right security, etc.
Could that be done under a centre of excellence outside of Shared Services?
4:15 p.m.
As an Individual
I would think so. Obviously SSC could input into that based on what the process needed to be, but procurement could still be done through a centre of excellence.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
In that case, we'll go over to Monsieur Ayoub, for five minutes please.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Ramez Ayoub Liberal Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to begin by thanking you, gentlemen, for being here in order to talk to us honestly and set the record straight. That's important.
At the same time, it is worrisome. Despite the good intentions, the results are a long time coming, and there has been no success at all. My concerns are multi-fold.
I would like to come back to the presentation or the will. You talk about costs.
Maybe I should wait a little bit.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Ramez Ayoub Liberal Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
Mr. Chair, are you going to spare me the time, a few seconds?
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Ramez Ayoub Liberal Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
I wanted to understand the history.
When there is consolidation, plans are made, there is an objective and there are control measures. You already talked about this, but I really want to go a bit further.
I feel that there is a clear lack of communication. There was no accountability regarding the results, and all that was done to save money.
Could you explain to me how that planning came about and how people end up staying in an organization where years go by without concrete results?
4:15 p.m.
As an Individual
Thank you very much for your question.
As I mentioned, in my view, there was minimal consultation on the creation of SSC. There had been lots and lots of discussion over the years about shared services. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, Transport Canada actually bought into shared services, but when we did it there was a detailed plan. There was a transition plan for employees. There were service levels identified. Albeit on a smaller scale, it was 1:1, but all those prerequisites were done in advance, including a complete cost structure of what was being transferred and what was going to be delivered in return. We were able to save 20% off a $10-million annual spend, which was good because I had fixed infrastructure costs.
In my view, that's the amount of planning that needs to be done up front. Build it and they will come, without understanding the details around it, is always a difficult one. The whole assessment is that these systems are needed. They are delivering what's required by the Government of Canada today, and they need to be maintained. When you look at it from a general perspective, if you have something existing and you need to move to something new and import the stuff over to the new stuff, you need to maintain both. Therefore, extra resources are required to do that in the short term. We used to say the analogy at Transport was, you spend a dime to save a quarter. Upfront investment is required to set it up, to transition it, and then once it's there, you can turn off the old and then you can start reaping rewards through the effectiveness and efficiency of what you've delivered.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Ramez Ayoub Liberal Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
There were delays, success was lacking and those involved were unable to see where they were at. The Auditor General's report, which was submitted last year, mentions that the savings could not even be verified. What would you say the foregone savings are so far? What is the delay in terms of the plan? How can success be attained? In how many years will there be results that should have been achieved several years ago?
4:20 p.m.
As an Individual
Based on what's happening today, I don't think we ever will. I think there needs to be direct intervention and a step back on SSC plans of what needs to be implemented, what the cost is to implement it, and the detailed information around to support that.
As I mentioned in my opening statement, the concepts were all right. People had the best intentions. I think that people at the senior level didn't understand some of the implications that we required at the departmental level to do this. The devil is always in the detail when you're delivering day-to-day operational production services.
I give Kevin and his team yeoman remarks for keeping the systems up and running and what they did through extraordinary means. Kevin hasn't mentioned this, but he was going through internal struggles with the transformation in SSC as well, where they were taking existing budgeting and moving it over to the SSC transformation side and the operations people didn't have access to it.
It's not a question of people's commitment; it's a question of the planning design and the expectations around what the investment is and what's to be accomplished when, how much, and what you will save in the future. That's why I firmly believe that SSC needs to take a step back. The transformation, it's just too much, too quick, and there's too much happening in departments to support all this. I dare say if that's not done, five years from now we'll be having the same conversation as we're having today.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Ramez Ayoub Liberal Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
My question is probably not easy. At the highest levels in all departments, do senior officials end up losing their motivation? They may think that the situation is impossible and that they will be unsuccessful. They still manage to show some results to protect their job and the investments they have made. Either way, they figure that, in two or three years, they will probably be transferred elsewhere, that someone else will take over and deal with the situation.
Is that sort of the dynamic within departments?
4:20 p.m.
As an Individual
Is the question for me?
Actions speak louder than words. I won't be as frank as Chris, but there's a lot of talk about support for Shared Services Canada. From my perspective, if there was a lot of support in some of the management accountability frameworks over the last five years, which Chris spoke to, that departments were submitting in departmental plans, then in an enterprise approach to supporting Shared Services Canada and some of the initiatives that the government was trying to accomplish, there would have been detailed plans as part of those submissions, would there not?
I'm not sure if the committee is able, but if you were to go in and research each of those plans, how many examples would you find where an actual department had in their IT plan that they were going to consolidate resources in any of the new data centres?
I'm going to give you two examples where we did have plans.