Evidence of meeting #14 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cybersecurity.
A recording is available from Parliament.
6 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Okay.
The ATIP process has been put on hold. Obviously people are working at home. When are we going to see it reopen so that the public, politicians, etc., can start getting answers to access to information requests?
6 p.m.
Acting Chief Information Officer of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
I don't believe the process has been put entirely on hold.
Again—
6 p.m.
Acting Chief Information Officer of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
Is it completely on hold? Okay.
6 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I would challenge you to find a single response in the last two months.
6 p.m.
Acting Chief Information Officer of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
I would have to check on that.
Certainly there are allowances for the fact that people don't have access to their offices, so they may not be able to do the same type of research that they would from internal—
6:05 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Are we developing a plan to address this? We can't just sit and say we can't access it forever. Are we developing a plan, or are we doing a wait-and-see to see how COVID bears out?
6:05 p.m.
Acting Chief Information Officer of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
We are working with the office of the chief human resources officer to start planning on the resumption, the return to the workplace. As part of that, we expect there's a backlog of activities, things potentially like ATIP, where they will have to be addressed on a priority basis. Those plans are in the process of being developed.
6:05 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
The Information Commissioner, Ms. Maynard, has been very critical—I guess that would be a polite word—of the government's handling of transparency right now. She put on her website, “institutions are reminded that they must continue to properly document their decisions as well as their decision-making process in accordance with the Policy on Information Management.”
How are we ensuring that's done, besides saying they're using government servers?
6:05 p.m.
Acting Chief Information Officer of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
That guidance is provided to departments. It is up to the departments to ensure it's being followed and to make sure the documents that are critical to recording the decisions—
6:05 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
The CIO of Treasury Board is the overseer. Is this another example of, “Well, that's the departments, and if they fail, that's too bad”?
6:05 p.m.
Acting Chief Information Officer of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
I wouldn't say that it's too bad. I think it's the responsibility of the departments and the deputies to follow the policies that are put out by Treasury Board.
6:05 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Right, but what is Treasury Board doing to follow up to make sure this is being done? That's my concern.
6:05 p.m.
Acting Chief Information Officer of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
I appreciate that.
We do have active reviews of compliance and annual reporting, to report back to....
6:05 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Are we ramping up these active reviews, considering nothing is going on ATIP-wise and there's this very real concern, as expressed by the Information Commissioner?
6:05 p.m.
Acting Chief Information Officer of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
Right now the activity is focused on understanding where departments need support and providing that capability, making sure that the operational priorities come first.
6:05 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
What's your confidence level that the policy and information management is going to be followed?
6:05 p.m.
Acting Chief Information Officer of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
Fairly high, as I think everyone is aware of their importance. We've had an amount of collaboration and communications in the community that we've never seen before, so it's not that people are not aware of this, and there's an honest desire to make it work.
6:05 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Thanks.
I have just a last question on that. She lists tips on her website, the nine email tips for maintaining information. Have you rolled that out to the departments, or are you just waiting for departments to look at her website on their own?
Again, Treasury Board is responsible for this. If you let it go.... We've seen this repeatedly from Treasury Board on human resources, whistle-blowing and departmental plans. Treasury Board is responsible but always says that it's the departments, and then nothing gets done.
6:05 p.m.
Acting Chief Information Officer of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
I haven't personally—
6:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Mr. Brouillard, I'm going to ask you to provide that answer—in writing, as I've mentioned before—to the clerk as soon as possible. I'm sure you want to give a fulsome answer to Mr. McCauley's question. I'll give you the opportunity to do so as quickly as possible, sir.
We will now go to our second round of questions, for six minutes again.
Mr. Jowhari.
6:05 p.m.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome to all of our witnesses and thank you for the information you've provided so far.
My question is for Mr. Brouillard. A lot of my colleagues have taken an approach where they've gone to one of the specific what I call pillars or building blocks of our digital strategy or digital government, whether it's cybersecurity or aging infrastructure, etc. For the benefit of the many Canadians who are watching, could you take a step back and very briefly demystify our government's digital strategy into four or five key pillars?
Give us an idea of where we were on the path of delivering our mandate before COVID-19, and what the impact of COVID-19 has been on our mandate and our being able to deliver. I'll ask some follow-up questions after that.
6:05 p.m.
Acting Chief Information Officer of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
I'm sorry. You're asking in relation to COVID-19 what is the digital...?
6:05 p.m.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Before COVID-19, there was a mandate. There is a mandate letter for the minister. For you as the CIO, what would you identify as the key building block of our government's digital strategy?
6:10 p.m.
Acting Chief Information Officer of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
Okay. That's a bit of a complex answer. I'll try to break it down.
There are various components to the Government of Canada, and all of those components need to be moving forward. Paul Glover can speak more to this, but on the modernization of the infrastructure to support the requirements to connect, we live in an interconnected world. We have to have networks that are efficient and able to talk amongst themselves. Cybersecurity, the topic of today, is an absolutely critical strategic imperative. We must ensure that the information entrusted to us by Canadians is held securely and properly treated.
On information management, again, it's about making sure that the privacy of Canadians is properly entrusted, but at the same time, supporting open government initiatives and making sure that the information that can be made available to Canadians is made available through the open government initiative.
Then we get into the applications and the service delivery and ensuring that those are developed and designed in modern ways, with the digital standards and principles in mind, the first of which being that it's user first, user-centric. If we aren't designing our services with the end-user—Canadians or Canadian businesses—in mind....