Government Operations Committee on Nov. 25th, 2020

[The Chair (Mr. Robert Kitchen (Souris—Moose Mountain, CPC)), Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

I'm calling this meeting to order.

Welcome to the ninth meeting of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.

The committee will meet today from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. to hear from the Minister of Digital Government and officials on the main estimates 2020-21.

The committee will next meet on Monday, November 30, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. and will hear from the Minister of Digital Government and the President of the Treasury Board on the supplementary estimates (B) 2020-21.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow.

Interpretation in this video conference will work very much like in a regular committee meeting. You have a choice, at the bottom of your screen, of floor, English or French. I would ask that you choose the language that you are going to speak in when you do so.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When you are ready to speak, you can click on the microphone icon to activate your mike. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute. To raise a point of order during the meeting, committee members should ensure that their microphone is unmuted and say “point of order” to get the chair's attention.

In order to ensure social distancing in the committee room, if you need to speak privately with the clerk or analysts during the meeting, please email them through the committee email address. For those people who are participating in the committee room, please note that wearing a mask is required in the committee room unless you are seated.

Finally, we will take the last 10 to 15 minutes of the meeting to do some committee business.

I will now invite the Minister of Digital Government to make her opening statement.

Minister, please go ahead.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Minister of Digital Government]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm really happy to be here amongst you—virtually—and I want to thank the committee for inviting me here to discuss the 2020-21 main estimates, and I guess the 2020-21 supplementary estimates (B) next week, for the digital government portfolio. This portfolio, I would like to note, includes the Office of the Chief Information Officer and the Canadian Digital Service, both in the Treasury Board Secretariat, as well as Shared Services Canada.

I am pleased to be joined today by Paul Glover, president of Shared Services Canada; Samantha Hazen, chief financial officer, Shared Services Canada; Marc Brouillard, acting Chief Information Officer of Canada; and Karen Cahill, assistant secretary and chief financial officer at Treasury Board Secretariat.

After my remarks, my officials and I will of course be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Mr. Chair and colleagues, as the Minister of Digital Government responsible for our digital transformation, part of my mandate is to work with my ministerial colleagues to provide federal public servants with the tools and strategies they need to design and deliver the services Canadians expect in the digital era—services that are secure, reliable and easy to use. While there is still much to be done, we have already made headway in updating our systems and rolling out better and more powerful tools so that we can improve Canadians' experience and their access to our trusted digital services.

We have an overarching policy, which came into effect on April 1 this year, on service and digital. This policy sets out just how departments need to manage service delivery, information and data, IT, and cybersecurity in the digital era. Importantly, it requires departments to consider putting the needs of people at the centre, right at the outset, when designing and developing their programs and services. It's an iterative policy that we will continue to improve and update. We're actually already looking at what changes should be in the next version.

I would note that we saw this policy come into effect when COVID-19 struck. Our government developed and launched, in just a matter of weeks, digitally accessible programs, such as CERB and the emergency wage program, that normally would have taken months, if not years, to develop and deliver. We collaborated with industry, our international partners and Canadians to develop, consult on and launch the COVID Alert app, also in record time. As a result, more than five million Canadians in eight provinces are now using the app to help slow the spread of the virus. I encourage everyone, in the room and virtually, to download it, if you can.

Looking ahead, we'll be examining our structures, incentives and culture and breaking down institutional barriers, such as silos, so that we can more easily develop and adopt digital—in other words, take an enterprise approach to IT and the Government of Canada, always with the goal of better serving Canadians. We will also continue to work on the next-generation HR and pay solution, committing resources to build a modern, user-friendly human resources and pay solution. That project has been transitioned to Shared Services Canada from Treasury Board Secretariat.

These same themes inform the items included in the main estimates and the supplementary estimates related to digital government. In the main estimates, the Treasury Board Secretariat will be seeking, for the next fiscal year, $281,600 to contribute to the Open Government Partnership, or OGP. The OGP is the leading global forum for advancing open government around the world. Canada was the chair, actually, and hosted the conference in 2019. We remain a very active member. These 78 member countries have a shared purpose, which is to make government more transparent, accountable and participatory. This is a very important forum for all of its members around the world.

We recently launched the consultation on the next iteration of our open government national action plan, which we worked to develop with civil society. I encourage anyone who's interested to contribute to that plan.

I am going to also mention the supplementary estimates (B), although I know we have another meeting on that, because some of the questions that you may have may weave through both of these estimates.

Shared Services Canada is requesting Parliament's approval to increase its authorities by $278.4 million, to a total of $2,490,741,062. These new funds would be allocated as follows: $91 million for information technology services that directly support the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as emergency relief programs for Canadians; $84 million for the information technology refresh program, which supports better life-cycle management of assets; $37.3 million for IT modernization initiatives, such as advancing Microsoft Office 365 in the cloud; $31.3 million for the secure cloud enablement and defence project, SCED, meeting the need for more secure and high-speed operations during the COVID crisis; $23.5 million for core information technology services and funding for the public service; and $10.1 million for secure video conferencing as part of the expansion of the secure communications for national leadership, to better support the cabinet, cabinet committee meetings, and senior officials and decision-makers right across government.

Taken all together, these investments will help provide federal departments and employees with the tools, guidance and capacity they need to improve operations and support the delivery of better services at this time, in a digital age.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We'd be happy to take questions from the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Minister.

We will now start our first round. The first round will be with Mr. Lloyd.

Mr. Lloyd, you have six minutes.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for appearing, Minister.

In a previous meeting that we had, when I assumed this role, you told me that the challenges faced by the public service in accessing online networks at the beginning of the pandemic, to work from home, were solved in a matter of weeks. Can you confirm the timeline when full access to online networks was achieved? Was it in April or May, or was it later?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

First, I'd like to say that the public servants at Shared Services Canada and the rest of the ministry have done a heroic job, really, to make it possible for public servants to work from home very quickly. That has meant that a number of services, from the tools they need to be able to do their work from home, such as computers and phones, to network connectivity, and collaboration tools like Teams, Microsoft Office—

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Minister, that is wonderful, but can you tell me what the timeline was when full network access was achieved?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I'm happy to ask Paul Glover from SSC to give you that detail, but I didn't want to lose the opportunity just to remind us all what our public servants do for us in a crisis.

[Paul Glover, President, Shared Services Canada]

Thank you, Minister. Thank you, Chair, for the member's question.

The short answer is, in each of those months. In March, when departments invoked BCPs—business continuity plans—we worked very quickly to make sure that those who needed the access in March had the access. In every month since then, we have continued to expand the access based on the needs of the departments. We are constantly growing and adjusting the network to respond to the individual needs of the departments as their operations have changed.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Glover.

We're hearing that the access was gained in April, May, and also later. The President of the Treasury Board, in a previous meeting, said that full access was not achieved until October 26. If the network was available in April and May to civil servants, why did the government not designate access to information officials as a priority or as an essential service so that they could do their important work?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Access to information certainly is a very important aspect of our openness and our transparency. At the same time, we were in a pandemic emergency, and people were not sure if they would be able to buy food or pay their rent. There was a very urgent imperative to get money to literally millions of Canadians and hundreds of thousands of employers in the early weeks and months of the pandemic.

I think it was imperative that the Government of Canada worked so quickly and collectively together to be able to do that. I know those who received CERB or rental assistance—

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Minister—

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

—and so on appreciated it very much. We are committed to access to information.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Thank you, Minister.

You're confirming that access to information and accountability was not a priority during the pandemic. I appreciate that.

Moving on, Minister, your government has made a lot of big commitments to improving information technology in this country. I estimate that Shared Services Canada will spend at least $2.1 billion this year, which is a nearly 40% increase from when your government took office. Why has this massive increase in spending not resulted in tangibly improved outcomes for Canadians?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I really appreciate the member's question, and I would just confirm the importance of openness, transparency and access to information on the part of this government, and our public servants working around the clock to be able to do those kinds of services for Canadians.

I'm a little mystified at the member's contention that Canadians aren't being served by the investments in Shared Services Canada. There are multiple ways in which this agency has updated and modernized its equipment, helping other public servants to be able to work from home with collaborative and secure equipment and bringing in more security to our connections to the cloud so that, as we modernize our applications and we shut down old data centres to move to the cloud, that data is safe and secure, as well.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Thank you, Minister.

A point that you made leads me to my next question. The government is saying that it has a cloud-first initiative, and yet we're continuing to spend millions, in fact hundreds of millions, on constructing new physical data centres. I'm confused about the government's priority here.

You say we're shutting down old data centres, physical centres, to move to the cloud, and yet the government is still spending money on opening up new physical data centres. Why is there this discrepancy in the government's agenda on this?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thanks for that question, because it's a great opportunity for Mr. Glover to help with the understanding of the array of storage that is necessary. We have indeed closed down over 200 legacy, inefficient data centres, and we're opening four enterprise data centres with modern technologies and services and with green underpinnings in terms of electricity, as well as being a broker for cloud services so that the departments, when their applications are ready and suitable, can quickly and easily find a secure cloud provider that could help them essentially have better, faster service at a lower cost.

I'll turn it over to Paul Glover to elaborate on our data centres.

[Paul Glover]

Thank you very much, Minister.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Excuse me, Mr. Glover. We need to move on. Mr. Glover, if you have a written answer you could give us, that would be appreciated.

Thank you, Mr. Lloyd.

We're now moving to Mr. MacKinnon for six minutes.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

In a moment, I'm going to save Mr. Glover from having to send us a letter by asking him or Madam Minister to answer the question in greater detail.

First, as the member for Gatineau, I need to point out that, in the National Capital Region, we were very pleasantly surprised by Shared Services Canada's performance when it came to providing network access to many of our public servants. We know that it has not been perfect or always smooth sailing. Nevertheless, I want to commend your and Shared Services Canada's efforts, Madam Minister. You have mobilized human, technological and financial resources to ensure that the government can continue to function during this pandemic.

Now I'm going to talk about data centres and cloud services. When we came in as a government, we found servers from the previous government under the offices of public servants in remote buildings. IT-wise, it was a real mess. They had no strategy, but now it's clear to me that a lot of thought has been put into data centres, our strategy and our cloud services strategy.

Madam Minister, I'd like you to tell us about the strategy for data storage, data centres and cloud services. Of course, if Mr. Glover would like to add anything, he is free to do so.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you very much, MP MacKinnon.

Just to start, I'll say that all major organizations are transitioning into a cloud as an essential part of their modernization, and for a very good reason. For those not familiar with the cloud—not too many months ago, frankly, I was not—the equivalent would be receiving electricity services. Rather than having the electricity plant on the site of your building to supply electricity and needing to have enough capacity for your peak—and you're paying for that kind of capacity of the equipment all the time, whether you're at the peak or not—the electricity utilities have the infrastructure and connect with us, and we just pay for what we use.

It's a bit similar with cloud services. Instead of the ministries having the infrastructure and capacity for their peak usage—think about CRA at tax time but paying for that level of equipment year-round—now, with cloud service, they pay for the usage they actually need at any one time, and the infrastructure is managed and handled by the cloud service provider.

I'd love to invite Paul to let the committee know how the transition to the cloud is going.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

We only have a couple of minutes, so I want to invite Mr. Glover to compress, perhaps, his answer.

I do have one other question.

[Paul Glover]

Okay.

Thank you, Minister and Chair, for the member's question and the kind words on the work we've done.

The short and quick answer is that we have not invested any money in new data centres—not a penny. We've invested money in closing data centres. We have four enterprise data centres. Those are state of the art. They have uninterruptible power. We are consistently taking workloads out of older data centres, inefficient data centres and end-of-life data centres and moving them to the cloud or to one of the end-state enterprise data centres.

There are costs with those migrations, and there is a cost to put equipment into the enterprise data centre to handle the workloads, but the physical infrastructure is built. As we know what workloads are going in there, we put in the racks—the computers—to handle that workload.

We are not building more data centres. We are closing data centres. In fact, last year was a record. We closed more data centres than we ever have—just short of 100—and we're going to continue to close data centres until we have all of our workloads in the cloud, in an enterprise data centre—one of the four—or in a hybrid of the two.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you very much for that.

I know that, in particular, this perhaps has been a difficult week. A number of us have heard from public servants about some applications perhaps not being available. I know there are some issues. Perhaps Madame Murray or Mr. Glover could comment on what kinds of investments remain to be done.

I know the dire situation that we found in 2015. As Mr. Glover just referenced, an awful lot of work has gone into updating and modernizing our network and making sure that data, data centres and the cloud have a coherent strategy.

What are the things now that SSC needs to get done on a priority basis to make sure that we have more predictable, continuous and reliable network access?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

I apologize for interrupting.

Mr. MacKinnon, that was an excellent question; however, I'm going to have to ask the minister if she would respond to us in writing to answer it because we're at the end of our time.

We'll now go to Ms. Vignola for six minutes.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

In the supplementary estimates, you're asking for $133 million for operating expenses. How do you justify the $133 million?

Could you give me a brief, substantive answer please?