Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair.
When you're considering the cost, it's true that the initial costs are higher in the early years, as once you get to a stage, they do go down.
But we did solicit the departments--the big 22 departments--to get an estimate of their costs. This was not necessarily a full-blown scientific estimate, but they were in the neighbourhood of $300 million. That's a mix of the costs to do documentation, with the heavier part on some systems improvements that were needed. We're talking here about integration of systems. The Auditor General has observed before in some departments that they are using systems to get accounting information that were not designed as accounting systems.
So while we can get the right information from them for our financial statements, they have some challenges around the controls piece. A big part of that estimate is around the systems costs.