Evidence of meeting #16 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 nicholl.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
Yes, it is quite different.
Conservative
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
Where do we start? In Ottawa, your departments, your ministries, still have enormous control, certainly on the application side of their business. In 1998 that was changed in Ontario, and clusters were formed. Clusters can range from one ministry—we have one cluster for health, for example, because it such a huge department—but another cluster may have five different ministries. By the sheer nature of it, you loosen the ties of fiefdom and ownership that may exist within certain organizations, and you create that sense of more horizontal sharing across ministries.
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
Our system is a silo system. That's what we live in. What we tried to do is to create that horizontal view across ministries. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it's a struggle. With Shared Services Canada, it was a terribly blunt effort they had to take. It was tough. Really, it's hard work to do this stuff. Ministries are very solid organizations, as they have to be, and to try to drive horizontal lines can be difficult.
Yes, we're quite different.
Conservative
Steven Blaney Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
A previous witness talked about a transplant: taking apart a ministry and putting it into this large figure. You've just referred to ownership. Is it your feeling that within Ontario, within a specific department, those involved in IT feel that they are part of your structure? Do the IT people belong to the department, the ministry, or to your structure?
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
We like to think they belong to both.
Conservative
Steven Blaney Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
As a Quebecer, I am used to a dual identity.
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
Formally, our cluster staff will have a reporting relationship into a home ministry. I belong to Treasury Board. All the clusters do not belong to Treasury Board, but I do all the CIO's performance plans. That's what the federated model is. You have that true matrix environment where you're putting CIOs into position where they have an enterprise role—
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
—and they have a ministry role.
Conservative
Steven Blaney Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
Are you suggesting that the main difference between the model that Shared Services Canada is trying to implement and your model is a decentralization concept—
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
No.
Conservative
Steven Blaney Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
—as you mentioned, the federated model?
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
On the Shared Services Canada side, we're identical. It's only when you get into applications, business applications support and development, that we're different. From an infrastructure perspective, we are identical to Shared Services Canada. There's no difference.
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
It's only on the ministry application side that we're different.
Conservative
Steven Blaney Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
It is still expected that we could, as taxpayers, generate some savings with Shared Services Canada. What about you after 10 years? Have those, you know, political savings materialized or have they vanished with a cost overrun?
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
Our beginnings were strict. We had a two-year time frame to deliver on our our target of $70 million in infrastructure savings. We delivered that $70 million in infrastructure savings in two years. That was in 2006-07 and 2008-09. We did that, it was audited, and it was done.
Corporate Chief Information and Information Technology Officer, Province of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services
In fairness, we picked a lot of low hanging fruit. There's a lot of low hanging fruit. When you bring together so much stuff, there's always stuff that's going to fall off the tree.
We started our next phase of rationalization we in 2012-13. It was tougher because we did another baseline: where are we to market, how good are we, how bad are we? Since then we've taken another $70 million out of our infrastructure budget. That's on an annual basis.
We're focused on two things: service and efficiency. I think on both sides we've done well, but on the efficiency side we have driven what the previous people were talking about: the true promise of Shared Services. Service has to be one. The other one is efficiency. I think we've proven the efficiency is there for sure.
Conservative
