Public Accounts Committee on June 18th, 2007

[Sheila Fraser]

Government would really have to respond to that. It comes back again to the business case. For a project of this size and complexity one would have expected that the need would have been identified and communicated from the client departments rather than building something and then expecting them to use it.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

I think Mr. Poole wanted to comment.

[Steven Poole]

Thank you very much.

The business case was accepted earlier this year. Service Canada is using the secure channel quite significantly for its record of employment. It is true what the AG mentioned with regard to “My Account”, which was a soft launch for a pilot in the fall. We've used it there for a while and now they came off early, before tax season, because tax season has heavy demands on the secure channel. We expect them back on in the fall. Passport is also quite a significant user of the system.

I can check my numbers, but at any given time, in a second, there are 1,000 concurrent users using the secure channel.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

Thank you very much, Mr. Poole.

Mr. Sweet.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

One of the things that comes out of Ms. Sgro's questioning that I'd like to ascertain is we have an award-winning, apparently worldwide secure channel. Why is CRA not using this?

[Steven Poole]

Mr. Chair, the Canada Revenue Agency is absolutely using it. Service Canada is—

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Did I hear something wrong?

[Steven Poole]

I think the question was that the Auditor General had mentioned Service Canada. Service Canada is using it for their record of employment. Their “My Account”, which they had set up, for example, for employment insurance to go through, we put that in pilot mode for a few months. We've pulled it off and we expect it to go back on in the fall.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

There are some other lapses you were concerned about, though, Auditor General?

[Sheila Fraser]

CRA does not use it for the filing of income tax. For Service Canada, as I mentioned, there was another project. They use it for certain aspects of it but not for others, which they had started to use it for and which would have given more volume. There is still an issue about the usage of the secure channel.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

So there's still a substantial gap.

I have a concern about HR and not having another nightmare happen again. On page 22, in paragraph 3.95, the Auditor General's report says there was an organizational incapacity for staff.

I happen to know, because I have a substantial number of friends who were involved in the IT world around 2001 and 2002, that it was not a good time for them. Around Ottawa, there would have been a substantial number of surplus professionals. Yet when this audit was being done there weren't enough qualified people to get these projects moving along.

Does anybody want to speak to why that would have been? What was going on with human resources at the time?

[Ken Cochrane]

I think that when you look at that comment, one of the challenges we and many organizations outside of government have is with specific specialized skills. As you indicated, just after 2000 there were a lot of people available in the Ottawa marketplace. Many of those people have found homes working in the federal government—many of them from Nortel and some of the other large companies. But with some of the very specific skills, we and other organizations face challenges in obtaining very capable and competent project managers able to manage complex projects like the ones we see in front of us here today. So there are some skills gaps.

We do a lot of work with a group called the Organizational Readiness Office, which is actually in the Treasury Board Secretariat. It goes out and develops a lot of capacity in the community.

So we continue to do that. But we have, as I said, attracted a large number of people from private industry in Ottawa in the last couple of years. It has been of great benefit to us.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to give the rest of my time to Mr. Lake.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

Go ahead, Mr. Lake.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I want to start with business cases again. I'm particularly interested in the lack of the proper business cases being made. After some of the issues of the early 2000s and the gong show we saw with the gun registry and the culture around the lack of business cases there, you'd think that it would have changed quickly. Why hasn't that been the case?

[Ken Cochrane]

I think, once again, the government's position is that we need to do much better in the area of business cases. Of course, we do receive business cases with Treasury Board submissions. One could look at them and say they perhaps do not explore all of the alternatives available within a business case.

One of the things we are doing is we're in the process of strengthening business cases, as I think I mentioned, by putting in place a much more consistent approach to business cases. The enhanced management framework did have a business case model, but we're working across the secretariat to focus on a broader range of basic requirements that should be there, including key things like options analysis, so that we don't just consider one alternative, but look at a variety of alternatives.

Some of those things aren't always in the business cases, and we're beginning to reinforce those through the new policy tools we're putting in place.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Looking at something like AgConnex in exhibit 3.1, it had an initial budget of $60 million, and that was revised to $177 million. They spent $14 million on it between 2001 and 2003, and then it was discontinued. So $14 million was spent on this project and then it was discontinued.

Was there any benefit at all derived from the $14 million?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

Actually, it's your last question, Mr. Lake, for now.

Go ahead, Mr. Alexander.

[Jim Alexander]

Yes, Mr. Chair.

In terms of AgConnex, you are correct that the project was concluded or stopped when it had only spent $14 million—which is still a significant amount of money. In dealing with Agriculture Canada officials and looking at what they had been able to accomplish, they're assured, and we were convinced as well, that there were very valuable things delivered by that.

I would say this was a real benefit for us in the challenge process, because we saw that the project was getting too large and complex and that it was not going to be able to be completed. You're right that the estimate had grown to $160 million. As part of the challenge process in TBS, we actually said that it should stop. It was stopped, and there were benefits achieved out of the $14 million.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

I have a point on this whole area before we move to the next person.

I think we've probably seen this before, Madam Fraser, with the firearms registry, where maybe an ill-conceived model was embarked upon, one that was showing lots of flaws, difficulties and glitches, and that wasn't getting results. I guess when that happens in business, you make your first loss your last loss and cut the line and start over when you have something that is poorly designed and isn't going to work.

Do we have same situation here with this secure channel setup? Do we have a creature that's going to be very difficult to adapt and make work for all these departments?

[Sheila Fraser]

The secure channel is operational right now; the issue is the number of programs that are using it. So it's there, it is functioning, and $400 million has been invested in it. The question now is how to bring in other programs and increase the operations of it.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

Right. But I take it that a lot of departments don't find it very user friendly or something they would really like work through. It takes a lot of time and a lot of computer sorts of things to access it and get into it.

[Sheila Fraser]

We didn't go into an analysis of why the departments weren't using it, and I suspect there are probably a wide number of reasons. They may have to make changes to their own programs to bring them onto the secure channel. There could be a wide variety of reasons.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

Okay. Thank you very much.

Mr. Laforest.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. Fraser, you said that by March 31, 2006, the Secure Channel project had received funding 11 times. Was that money always taken out of the supplementary estimates?