Your report on the government's digital service transformation points out that there is “no centralized information on the total amounts that have been spent or saved on these initiatives, as the latter is generally not tracked.”
We've seen from contracts—like those for ArriveCAN, for example—how difficult or pretty much impossible it is to track and tally the government's spending on digital initiatives. We're glad we have Bill Curry from The Globe and Mail to do that work for us. We can't even track the headhunters and the middle people who are making loads of money off of these things. Now we're seeing that the savings from the digital initiatives are generally not tracked at all.
This is hugely concerning. If we aren't tracking how much is saved, how can we know if an initiative was worth it? When it comes to evaluating these projects, we're pretty much blind going in. Can you speak about what challenges or gaps arise when this information isn't available for analysis?
I'd also like to hear your thoughts on how this could be tracked and centralized, and what the benefits would be. Maybe you could speak about the economic leakages too.