Sure, I can add to that particular question.
One of the things that is happening in parallel with the discussion we're having this morning is that the department is developing its investment plan. It's a new policy that Treasury Board approved in June 2007. It's basically a high-level strategic document essentially replacing the long-term capital plan as a document that links with the department's strategic planning--in this case the Canada First defence strategy. It's aligned with the high-level outcomes the department is trying to achieve. And the documents in particular, the Auditor General noticed, were absent. In this instance the project profile risk assessments are built in up front.
In the case of National Defence, their investment plan was approved by Treasury Board ministers last year with around eight projects in it. Each project was evaluated on its inherent risk. We also evaluated the department's ability to manage risk--to emphasize the point I made earlier around risk. So we're moving away from the sort of time-consuming preliminary project approval and effective project approval stages. We're doing a lot of up-front work now to ensure that we have a good handle on how the risk is being managed, that the costs are going to be contained appropriately, and that the appropriate mitigation strategies are in place for scope, budget, and whatever else may actually happen.
That's our contribution to streamlining the approval process. That means as long as they're managing a project that's within their risk management capability, they don't have to come back to Treasury Board for approval. There are still some that do because ministers have expressed an interest in them, but by far the large part now will no longer come back. They will still have to go through the contracting approval process, and we'll continue to work in that vein. But the project planning part is being managed in a completely different fashion now.