Public Accounts Committee on April 22nd, 2010

[Sheila Fraser]

If I may, Chair, just correct you, not all those reports are favourable, but--

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

No, I said they were not favourable.

[Sheila Fraser]

They were not favourable, correct. Those are systems under development, which is quite different from the aging IT systems. We were looking at the mechanisms that government had put in place for the development of new systems. The secure channel was one. The global case management was another, and there were some as well in Revenue Canada, but those would be systems in part to replace some of the aging systems. This is the first time, to my knowledge, that we have looked overall in government about how it is managing the risk of aging IT.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

You classify the secure channel as a system under development.

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

How long has that been around? Has it been five or six years, seven years?

[Sheila Fraser]

It is probably close to 10 years.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

It is really not used that much in Ottawa by many departments or agencies.

[Sheila Fraser]

It has begun to be used, but I'm not sure what the state is currently, and I'm not sure if that's in our audit coming in the spring.

It will be in the spring report follow-up of it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, we're now going to go to the second round of five minutes.

Ms. Hall Findlay for five minutes.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all, of course, for being here.

This has to do with the information technology piece. I'm a bit confused. There is a chief information officer branch of the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, but there is also a chief information officer responsible in each of the departments. Is that correct?

[Sheila Fraser]

That's correct.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Needless to say, I'm a little taken aback by the commentary about the chief information officer branch of the Treasury Board being aware of these issues, not formally identifying an issue as an area of importance for the government, and who hasn't done really too much.

I'm also concerned about the involvement of Public Works, and I'll express additional confusion because I hear “secure channel”, I hear “global case management”, and I hear “GENS”, the Government Enterprise Network Services project. We, in the government operations committee, have spent an awfully long time trying to get to the bottom of what's happening with GENS, for example, which seems to be an effort on the part of Public Works to establish a network system that will provide the opportunity for other departments to enhance their IM/IT processes. At least that is the impression I get.

To be perfectly honest, I used to work in the business, and I'm still somewhat confused. I'm a bit surprised to now hear that Public Works itself is clearly having its own challenges in managing its own IT systems and its own planning for the future.

Can you help a little bit in just clarifying this? Can you shed any light? Have you done any investigation of the GENS proposal?

[Sheila Fraser]

We have not looked at GENS, and I'm afraid I really can't talk to that. I don't even know what stage it's at.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

I was really hoping you were going to help my confusion.

Needless to say, we continue to have more work to do at the government operations committee.

What comfort do you have in some of the responses in your report? I see “we will do this now” and “we will proceed”. It seems that this happens every time there's a report, and this has been going on for some time. Is this enough? Is it enough to just say there are continuing problems and have departments respond by saying yes, thank you, we will do this? It seems very disjointed. I know that in other jurisdictions governments have gone in the direction of, for example, a chief information technology officer, a person in an office who can actually take charge. I guess it's similar to the governance challenges that we're seeing with the government buildings.

Would that be something you would recommend, or recommend that it at least be considered?

[Sheila Fraser]

Mr. Chair, I think it would be interesting, should the committee decide to hold a hearing on this, to have a discussion about the philosophy of management with...it would probably be the Secretary of the Treasury Board. The government is really taking an approach that the deputy ministers are accountable for the management and the operations of their department, be it human resources, information technology, or financial management. They are responsible for managing these risks. They are responsible for requesting the funding to deal with these projects, rather than having one person or one branch that would manage this across this government.

I think it would be very difficult for one entity to try to manage all of these risks. We certainly recommend very strongly in this audit that the chief information officer, which exists currently in the Treasury Board Secretariat, needs to understand what the state of IT is across government, what the coming challenges are in that, what the risks are, and what the bill is coming down the road to replace all of this, and to give some coordination, and some challenges as well, to what departments are doing.

If all of the departments say their systems can last another five years, and they all come in at the same time asking for the money to replace the systems, I think we can all probably guess that it would be very hard for government to fund all of that at once.

What is the plan going forward? Maybe some have to start the replacement earlier than normal. It's like us in our own homes. You can't do the roof, the furnace, and everything all at once. There's the planning and coordination of that, and the relative prioritization. That, we really believe, should be led by the chief information officer with the coordination and collaboration of various deputy ministers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Ms. Hall Findlay.

Mr. Kramp, you have five minutes.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to start on the electronic health records. Obviously there is no topic of more importance to Canadians than issues relating to their health. The e-health file has been identified as a component in hopefully reducing costs, but also certainly in increasing effective care.

With the recognition that we have an integrated solution here between the provinces, and the feds and even though the feds end up still supplying the dollars to the provinces, there are still inherent responsibilities for both.

Given the initial reports that came out in a number of the provincial assessments of their progress today--and specifically I can mention the $700 million Ontario tobacco money that was spent to hire consultants, and we've all heard that--I'm wondering, how confident are you that the various provinces are going to be able to fulfill their responsibilities in this arrangement?

[Sheila Fraser]

That's a very difficult question.

We note from the audit reports of our various colleagues who participated in this concurrent audit with us that there are several provinces that had, I would say, pretty major management issues, not only with the actual management of the implementation but also in the planning and the monitoring.

However, I would say that when we did the audit of Infoway, we noted they were very rigorous, first of all, in the assessment of the projects that they would partially fund. They contribute only a portion of the costs. They were also monitoring those projects to ensure they were meeting the conditions that had been set out in these funding agreements. So we can only hope that the audit reports that have been produced will help to strengthen the management of the projects.

But what we are really trying to focus on in this summary report is that there are some very significant challenges to the success of this initiative, including getting buy-in from various stakeholders, changing technologies, and ensuring compatibilities across the country.

This is a very expensive project--some have estimated it at more than $10 billion across the country--and we would certainly encourage all the legislatures to continue to monitor this, to track the progress, and to see if these challenges are being met successfully.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Fine. Partnerships can be difficult in many circumstances, as we've found out. In this particular case, though, recognizing that we have some impending deadlines or expectations--2010-11--for implementation of part of this, do you not think it would be a good idea to have before this committee a request for confirmation by the provinces of their status right now so we can have an idea of where the problems lie? Obviously this would be in addition to having an administrative role in overseeing a lot of this through our process.

If we don't have problems clearly identified, then how can we move forward? Do you think it would be a good idea to request a status update from the provinces?

[Sheila Fraser]

Chair, I will leave up to you whether the federal committee can ask for that kind of information from the various provinces. Certainly, you should be able to get that information through Infoway.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Okay.

[Sheila Fraser]

Infoway is tracking the progress in the various provinces. It should be giving detailed reports on that and should actually know where the various provinces are, who is on track and will meet the deadlines and who is perhaps a little further behind.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Correspondingly, then, would Infoway be the source of some potential result, either anticipated savings and/or levels of efficiency expected? Could we expect they would be the source of that too?

[Sheila Fraser]

They should have some information on that, some studies that would be done. They would certainly be able to do that.