Government Operations Committee on March 7th, 2017

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Colleagues, I call this meeting to order.

I have a couple of housekeeping notes before we begin. First, I'd like to take about 15 minutes at the end of today's meeting to go over a little committee business. It shouldn't take too long.

Second, on a little brighter note, I want to announce that our colleague Mr. Clarke is now the proud father of a bouncing baby boy.

Ramez, perhaps you could explain this to me. Why a proud francophone would name his first son Winston is beyond me. Perhaps he's a great admirer of a British prime minister.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Since when was “Winston” not French?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

At any rate, Mr. Clarke will be attending to some obvious family business for the next few weeks, but he will be rejoining us before the end of the session.

I'd like to welcome our witnesses here today. We're dealing with the supplementary estimates (C). We have representatives from the Privy Council Office and Shared Services Canada.

Gentlemen and ladies, I think you know how these things work. We'll have opening statements, followed by a round questioning from all our panellists.

Mr. Dupont, I think you're first up on my list. Please give us your opening statement, sir.

[Serge Dupont, Deputy Clerk, Privy Council, Associate Secretary to the Cabinet and Deputy Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Privy Council Office]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning to you and good morning to members of the committee. Thank you for inviting the Privy Council Office to review our 2015-16 departmental performance report, and as indicated, the 2016-17 supplementary estimates (C).

I'm accompanied by Ms. Kami Ramcharan, assistant deputy minister, corporate services branch, and chief financial officer of the Privy Council Office.

My introductory remarks will be brief so that we may turn quickly to the questions of the committee.

As you know, the mandate of PCO is to provide professional, non-partisan advice and support to the Prime Minister and ministers within his portfolio and to support the effective operation of cabinet. As a central agency, PCO exerts a leadership role across government to departments and agencies to ensure the coherence and coordination of policy development and delivery.

As identified in the departmental performance report, in 2015-16 PCO provided advice and service to two prime ministers and their respective portfolio ministers and cabinets, and successfully facilitated the transition from one government to another following the 2015 federal election. We advised on, developed, and delivered a number of key components in support of the government's agenda, including development and publication of ministerial mandate letters, the throne speech, budgets 2015 and 2016, and two first ministers meetings with the provinces and territories. As members know, a third first ministers meeting was held in December 2016.

We performed a central advisory and coordination role in the creation of the cabinet committee on agenda, results, and communications and the creation of the results and delivery unit of PCO in support of the government's commitment to deliver results to Canadians.

Finally, we advised and supported the Prime Minister, portfolio ministers, and cabinet during their first 150 days in office and on advancing Canada's presence and interests at international events, such as the G20 summit, the Commonwealth heads of government meeting, the Conference of the Parties 21 in Paris on climate change, the 2016 nuclear security summit, and the first state visit to Washington, D.C. All of that was in 2015-16.

Budget 2016 identified a number of needs and initiatives that require investments in PCO's capacity to support the Prime Minister and the government in the delivery of their agenda. Some of the additional authorities supporting new and modern IT infrastructure and security platforms, and enhanced digital communications, were approved through supplementary estimates (A).

In addition, the resources approved through supplementary estimates (B) included funding for the following: enhanced engagement with provinces and territories as well as well municipalities and indigenous groups, requiring added resources in the Intergovernmental Affairs Secretariat of PCO, serving the Prime Minister as Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs; support for the Minister of Democratic Institutions; active engagement with youth through a Youth Secretariat, serving the Prime Minister as Minister for Youth; a focus on outcomes and results for Canadians through a new Results and Delivery Unit, housed in PCO; a more open, transparent and merit-based appointments policy requiring added resources in our Senior Personnel Secretariat; and responsiveness to evolving threats to our national security by bolstering the capacity under the National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister.

Turning to 2016-2017 supplementary estimates (C), PCO is seeking spending authority of $4.0 million, supplementary to $157 million of authorities to date resulting in total authorities of $161 million in the current fiscal year. Specifically we are seeking approval for an additional $3.8 million in resources that enabled PCO to support the Minister of Democratic Institutions' activities related to electoral reform and $150,000 for the Access Control and Physical Security Project at PCO.

For electoral reform, $3.3 million of the total $3.8 million funding was to support the following activities: engagement of Canadians through a series of outreach events including 17 ministerial town halls across the country, with the participation of approximately 2,000 Canadians; the creation of an interactive and online engagement application, MyDemocracy.ca, that allowed Canadians to identify the values and features of a democratic system that are the most important to them. These one-time communications and engagement activities required the support of 4.5 FTEs.

The remaining $500,000 of the $3.8 million request for electoral reform covers paid digital advertising to achieve greater citizen engagement in the electoral reform consultations.

The final item in these supplementary estimates is $150,000 used for the planning, procurement, and implementation of the access control and physical security project.

Budget 2016 provided funding to strengthen security and make required investments in life-cycle updates to systems and buildings. Given the evolving threat environment both in Canada and abroad, PCO's focus includes better securing the perimeter of its facilities to prevent unauthorized entry and enable PCO and the Office of the Prime Minister to function in a safe and secure manner. The funding for the access control and physical security project included 0.7 full-time equivalents.

This summarizes the initiatives to be funded through PCO's proposed supplementary estimates (C).

Mr. Chairman, I look forward to the questions of the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much, Mr. Dupont.

Mr. Barr, please give us your opening statement.

[Graham Barr, Acting Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategy, Shared Services Canada]

Mr. Chair, we are pleased to appear before your committee to discuss Shared Services Canada's 2016-2017 supplementary estimates (C) and the 2015-2016 departmental performance report.

My name is Graham Barr, the Acting Senior Assistant Deputy Minister for Strategy, and I am accompanied by Samantha Hazen, Acting Director General of Finance and Deputy Chief Financial Officer,who will discuss our supplementary estimates (C). I will be focusing on our departmental performance report and related activities.

Shared Services Canada was created in 2011 to modernize how the government manages its information technology infrastructure. We deliver email, data centre, network, and workplace technology device services to departments and agencies in a consolidated manner to support the delivery of government programs and services.

Over the past several months and throughout 2015-16, we spent a lot of time and effort in improving our business model to better deliver on our priorities. We have strengthened our “service first” approach to better listen to our customers, take account of industry trends and changes, and deliver value-added services to our customer organizations and the Canadians they serve.

In 2015-16, Shared Services Canada continued its work to upgrade out-of-date mission-critical infrastructure across the government and enhance cybersecurity measures to assure the delivery of vital services to Canadians.

Our efforts have been supported by an investment of $460 million in Budget 2016.

SSC also played a key role in helping support the whole-of-government effort to welcome Syrian refugees to Canada.

Our department worked tirelessly to rapidly install the necessary IT for the first welcome centres in Toronto and Montreal. This was carried out in close collaboration with multiple departments, local airport authorities, the Canadian Red Cross, Ontario and Quebec law enforcement, and numerous vendors and contractors.

In 2015-16, Shared Services Canada launched a number of initiatives to strengthen service delivery to partners. This included an online catalogue of all IT services offered by SSC to our customers. We also launched a monthly customer satisfaction feedback initiative to help us continuously improve our products, services, and processes, and in a year we've seen improvements in our results.

We have also continued to modernize and simplify our procurement practices by developing, among other activities, a system to electronically manage the procurement to payment process. We have also taken steps to ensure all our customers can obtain modern enterprise video conferencing services that support the government-wide commitment to a mobile and connected workforce from coast to coast to coast.

Towards the end of 2015-16, SSC launched a comprehensive review of its plan to consolidate and modernize the Government of Canada's IT infrastructure to ensure that the scope, costs, and timelines are realistic.

These are just some of our activities for the 2015-2016 reporting period, as part of our efforts to build a modern, secure and reliable platform for the digital delivery of programs and services to Canadians.

I would now like to turn to my colleague Samantha Hazen, who will discuss our supplementary estimates (C).

[Samantha Hazen, Deputy Chief Financial Officer and Acting Director General, Finance, Shared Services Canada]

Thank you.

For this third and final round of estimates for the 2016-2017 fiscal year, Shared Services Canada is seeking an additional $34.2 million.

This includes $3.2 million in incremental funding to provide information technology services to our customer departments and agencies.

This funding will support new government employees with a suite of standard services such as cellphones and Internet access. It will also support a project led by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada on the DNA analysis of insect and plant collections, for which SSC is providing computing capacity, storage, and ongoing maintenance.

These estimates also show that Shared Services Canada is receiving $31 million in transfers from other organizations. This includes $14.4 million from Statistics Canada to stabilize a legacy data centre as well as to support them in carrying out a number of surveys over the next few months.

This work will help reinforce the constructive working relationship we have established with Statistics Canada.

Working closely together we will indeed achieve a great deal. This includes, for example, the fact that Canadians were able to participate in record numbers in the 2016 Census using Shared Services Canada's networks.

These estimates also include a transfer request of $9.3 million from Public Services and Procurement Canada to support various initiatives, including the department's pay operations. For example, we rapidly helped to establish call centres in Ottawa and Toronto last fall in less than two weeks in collaboration with the IT industry. Following this success, SSC went on to implement other related solutions, including a claims centre for Treasury Board Secretariat. These additional centres were also completed quickly to meet the urgent business needs of our customers.

Finally, through the supplementary estimates, we are reprofiling funds to future years.

That includes $52 million in support of the Carling campus initiative to consolidate a large part of the Department of National Defence's headquarters function at Nortel's former campus. This is a large multi-year infrastructure project led by Public Services and Procurement Canada as the custodian. Shared Services Canada is responsible for all communication equipment, connectivity, and information management and information technology to support DND's business operations.

I'm pleased to note that after four years of work, the first wave of DND employees moved into the newly refurbished, updated, and upgraded Carling campus in January 2017. All employees were well equipped with IT tools and services to deliver on their roles and responsibilities.

Currently, the move is on track to be completed by 2019. However, due to some delays related to construction, some of the funding Shared Services Canada had planned for 2016-2017 is now planned for 2017-2018 and 2018-2019.

That completes our opening statement. We would now be very happy to take your questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you all very much. Now we'll begin our questions.

Madam Shanahan, you have seven minutes.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to everyone for being here this morning with us. My question will go to Mr. Barr of Shared Services.

We've heard from Shared Services a number of times over the last 12 to 18 months. I understand that you're working on your updated IT transformation plan. Just to refresh the committee, could you give us an update on the purpose of the plan and its scope?

[Graham Barr]

I'd be happy to.

The purpose of our transformation plan is to chart the way forward for the consolidation of the government's email, data centre, and network systems. Before the creation of Shared Services Canada, SSC's customer departments had 63 different email systems, 50 different wide-area networks, and over 500 different data centres. The vision of our transformation plan is to consolidate that, to streamline and modernize it so that we can build the IT platform for the delivery of services to Canadians.

As you've noted, towards the end of 2015-16 we launched a comprehensive review of that plan to consolidate and modernize IT infrastructure. We based our review on the lessons learned from our early years. In the fall, we also undertook a broad-based consultation with Canadians, with industry, with federal public servants, and with departmental CIOs, all aimed at ensuring we get the best possible advice and input from the various stakeholders to shape the plan.

Under the leadership of the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, an external review was launched in the late summer. That review involved the services of an expert panel, a panel of experts from different jurisdictions who had undertaken IT consolidation and modernization efforts before. All that work was undertaken during the summer, fall, and early winter of the past year.

We're in the stage now of analyzing everything we heard through the consultations. The expert panel and the independent review process is wrapping up, so our goal is to have a new, revised transformation plan that will be ready for consideration by ministers and that will have more realistic time frames and scope to chart the way forward.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Okay. That was the major criticism, the delays in putting forward that plan and making it public. When do you expect to have that made public?

[Graham Barr]

The consultation did take a while, but we wanted to take the time to do it right. We wanted to take the time to ensure that we heard from as many stakeholders as possible. For example, we undertook three different industry round tables, meeting with representatives from 78 different companies and industry associations.

We set up an online portal on our website to receive suggestions from stakeholders on how to improve our plan. We received 2,500 different suggestions for improvements to our plan. As I said, we're in the process of analyzing that input. We anticipate wrapping up our analysis in the coming weeks and we'll provide that to ministers for their consideration.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

When can this committee expect to see the plan?

[Graham Barr]

That will depend on the length of time or the process of ministerial consideration.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you for that.

I have another question. It concerns the estimates.

I remember very well the customer satisfaction survey. I'd like to have an update on it. Last year at this time, it was 2.79 out of 5.

[Graham Barr]

That's correct.

We continue to conduct our satisfaction survey on a monthly basis. Our most recent results, for the month of January 2017, indicated a score of 3.1, our highest ever. That may seem like a small increase, from 2.79 to 3.1, but it's an increase that's important to us. It validates the various service improvements we have been able to put in place despite some of the challenges we face.

It's encouraging for the morale of SSC employees as well, and it's helping us start to restore our customers' confidence in Shared Services Canada.

We will continue to conduct a survey on a monthly basis and we look forward to even better results in the future.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

What are the areas that are still lagging behind?

[Graham Barr]

The customer satisfaction survey tests five different drivers. The area that is the lowest is with respect to timeliness of our business processes. Our customer departments perceive that it takes longer than they expect it should to receive services from Shared Services Canada.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

What steps are you taking to improve that situation?

[Graham Barr]

We're currently streamlining the number of steps in our business intake process. As well, we have set up account teams. Each one of our customer departments is supported by an account team at Shared Services Canada. We are trying very hard to integrate ourselves into the business of departments so that we have more advance notice of the business requirements for those departments and there aren't surprises when they come knocking at our door for a particular service, because we already can see it coming on the horizon.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Are you requesting additional funding to help you in those efforts?

[Graham Barr]

No, we are not, through supplementary estimates (C).

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. McCauley, you have seven minutes, please.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Welcome. Good morning.

Mr. Dupont, I'll start with you. I didn't see this in your DPR, but I found a fun quotation for you from last July in “Privy Council Office takes lead in dealing with pay system catastrophe”. It was from the Prime Minister.

Can you walk us through any involvement your department had with this? It's very clear that the Prime Minister said PCO was going to take the lead, yet it's not mentioned in your DPR, and we see ongoing problems with it still.