Public Accounts Committee on May 27th, 2015

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Okay. I don't have time to go back, so you can go back and look at that.

I have a specific question for you, Ms. Weber. It was actually Ms. Jones' question initially. I would go back and look at Ms. Jones' first question period because that's when it was asked.

Ms. Weber, you have acknowledged today, it seems to me, that the Auditor General says you have an overall—if I can use the term—macro system that's quite good. The issue is making sure you hit the gate boxes, as you might call them, along the way, where you didn't do so well. You have agreed you need to do that, according to your plan.

How do you intend to make sure it gets done? I recognize, Ms. Weber, that you're not doing them. It's not you as an individual that's going to actually make sure all of these things get done. This is a big job involving a lot of people.

How are you going to make sure it gets done? The Auditor General clearly said it didn't get done the last time.

[Caroline Weber]

Thank you for the question.

We were all involved in the decisions about which gates would get checked off as we implemented a new framework. The challenge for us has been IT projects that were already in progress, had been started, were a long way down the road to being completed when we bring in a new project management framework. The question then was whether we were going to go back in order to check the boxes on these projects, or whether we were going to continue and deliver, especially when we're near the end of a project, knowing that we would leave it undocumented, but thinking perhaps it wasn't the right way to use our resources at that time.

On a go-forward basis, all of our projects are being put through the entire framework with no exceptions, and we review that all the time. It wasn't that these projects—

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

I'm down to about 90 seconds. I appreciate the explanation. I'm not sure if that was the answer I was looking for, but that's neither here nor there at this point.

Mr. Ferguson, in paragraph 5.56, on page 18 in the English version, you talk about a business-to-business project that was closed in April 2014. Let me read it partway through:

This project had an approved budget of $5.4 million from 2012 to 2017: $3.4 million for phase 1 and $2.0 million for phases 2 and 3. The final close-out report stated that the project had spent $3.6 million for phase 1 and that all deliverables had been completed, even though an important component had not been built.

Perhaps you could speak to that particular statement in your report and why it's really important to make sure—my term used loosely, mind you—when we have a system, we check off all the boxes along the way to ensure we do what we need to do.

[Michael Ferguson]

The reference you are making is in paragraph 5.56. We're talking about the importance of the health of a project being reported to the people who have oversight of those projects so they understand where the project is.

This is an example in the business-to-business project where it was confusing to understand exactly what stage the project was at because they seemed to have said it was closed, but then they were also continuing to work on it.

Understanding that is important. Going through projects and making sure that each stage is met along the way is critically important to understand that all the requirements as well as the time and the budget are on schedule, to make sure the project is going to deliver what was intended.

We would never ask a department to go back and try to redo gates that have already been passed. But we would expect the department, at the point they were putting in place a new framework, to at least look at those projects that were in place and identify if they seem to be on the right path to deliver what they were intended to deliver, regardless of the fact that you can't go back and re-document certain gates, whether they were passed or not passed.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

That's very good. It's the next gate. Thank you.

It's over to the last spot on our usual rotation. Mr. Albas, you have the floor, sir.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Weber, you seemed to want to reply to one of Mr. Allen's comments. You felt that you got all the things on the table? That's good. I'm happy to hear that.

When we talk about frameworks and whatnot, it seems to me that part of the reason is to deal with the complexities that Mr. Woodworth had raised, to deal with some of the matters that Mr. Falk raised as well, making sure you don't end up going down the wrong path and delivering something to CIC or to another agency that was unintended.

I also think it's important to take a step back and look at that yes, it's getting more and more complicated, but it is possible to deliver a very good project on time and on budget, and all those things, and to have one or two people or a small team to check off all the internal controls. But I do take the Auditor General's point that there's considerable risk to that. I would think that if someone got sick or if the team disbanded and there were unanswered questions long after that team had disbanded, that's why there are these these frameworks, so that you can come before a parliamentary committee like this, and answer questions and say that the taxpayers are getting all the things they're supposed to.

I certainly appreciate it. With 90,000 people coming across our borders every day, I'm glad there are people like you who are able to take that on.

I also had a question on page 18, the same page that Mr. Allen did. It's in paragraph 5.57.

Since May 2014, the Information, Science and Technology Branch introduced a new process to monitor project performance using a technique known as earned value management reporting....

I hadn't heard of this. Could you please give me an idea of what this technique is? What is it intended to do in light of the Auditor General's concerns?

[Caroline Weber]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the question. May I turn to my colleague? Thank you.

[Louis-Paul Normand]

Thank you for the question.

The earned value management technique has been around for years and years. The first requirement is that you need to have a good plan. Based on that plan, you load up with your resources that you need to deliver on that plan. Then the tracking becomes the planned value. As you go through six months of activities, you should be 50% done on a 12-month project. If your actuals, your financials, are over that or below that, it creates a variance that you track. That's the essence of earned value. It does that for scheduling variance. It does that for cost variance.

Now in our dashboard to Treasury Board, the colour for cost and schedule is no longer subjective. It is based on a percentage of variance on cost or scheduled variance.

We removed a lot of subjectivity from the process using earned value analysis. At the risk of repeating myself, the key element is to produce a quality plan up front. People in a hurry will often produce subpar plans if they feel they can get away with it later.

Earned value catches bad plans early in the process.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

It actually sends a message to the people who are going to be developing the system that there has to be a certain robustness.

[Louis-Paul Normand]

Right.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

It's not just the actual project getting done, but it's the delivery of those systems and the monitoring of those systems, long term.

Thank you very much for sharing that.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

We have a few recommendations that have been presented here by the Auditor General. I know that you've submitted an action plan to this committee. Would CBSA officials mind going through the action plan? Could they go through it so that people at home have an idea of what things are being done in dealing with the recommendations?

[Caroline Weber]

Certainly. I will try to be quick about this.

As we've said, we've updated our investment plan and our annual IT plan as part of our regular cycle, and we've presented it to the Treasury Board for their approval already.

I'll move on.

Enterprise end-state architecture, we'll continue to expand that in both breadth and depth. A functional directive covering every domain of the enterprise architecture will be finalized by September 2015. Also, we've begun to move individual projects toward architecture standards that fully align with Shared Services Canada's directions, and the service life-cycle management framework ensures that enterprise architecture directions are adhered to by all projects.

Finally, we're going to continue to maintain our beyond the border project level risk profile and to provide a full portfolio risk update roll-up at the quarterly beyond the border senior project advisory committee.

Am I running out of time?

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

You are, Madam. Good intuition. Well done. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Albas.

That not only concludes Mr. Albas' time, but also the time allocated by the committee for these witnesses.

In the absence of any motions or suggestions otherwise, and I'm not sensing any, on behalf of the committee let me thank our guests from the Canada Border Services Agency for being here.

As always, to our Auditor General, thank you, sir, for the work that you and your department does. It's much appreciated.

With that, colleagues, all those in favour of adjournment, please leave.

The committee stands adjourned.