I think it's hard to underestimate the importance of a sound information system, not only for the executive but also for society at large. That, I think, is a given for any evidence-based policy-making.
The other question, of course, is how do you put that in place? I don't have any particular insights on the specific question of Shared Services Canada, but, of course, if you look at various countries, you do have cases where certain IT services are outsourced, for example, for efficiency reasons because some services can be provided more efficiently that way. But there are major legal barriers in the sense that, for example, under the European Union legislation, the data is not allowed to be stored outside the country. It is not possible to store data in the cloud, for example, because in doing so one cannot guarantee that the data is on national territory, which limits, of course, cloud storage, for example.
The other general tendency that I see is that whenever there is outsourcing in one way or the other, there may not be a transfer of responsibility or liability of the operations by the statistic office. The statistic office has to remain in charge of the management functions in its responsibility for the data. This is not something that one sees outsourced. But, again, I have not investigated this at great length; I'm just giving you my ad hoc opinion on this.