Evidence of meeting #27 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Paul-Hus Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
Thank you.
I will give the rest of my time to Mr. McCauley.
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I have a couple of quick questions on the redaction, Mr. Glover. Did you have any role in that, or was it purely the legal advice you received? Was the report handed back to you saying, “Take this out, take this out”, or did you provide direction on what to look at?
5:30 p.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
That's a very important question. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify.
This is done at my direction as the deputy head. It is my responsibility and accountability. I turn to an access to information unit that is well trained in the administration of this, and it is directed on a standing order, not specific to this request but to all requests, to enforce the law strictly. When the unit is not clear about how to interpret it, it is to obtain legal advice.
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Specifically, I'm asking about things that were crossed out and redacted—not by you—things like SWOT plans, weaknesses, strengths, those kinds of items.
Who looked at that and said that this was business confidence.
5:35 p.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
That would have been done by professionals, trained and well-experienced in the interpretation of the act.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Were they from your department, though, or from Justice?
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Okay. I just want to ask you a question, just switching track, about Cisco and about the amount of sole sourcing. You mentioned that, out of $1.3 billion of procurement, 87% is competitively bid. You continued, though, and you talked about name branding. If your department specifies it has to be a Cisco brand, but then goes to competitive bids on who's delivering the Cisco-branded product, is that not a form of sole sourcing? Is that included in that 13%?
You're not forcing, but when you're basically directing to use a Cisco product and going to vendors to deliver it, do you consider that a competitive bid?
5:35 p.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
The interpretation is to the vendors, to the marketplace. If we target a specific vendor to provide the equipment, that is deemed a non-competitive sole source. The requirements may dictate Cisco, and then we could compete the Cisco requirements, so we would consider that to be competitive.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Just walk me through. It says, “Contracts were issued to 25 different resellers of Cisco, 22 of which were [medium enterprises]”. These are contracts where you've told people that they have to use Cisco, and then you go to two or three installers—for lack of better words—to install.
Do you consider that a sole source of Cisco, when you're basically directing people to use a Cisco product?
5:35 p.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
There are two parts to that answer. From a procurement point of view, that is a competitive procurement, because the industry has been—
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Is it included in that 13% sole source or in the 87% you consider competitively bid?
5:35 p.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
As I said, that would be in the 87% that was competitively bid. There were a number of firms competing for that business to ensure we obtained the best price for Canadians.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Robert Gordon Kitchen
Thank you, Mr. Glover. If you feel that there's more you can add to that, then please do so. We'd appreciate that.
We'll now go to Mr. Jowhari for five minutes.
5:35 p.m.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Once again, thank you, Mr. Glover and Mr. Davies, for your professionalism, for the great work you're doing and for keeping our government networks going during this time when we're facing many difficulties.
I'd like to go to the information for parliamentarians report dated February 24, 2021, on network modernization and procurement. In there you talked about how you published the “Network Modernization Way Forward” document. I believe, in your opening remarks, you talked about the short-term, medium-term and long-term strategies that you have or the department has for network modernization.
In about a minute, can you spend time demystifying or breaking down the short-term, medium-term and long-term vision that the department has?
5:35 p.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
Mr. Chair, for the first time I'm going to turn to Mr. Davies, the chief technology officer. He's far more capable of doing that quickly than me.
5:35 p.m.
Matt Davies Deputy Chief Technology Officer, Shared Services Canada
Thank you very much for the question. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
One recommendation from the Gartner group was for us to be more specific with respect to timing. They broke their report down into short-term, medium-term and long-term objectives. One clear recommendation that came through that report was for us to spend time assessing the current state and then put together a plan with clear activities for the short term, medium term and longer term. They also overlaid in that report the guidance for us in terms of what they see from their technology road map when certain technologies are going to become more relevant. We took the advice from the Gartner group. We took some of it immediately and incorporated it into our updated “Network Modernization Way Forward” paper.
We're going to meet with industry later, on May 14, to give feedback to it. It's also important that this document helped us to have a good discussion with industry partners. We got feedback from 26 different partners on that modernization way forward that we then took in and incorporated and will incorporate into our plans moving forward.
Overall, I think I've probably talked a little bit longer, but this is a first time for me. Thank you.
5:40 p.m.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
No worries. Is there any way that you could give us one of the characteristics—at least one characteristic—of what is the short term, what's the medium term and what's the long term, Mr. Glover?
5:40 p.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
As a senior leader, I would describe it as stabilizing. It breaks too often. We need to assess it and fix its vulnerabilities and weaknesses. It is too complex. I want to standardize and simplify it moving forward, so that it is easier for us to maintain and far more predictable.
I was speaking earlier about outages. Fully 30% of the outages are results of changes that are made. That interoperability that everybody talks about is not always guaranteed. It doesn't always work. We need to simplify. We need to standardize as we move forward.
The future is software-defined zero trust. That is really where we need to get to more quickly, but we first have to stabilize the patient to stop the bleeding, then move to standardization and consistency and then to the longer term. Obviously, any opportunities we see to advance the longer term while we're doing the short term and the medium term we will attempt to harvest early.
That would be the way I would chunk it out.
5:40 p.m.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
That was great. Thank you. That's exactly what I was looking for.
In your report, under “SSC Procurement by numbers”, although you mentioned it in response to my colleague MP Weiler, can you do a deep dive for us as it relates to competitive procurement and small and medium-sized businesses, as well as indigenous businesses?
Give us some sense of the numbers. Give us some sense of dollars that we could share with those who may not have read the report.
5:40 p.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
Absolutely.
As I said earlier—I would encourage members to take the time to read those documents, and I do hope you find them useful—we're at about $1.3 billion or $1.4 billion in procurements in 2019-20. Of that, 87% we would call competitive and, recognizing a member's question earlier, even when that is for requirements—a vendor—we force competition, as per questions from members here, to ensure the best possible price. That is part of what we do.
When there are urgent requirements, we have no choice. We have to go out. A particular system needs more memory. It can't keep up with the demands of COVID and the number of Canadians logging in. We need to do it quickly and surgically. We'll go out and do some non-competitive.... It's about 87%:13% in terms of competitive and non-competitive as it moves forward.
We're quite pleased with the number of small and medium-sized enterprises that are engaged in this. That, we think, is something that we would like to continue to do. We don't want to be just dealing with the large multinationals as this moves forward. We're quite happy with the number of small and medium-sized enterprises we are doing, but we would like to grow that number moving forward, and we would like to share with you better information about what we are doing moving forward on employment equity, on what we can be doing better for aboriginal businesses, Black-owned businesses, women-owned businesses, other employment equity and the disabled. We are improving our reporting requirements on that front.
I am pleased to say that in 2019 we awarded 117 contracts to indigenous businesses, for almost $36 million. It's good, but there's a long way to go to improve that number.
5:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Robert Gordon Kitchen
Thank you, Mr. Glover.
Thank you, Mr. Jowhari, for your questions.
That brings us to the end of our questioning today. I'd like to thank Mr. Glover and Mr. Davies for coming to committee and for answering questions from the committee members. That said, you're free to go.
This ends our public portion of the meeting. We were going to go in camera, but in light of the time and just in looking around the room, I suspect that what we were going to discuss in camera we can do at a later date.
I will indicate to committee members that you have received just today an update on the calendar and the calendar scheduling. Please take a look at that.
Also, just so you're aware, we have been trying to get the ministers to attend to talk about the main estimates. At this point in time, you will have heard today that the Minister of Digital Government has provided us with a time. We're still waiting and have not heard from the minister from PSPC.
That said, I wish you all a good night. Thank you very much. I declare the meeting adjourned.