Government Operations Committee on March 7th, 2017

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

I think they would be well-spent funds if they were part of a genuine process, but if at the end of it the government announces that it's not going to do anything, should we be spending public funds on that?

[Serge Dupont]

Again, the monies were able to ensure that 2,000 Canadians participated in town halls across the country, that over 360,000 Canadians participated in an online exercise, that there were other opportunities for Canadians to express themselves, and then it was for the democratic system to take over in the conclusions to be drawn from the exercise and the decisions to be made.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

The great majority of those Canadian participants that you mentioned indicated a preference for a proportional voting system, yet the government decided not to move forward at all with a new voting system. Can we really conclude that those consultations were a good use of public funds?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Pardon me. If I may, I'd like to interject for a moment.

Mr. Weir, I'm listening very carefully to your intervention, but you have to realize that the Privy Council Office supports the efforts of the Prime Minister's Office. They are not the ones making political decisions. I would ask that you try to phrase your questions in a form that will respect the abilities of the PCO as opposed to the political decision-making, which goes to a completely different standard.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Fair enough. The PCO is the intersection between the public service and the political arm of government. It's on the borderline, but point well taken.

With regard to the PCO's supplementary estimates more generally, CBC recently noted an increase of about one-third over the last fiscal year. I'm wondering if you could give us a sense of the rationale for that very large increase in the PCO's budget.

[Serge Dupont]

What the story the member refers to was talking about was the increase in the main estimates for 2017 relative to 2016-17, which is fair. A lot of that represents amounts now built into the PCO base that this committee saw coming through supplementary estimates (A), (B), and (C). Since the coming into office of this government, there have been clearly expanded mandates for PCO for the creation of the youth secretariat, for a more merit-based Governor in Council appointment process, for the results and delivery unit, and for a more robust intergovernmental affairs function.

These kinds of functions, which we explained at this committee came through in 2016-17 through supplementary estimates to some extent—not all of them—now get built into the base of the main estimates that then reflect the increase vis-à-vis 2016-17. I could go through the items in more detail, but they're roughly the items that this committee has heard about over the past year.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

That's fair enough.

I also have some questions for Shared Services, I suppose Ms. Hazen particularly, because they are on the supplementary estimates.

Just last week we learned of a memo from the RCMP commissioner to the Minister of Public Safety with a long list of complaints about a lack of IT support, faulty telephone headsets for 911 dispatchers, long network computer outages that affected officer dispatch and mission-critical databases, and computer hardware failures that resulted in some permanent losses of police information.

I wonder if the funds that are being requested in these supplementary estimates will fix those problems.

[Samantha Hazen]

Thank you for the question. Of the funding we're requesting in supplementary estimates (C), none of the money being requested is designated towards our partner at the RCMP.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Okay, so could I ask more generally what Shared Services' plan is to address these major problems that the RCMP has highlighted?

[Graham Barr]

Thanks for the question.

We have recently made changes to improve the services that we provide to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. We formed a joint task force with the RCMP in November 2015 to address critical issues, and we have made some progress. We're using financing funding received through budget 2016 to replace aging telephony equipment, networks, and storage for the RCMP. There have been, as the member notes, recent outages in support for RCMP services and programs. The most recent one on January 19, 2017, was not, in fact, caused by network equipment that was well past the end of its life. That network equipment still had a useful life until 2020, was under maintenance contract, and also was receiving software patches on a regular basis. Nevertheless, we will be replacing that network equipment.

With respect to some of the other incidents that were noted, Shared Services Canada has been working really closely with the RCMP, whether it was on the site of the Fort McMurray wildfire or in Moncton to ensure that federal emergency response providers had all the IT equipment they needed to do their jobs, including cellular phones, Internet connectivity, security firewalls, etc. There is some improvement to be made, but we have taken concrete action over the past year in this regard.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Drouin, you have seven minutes, please.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

I want to touch a bit on Shared Services. I can appreciate the questions from Mr. McCauley. The thing that's becoming evident is the pattern that's being developed, whether it's with email or Phoenix. There are always upfront costs to implementing a transformation plan or a major IT project, but when you set it up to fail or, as the Auditor General said, when you cut $75 million out of the budget right up front.... Perhaps Mr. McCauley would like to ask the leader of the official opposition, who I believe was the minister back then. She would probably have those answers on why they cut the budget for the email solution. It makes it hard for organizations to fully implement a solid plan.

I'm reading your DPRs, and the start date was April 2012. Right now the implementation date is under review. What's the plan? What's changed? I think last year you were at 10% implementation. Where are we at with email now?

[Graham Barr]

With the amount...?

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Where are we at with the transformation, the ETI?

[Graham Barr]

The email transformation initiative, just as a quick reminder, is meant to consolidate the email systems of our 43 customer organizations into one and to make the system more secure. There are 5,500 email accounts in the Government of Canada. In November of 2015, we halted the migrations or transfer of email accounts onto the new system due to technical stability issues. Basically, the computing requirements for an average email user had been underestimated, and as we were bringing more departments on, the system was failing, so we halted the migrations.

That technical issue has since been resolved. However, there are still some system functionalities that are required as per the contract that have not yet been added to the service by the vendor. We've been working closely, often, and collaboratively with the vendor to ensure that those contracted system functionalities are included in the service.

Just as a reminder, the vendor only gets paid for each of the email accounts that they migrate onto the system.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Okay.

I want to get back to the line of questioning that Ms. Shanahan was following with regard to the transformation plan. You've mentioned that you've consulted with stakeholders, but I believe that your most important stakeholders are your clients, or your customers, as you call them. How much time do you spend with them trying to understand their business?

I know that one of the major complaints was about timing, about being able to deliver services at their request. How much time is SSC spending with their client organizations to ensure that they understand—I know that they still have responsibility for applications—what their needs are? How much time are you spending with them now?

[Graham Barr]

We have been spending a significant amount of time with our client organizations. That is a key difference from the original transformation plan, which did not have as much consultation.

We have a number of partner organization advisory boards built into our governance at Shared Services Canada. We have been consulting with deputy ministers and chief information officers as well as with employees in customer departments on what their requirements are. We have been holding joint fora with chief information officers as well as chief financial officers to talk about the way ahead, whether it's on the technology side and the IT architecture side or with respect to funding models that can be more sustainable for a transformation program of this scope. That work of consulting with departments is certainly not over. It's something that we expect to continue and even to increase in the future.

As I mentioned in response to the earlier question, we have set up account teams for each of our partner organizations so that they can be more integrated into the business of the departments and provide a better understanding of their requirements. We certainly will be continuing that approach as well.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

You've also developed a questionnaire to monitor customer satisfaction. Has the response rate been good in terms of the questionnaire?

[Graham Barr]

The response rate is exceeding our expectations. We have 43 different customer organizations. For example, in January, 37 of the 43 responded. As I noted earlier, the average score we received was 3.1 on a five-point scale, which is an important improvement from a year earlier.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

That's great.

I want to spend a bit of time on something the Auditor General mentioned last year in regard to service level agreements. Has the department or SSC started to develop those with their client departments? These are service level agreements to ensure the mandate is clear in terms of what services or IT services they're getting.

[Graham Barr]

The Auditor General recommended that Shared Services Canada publish service level expectations and report on our progress against them so that there was more transparency for partners. Since that time, we at Shared Services Canada have published a service management strategy and we've made available our service catalogue for each of the 24 services. In our service catalogue, we have established service level expectations. Also, we are reporting to partners against those service level expectations.

We are also finalizing what we call a “business arrangements document”, which is an agreement between Shared Services Canada and each of our customers that outlines our respective roles and responsibilities in ensuring the successful delivery of IT services. We developed that business arrangements document in consultation with other departments. We expect to be sending it to those departments within a few weeks and seeking their deputy head's signature to ensure that it has the highest-level endorsement.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to a five-minute round.

Go ahead, Monsieur Gourde, s'il vous plaît.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for being here this morning.

In supplementary estimates (C), I note that for a $157-million budget you are seeking an additional $4 million; this would take the budget to some $161 million. In reading the document I also see that this would mostly be used to pay for democratic reform initiatives.

Did the Minister of Democratic Institutions not have the necessary budget for those initiatives? Was that not included in her operational budget?

[Serge Dupont]

Mr. Chair, these are one-time expenses that went basically to consulting Canadians over the course of the year about democratic reform. I mentioned the general consultations which were held throughout the country, 17 in all. The same thing applies to the online consultation tool and the work to inform Canadians about it.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Concerning these ad hoc expenses, did the request come from the minister because she did not have enough money in her operational budget, or because she simply had no budget?