Evidence of meeting #54 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was security.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
Of the 43 that you provide services to, which department sees the biggest spikes in traffic? Is it Stats Canada?
President, Shared Services Canada
Mr. Chair, I don't have particular data on the traffic flows to each of the departments at this point. We have some extremely large clients, ranging from Employment—
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
That's fair. I would think that we might know the top three that are of high risk, and I would think that Stats Canada could possibly be one of them, specifically in terms of labour reports and censuses, etc.
When you see those spikes in traffic, whether at the CRA or Stats Canada, are you able to provide the additional bandwidth required by those agencies? Are you able to add capacity?
President, Shared Services Canada
Mr. Chair, we work with the customer departments very closely as they determine their business requirements. Their forecasts of bandwidth requirements are instrumental in determining the amount of bandwidth we provide them. That's the core basis for going forward. We also have an ongoing dialogue with customers. If they anticipate that because of an event, there will be additional bandwidth or compute requirements, we will action that as well.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
Say, in the last year, how many times have you maxed out and had to either have a complete shutdown of a site or it has slowed to the point where someone couldn't even move to the next screen? How many times would that have happened in the last year?
President, Shared Services Canada
Mr. Chair, I'd have to get back to you in terms of the bandwidth maximization across this system. At the moment I can recall one incident that was at play. But this is quite a difficult area, because it's a combination of bandwidth, compute capacity, the memory storage capability of the infrastructure, and the application as well, and how all those things work together. You can get stalls in the functioning of an application for many reasons.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
If you can forward that information to the clerk as soon as possible, that would be great. Thank you.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
Another question I had for you would be about competition with the private sector, because you will be competing to retain those 6,000 employees and to hire new people all the time. Are there currently issues with trying to retain your employees or hire new employees?
President, Shared Services Canada
Mr. Chair, one of the most important challenges we have is the attraction and retention of talent. The rate of turnover at Shared Services Canada has been commensurate with the rate of turnover in the Public Service as a whole. But we know that for the skill sets we're looking for, there's a lot of demand. We have had good success attracting employees to Shared Services. We're running a lot of competitions and processes now in terms of looking to hire folks. We have more than 2,000 applications that we're processing.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
Before my time runs out, I have a question on your customers, which are federal department agencies, that have red classifications. I think it was reported that you had nine at the end of February. I would think that's probably around the number you usually have. What are those issues, and are they recurring month after month after month? Is this leading to frustration? Can you tell us a little more about that situation?
President, Shared Services Canada
Mr. Chair, in regard to the project base that we have, as the member mentioned, it is roughly nine projects. We have a portfolio of about 110 projects, so it runs at about 6%, 7% of the total portfolio of projects. We review those issues regularly. They tend to be project specific.
Liberal
Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Thank you very much.
I'm going to share a little of my time with Majid as well because I had some opportunity.
Picking up on cybersecurity in particular, we're delving into it, but it's a concern for many people in today's world. As I mentioned earlier, the transactions are happening at an enormous rate. The preventive stuff you have in place is really important. I worked with the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities for the province, so I know some of the checks their shared services go through.
Very quickly, is employees' access to things like Facebook, social media, outside websites, including Hotmail, or whatever, still a potential risk, because sometimes that's where a lot of the cyber stuff comes through? They go to their Hotmail and are targeted by some sort of phishing scheme and they hit the button and their screen goes blue. What steps and policies are in place to prevent that kind of stuff?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Cyber and IT Security, Shared Services Canada
We work very closely with the departments. Some departments, especially people in the communications area, need to access social media, so we work with individual customers to ensure that they are aware of the security risks and what needs to be done to ensure they are not clicking on these malicious emails. Also, departments run some tests on phishing and how to train people to ensure that they're not going through websites and clicking on links that could be malicious—and the same with the emails.
There are TBS guidelines and policies related to employees accessing the Internet and private emails and sites, so we do work very closely with TBS as well in ensuring that the controls we put in at the perimeter can catch any of the malicious activities. It's a balance between enabling the business and securing it to the extent possible.
Liberal
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you all for coming here today.
Let's go back to what we're really here for. We're here to assess Bill C-36, which focuses on the independence of StatsCan. When I look at this in general, I see three key stakeholders, which I call the three legs of the stool. I see a ministry or department, I see Shared Services, and I see StatsCan. If we look at a day in the life of any of these three departments, certain business requirements identified by a ministry are passed on to StatsCan, and it needs to assess them to be able to satisfy that. Within that process, can you explain to me Shared Services' role and what controls are in place to ensure that the independence of StatsCan is met?
President, Shared Services Canada
Mr. Chair, the question is good. The departments that Statistics Canada serves, or other entities that it serves, are the heart of what drives Statistics Canada's business. They take those inputs in demands for statistics and data, and at what they call their “field level” they consolidate them and prioritize them from a business priority perspective. They then work with their internal IT people who are responsible for the applications and interfacing with us to prioritize that across a set of business requirements that are translated into what Shared Services is required to deliver.
That's what we've been very actively working on with the chief statistician and his entire IT leadership team. We sit down about every two weeks and run through those prioritized business requirements, the clarity of those business requirements, and bring together that demand side and mesh it with the services we're providing and the growth in those services that Statistics Canada requires.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
I'm running out of time, but if I get a chance, I want to come back and ask some very specific questions.
Thank you.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
Thank you.
On Stats Canada specifically, are there any current projects with Statistics Canada in the red zone?
President, Shared Services Canada
There are no projects at the moment with Statistics Canada that are in the red zone.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
Are there any in the step prior to entering the red zone? I don't know how you classify it—yellow or cautionary or whatever—but are there any in that zone right now?