Government Operations Committee on May 16th, 2017

[Arun Thangaraj]

Section 7 would be for the keyboard. I would be—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

What would be considered exceptional circumstances, then?

[Arun Thangaraj]

It's really our international operations. We would look at where it makes sense, where there are certain things that we could do for ourselves internationally, for which—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Such as? If I'm reading it right, I assume these would all be one-offs that the minister would have to approve each time, if it's an exceptional circumstance. I'm curious what that would cover.

[Arun Thangaraj]

The way we see this unfolding is that we would work with Shared Services Canada to look at all of the scope of services we do internationally, whether it be support or anything like that, and decide with that range of services what we would do and what Shared Services Canada would do.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

But what would you consider under this item as an exceptional circumstance? Mr. Parker, maybe you can answer what would be considered and exceptional circumstance.

[Arun Thangaraj]

For example, for an Internet service provider locally in one of our missions, the contract right now would go through Shared Services Canada. We would look to see whether it makes sense in those local circumstances for us to do the negotiation for that.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Who would oversee security for such an item or such items? Obviously we have something in place right now.

The reason I bring it up is that at a previous committee meeting about a month ago it came up that either someone in the U.S. or someone at one of the embassies walked across the street and bought a USB that had been pre-infected by the Russians. If we're all of a sudden passing it off to embassies, etc., who is looking after the security?

[Arun Thangaraj]

I'll let Martin answer.

[Martin Loken, Chief Information Officer and Director General, Information Management and Technology, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development]

Each department has responsibility for the IT security of their end user devices. In that function we follow overall Government of Canada guidance, which is set by colleagues in Shared Services Canada and other key players. We would accordingly continue to follow the guidance that the government has set out for IT security.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Erin Weir]

Thank you.

Now we'll go to the “NDP” for seven minutes, as I mentioned at the start of the meeting.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Who's timing this?

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Erin Weir]

Our committee has previously heard about purchases of routine items such as keyboards and USB keys, and I certainly appreciate why Shared Services Canada wouldn't want to spend a lot of time processing these routine, low-value transactions; however, I wonder whether there might be cost savings from bulk purchasing and having all of those items purchased by one entity.

[Ron Parker]

Mr. Chair, thanks for the question.

There absolutely are, and that's part of establishing the framework that we need to have in place. We need to look at the grouping of the various commodities to assess the scope for the discounting associated with bulk buys. That's one factor through which we very much have realized savings.

This is part of deciding. Not all of those commodities, however, benefit from bulk buys. The balance, I think, will be the bulk buy versus the efficiency that may come to a particular department from the timeliness of getting a set of goods and services.

We will have to go through these, commodity grouping by commodity grouping, to do the assessment. It won't be the same for every single department that takes services; it will be different. That's why I'm talking about the need for that consultation.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Erin Weir]

Right.

Now, today and previously, keyboards and USB keys have been used as examples. Would those be commodities that benefit from bulk purchasing or less so?

[Ron Parker]

I'm going to check with Mr. Duplantie. I'm not 100% sure on that one, Mr. Chair.

[Alain Duplantie]

Mr. Chair, typically in the basket of hardware we refer to desktop micro-computing, be it for mobile work stations, laptops, tablets, and the like, or peripherals—monitors, keyboards, external or internal storage devices, printing products, scanners. That's the kind of basket of goods we're talking about.

There's one area in which we have been able to generate some savings, and it's in the area of micro-computers, desktop computers. Cornered with the consolidation mandate, we established in consultation with the industry a web page, for our partners and clients to view possible products and for us to gather and aggregate the demand. Wherever we've been able to generate a substantial volume of demand, we've benefited from fairly substantial discounts, taking into account industries' timelines to deliver when they're looking at just-in-time delivery and not wanting to stock up too much.

These realities we need to consider in the framework in the model. Is the trade-off whereby we would provide a department with the ability to contract directly from a vendor a sufficient advantage administratively as an offset to the financial savings arising from the volume discounts? That's part of the equation we have to contemplate.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Erin Weir]

I'd like to shift from these routine purchases to the exceptional circumstances in which the minister could allow a department or agency to make IT purchases outside of Shared Services. We've touched on offices outside of Canada. Are there other exceptional circumstances that come to mind?

[Ron Parker]

Mr. Chair, it may be the case—for example in remote locations within Canada—that Shared Services may not have feet on the ground to provide the service that a partner would require. That's another type of example we would look at.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Erin Weir]

Some federal entities, including Parliament itself, were deemed to be so unique in their needs that they should not be part of Shared Services' bailiwick. We've heard from the former head of Statistics Canada, who felt that his organization should be allowed to purchase IT outside of Shared Services in order to fulfill its mandate and maintain its independence. Would these provisions allow the government to address those kinds of situations?

[Ron Parker]

Mr. Chair, the special circumstances around the House of Commons—Parliament, the agents of Parliament, and the judiciary—revolve more around the separation of the levels of government than the responsibilities. That's quite a different situation.

In terms of a department, the intent is not to use this as a vehicle to avoid taking services from Shared Services Canada, except in exceptional circumstances where it's more practical and more efficient. The minister has the discretion to come to those judgments, and I expect it will vary on a case-by-case basis.

In independence, every department has a vertical accountability, and in the establishment of Shared Services Canada providing the service horizontally across government is implicit. We're doing that well with the partners.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Erin Weir]

The point is certainly well taken that how these provisions are used will depend on the minister's discretion, but your sense is that the goal would not be to use them to address the concerns raised by Wayne Smith.

[Ron Parker]

The intent is to provide the scope for the minister to come to judgments in truly exceptional circumstances. For me the suggestions around Statistics Canada are the normal course of business.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Erin Weir]

Thank you.

The NDP is out of time, and we'll go now to Mr. Peterson.