We decided to create that tool because personnel expenditure information is available on multiple platforms and in multiple repositories at the federal government. “Multiple” is the key word. At least to our knowledge, there's no one single window where you can have a picture of the historical trends by department on the number of FTEs and the expenditures. That's why we decided to collect that information in one tool, so that parliamentarians and Canadians can access it and use it.
Initially, we called it PEST. We came up with an acronym that made sense—personnel expenditure...something tool—but the acronym had a negative connotation, so we decided to go for PEAT instead.