Government Operations Committee on May 4th, 2017

[Éric Trottier, Chief Financial Officer, Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner of Canada]

For the LEAN processes, we hire an external company to do the process with us. I believe it's about $25,000 that we pay a consultant to work with us.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Okay, understood. Thank you.

To go to the Canada School of Public Service, your departmental plan indicates that you intend to conduct a horizontal audit of the cost of information for decision-making in departments. I'm wondering if that's something that you would also be doing for any federal agencies or crown corporations.

[Wilma Vreeswijk]

I'm sorry. We are trying to locate that within our departmental plan.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

I believe it's in the supplementary information tables, but if it's not something that you have at your fingertips, it's certainly something that you could—

[Wilma Vreeswijk]

We'd be happy to follow up on the question.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Yes, that would be absolutely fair enough.

I'll come back to PCO, then, about the results and delivery unit. How will its performance be measured?

[Chantal Maheu]

There are a number of indicators that would show that results and delivery have made an impact. As I mentioned earlier, all departments have been asked to have a chief results and delivery officer.

How we're proceeding in developing what are called “charters”, which allow us to assess progress, will give an indication that the approach is taking hold throughout the government. Also, the government is reporting—or will next year—through new streamlined performance reports, and that will also inform those reports. There are a number of places where the government, in its communication and in its reporting, will have more robust data and more consistent approaches to reporting to Canadians.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

Mr. Whalen, you have seven minutes.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Madam Maheu, how long have you been involved in the estimates process within PCO? How many years have you been in a role that would allow you to participate?

[Chantal Maheu]

Actually, the building of the estimates would be done by my colleagues, the chief financial officers, so I'm not personally involved in my responsibilities with developing the estimates.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Okay. How long have you been involved in overseeing plans and priorities with the PCO?

[Chantal Maheu]

My role in PCO is one that looks at plans and priorities generally for government. In that role, when PCO puts together their report, I provide a sense of the overview of priorities for government and how PCO is contributing to that.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

For how many years have you been doing that?

[Chantal Maheu]

Since September.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Okay. Is there someone here with us today who has a little more institutional knowledge of the process?

Ms. Ramcharan, have you been doing this longer? I just want to get a sense of the communication function within government, certainly out of the Prime Minister's Office, but also generally. It seems that there has been a transition to moving some of the function within the Prime Minister's Office, but under the previous government they seemed to do a lot of public communications and outreach through the action plan. I'm wondering if you had any sense of how that was financed and through what department.

[Kami Ramcharan]

I've been a chief financial officer in PCO since June of last year, but I was a chief financial officer for Natural Resources Canada prior to that, for three years.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Okay.

[Kami Ramcharan]

I've had some experience with regard to the estimates process. What I can say in terms of the process is that the process is very similar. You start out with a budget, and the budget announces what a department is going to do. How you actually access those resources is done through your supplementary estimates, be that (A), (B), or (C), which then comprises, in terms of going forward, into your main estimates.... If I understand your—

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

I'm sort of trying to get a sense of.... We have almost $3.7 million for communications and e-cabinet, and we have a million dollars, some of which is going towards digital infrastructure in the background to assist PCO in selecting senators. Not all of it might be used. I'm trying to get a sense of where the work is actually being done. Is this being outsourced, then—the technology portion—to Shared Services Canada? How might this money have been spent? These functions would need to have been done by the previous government. How would they have engaged in these functions and this community outreach?

[Kami Ramcharan]

Some of these functions are actually new functions. If we go to digital by default, we would not have been doing that kind of function prior to 2016. We would have gotten additional resources to do it. In order to spend those resources, it would have been a combination of a couple of things. For certain, Shared Services Canada would be part of our partners working with us in terms of developing the technology, as they have a lot of the responsibility right now for infrastructure within the Government of Canada. We would also have our existing people who will come in. Then we would also have professional services contracts to augment some of the additional capacity that we might need. It's spent in a number of different areas.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

You said a bit about how maybe the full $1 million might not be used on the Senate. It's sort of earmarked for employees for that purpose, and they might be repositioned. Will we see in the public accounts later this year how much the website actually cost at the end of the day, even if $400,000 was earmarked towards it? Or would that money have been transferred to Shared Services Canada to develop the website, and then, if they had any savings associated with it, they would be the ones who would get it? How is that going to play out in the estimates?

[Kami Ramcharan]

On the public accounts, what you'll see is how we've spent our money in different categories. You will also see, in our departmental results plan, how we've used our money very broadly in those various categories. You won't see something specific that says “$400,000 on a website”. We wouldn't be that specific in our departmental plan, but in our public accounts, as we post every single quarter, you see where we spent money in contracts. If we transfer money to Shared Services Canada, they would then have an accounting of how they've spent the money in terms of doing that.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Okay. To go a little further on Mr. McCauley's question, then, with respect to the website design and money allocated for these processes, will we see transfers to Shared Services Canada to assist in that development or is that all done in-house?

[Kami Ramcharan]

I can't be very specific with regard to that, but it's likely that we would have our colleagues at Shared Services Canada involved in doing that. We would also have contracts related to professional services in addition to that, as well as our internal folks working on those websites.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Okay.

Under the previous government, then, in terms of public outreach, there were items that were related to the economic action plan. Would they have been sourced and communicated through individual departments such as Natural Resources, where you were, or would they have been paid for out of PCO or PMO?