I'll take a stab at it.
We absolutely agree with the OAG's recommendation in terms of having to move from a paper-based process to a digital-based process. One thing that we've struggled with, obviously, is that departments work independently of each other, and we don't always connect our IT systems. I think that's just a reality as departments grow up in terms of how they develop their priorities with respect to IT. One of the struggles that we've had as a system is that our IT systems have developed separately, as has our culture around the issues that we take on from a technology perspective.
The audits allowed us to bring the group together and consider how to put a governance structure around this issue to actually effect that recommendation. I'll give you some details about some of the things that we've done, because I think that will help you to understand some of the issues we've faced and where we're going.
The ASMB that I talked about in my opening comments has really given us a platform to work together. We meet approximately every six weeks and we talk about the issues that fundamentally, from a governance perspective, are having the biggest impact on the system. IT is an example of one of those subjects.
Investments from the recent budget gave us approximately $120 million divided among us for IT projects. As soon as the budget was announced, we had an ASMB meeting and we talked about the priorities we needed to identify to actually effect this. We then reached out to Shared Services and to PSPC to bring them to our table so that we're not fighting an uphill battle and we have the departments that can help us make our plan for coming into the digital age a reality.
As a result, we now have a working group formed at the senior executive level, which is bringing our three organizations and those other two departments together to effect a plan. Since that time, we've already identified milestones between now and the end of December. We've identified milestones for our project plan. We have people working on determining the greatest needs versus what can be identified for the outer years, and how we can effect that in responding to the OAG's recommendation in terms of implementing a technology plan that will move us from a paper-based process to a technology-based process.
We're very confident from the work that we've done to date that we will be able to realize that goal along the way. These are very complex systems, and because we have grown up separately from each other, our technology systems don't talk to each other.