Evidence of meeting #140 for Public Accounts in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was clients.
A video is available from Parliament.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
Thank you very much, Ms. MacDonald, and thank you, we're at nearly six minutes.
We'll now move to Mr. Davidson, please.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
Scot Davidson Conservative York—Simcoe, ON
Good morning, everyone. I guess we'll cut right into it.
Looking at this report, it's incredibly disappointing to me, and I think we have to point that out. It shows that the government has failed to help eight million Canadians, and that's a huge number. These Canadians had questions about services like EI, CPP and OAS. It's unacceptable that it takes, on average, looking at this, 32 minutes to reach an agent at these departments. Many Canadians have been hung up on or they've been provided with inaccurate information.
I'm a new member of Parliament, and I hear from constituents all the time. These departments.... We serve the people of Canada, and this is probably one of the most frustrating and upsetting things for Canadians, that they don't get hold of government departments to receive the services they require and, quite frankly, are entitled to.
I have a few questions that I want to talk about.
To the Department of Employment and Social Development Canada, it appears to me, reading the report, pages 10 to 12—I just want to get a handle on that—that you've rejected calls by the Auditor General to track those who hang up before the 10-minute standard wait time has passed. Is that true?
May 30th, 2019 / 9:25 a.m.
Leslie MacLean Senior Associate Deputy Minister of Employment and Social Development and Chief Operating Officer for Service Canada, Department of Employment and Social Development
We track a number of indicators and have very few that we report publicly—the service standards themselves.
On this observation from the Auditor General, we had not been tracking callers who hung up on us, as an external reporting tool. We always tracked it internally to see what's going on with our calls, because we monitor them very closely on a day-to-day basis. However, based on this observation, we're now going to start tracking—and have done so, as of April 2019—those callers who hang up after the 10-minute service standard has expired. That will be part of our public reporting going forward.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
Scot Davidson Conservative York—Simcoe, ON
You've adopted the industry standards set out by the Office of the Auditor General.
9:25 a.m.
Senior Associate Deputy Minister of Employment and Social Development and Chief Operating Officer for Service Canada, Department of Employment and Social Development
We're always using best practices across a range of sectors. We set up a call improvement strategy with help from the private sector, so we're constantly testing what we measure, how we measure and how we report it.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
Scot Davidson Conservative York—Simcoe, ON
As well, I think Canadians are concerned about having confidence in our information technology sharing. The Auditor General points out to us that departments aren't talking. We have technology gaps.
Alex Benay, you're now the chief information officer of the Government of Canada. Is that correct?
9:25 a.m.
Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
Yes.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
9:25 a.m.
Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
I believe it was April 2017.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
Scot Davidson Conservative York—Simcoe, ON
Do you have a mandate yourself, your department? What is your mandate?
9:25 a.m.
Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
We provide administrative policy guidance, including technology policy guidance, to departments, and increasingly provide architectural recommendations and direction as well, which is perhaps a level below policy, including things such as privacy, technology, cybersecurity and others.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
Scot Davidson Conservative York—Simcoe, ON
Will you or Shared Services Canada be responsible for modernizing the remaining 213 call centres?
9:25 a.m.
Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
We would work with our colleagues at Shared Services Canada to set the strategy—the architecture—as well as work with client departments that, as you heard, have different needs, depending on the different call centres. We would work on service standards, which is something they were actively doing in the refresh of our new digital policy, and then make sure that our colleagues at Shared Services Canada get the support they need to implement the directive.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
Scot Davidson Conservative York—Simcoe, ON
Have we set the strategy? We've looked at only eight call centres being updated in four years. We have another 213 remaining.
9:30 a.m.
Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
As President Glover mentioned, we are in the middle of revising each of the remaining call centres, and I believe—not to put words in Paul's statement—that by the end of June, we'll be in a position to assess the remaining call centres and the strategies for each of them.
9:30 a.m.
Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
Paul.
9:30 a.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
To respond to the member's question, it will be Shared Services that is responsible for the provisioning of that infrastructure and working with the vendor community and departments to make sure that we provide solutions in line with the needs of those departments.
As I said, we started with those that were the most complex and represented almost 50% of the total call volume. We're very confident, given that we've tackled the most complex, and almost half of the total government's call volume, that we can now scale at speed, having learned these important lessons, the remainder of the departments. We're working with them to make sure they don't get a system that is bigger and more complex than they need, or more expensive because it has security they don't need.
We'll be able now, having done the most complicated, to tailor solutions and move quickly to all of the remaining centres. We're working with them to get an inventory of their requirements and will layer on top of that the systems they have, contracts and end-of-life technology. By the fall, we'll have a plan for all of the remaining call centres.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
For the timeline, the fall was the last thing he mentioned.
All right. Mr. Christopherson, please.
9:30 a.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Thank you, Chair, and thanks to all of you for being here.
If it wasn't already noted, I think this is our last public hearing that we're holding. Was it noted?
9:30 a.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Well, I'm noting it because it particularly matters to me. It's the last one I'll do in my whole life.
There are an awful lot of bureaucrats who are saying, “Yes!”
9:30 a.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
9:30 a.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
However, it's unfortunate. I would have preferred to end on a positive note. That's not possible with this one.
I agree with my colleague in terms of the amount of time available. It's really hard to know where to focus in.
Look, the late Michael Ferguson's mantra was, “Do service well.” This is the opposite. This is doing service lousy. To me, this report highlights the importance of audit reports and having these things come forward. That's why it's such a disgrace that the current government is not providing the Auditor General's office with the money it needs to follow the audit plan it has for next year, including a study on cybersecurity.
As you know, Chair, I will be using every opportunity to underscore that insulting, disgusting decision by the government, and it's nothing less than that. That's what autocrats do. They hide. That's what this government is doing. I can only hope that before this Parliament rises we can get them to change their minds.
I want to give a compliment to the deputy of Veterans Affairs. I want to say, sir, that one of the things I enjoyed when I was a solicitor general was to work with police in a very similar culture, and that is that things tend to be straight up front. There's not a lot of BS. There's not a lot of fog. There's not a lot of uncertainty—it's this, this or this, or it isn't.
I really liked that you came in and said.... There were a couple of compliments in here, but you were good enough to mention this, and I'm asking other deputies to pay attention, because there is something to be learned here. In your presentation you said:
When the department stopped offering a teletypewriter service for the hearing disabled, there was no indication from our records as to the rationale for this cut in service, nor whether there was consultation with veterans. This is not appropriate service.
That's what I like to hear from a deputy minister. Roll in here, and when something has failed, say so. It goes a long way.
Then he goes on to say, “As such, we are reversing this decision”. I'd like the government to get into the habit of that and reverse their decision in terms of funding the Auditor General.
That's the way the deputies should be coming in here, and this is what has frustrated me. For Shared Services, I have to tell you, the stuff we hear in terms of the justification for nonsense is just mind-boggling.
Again, I would give one example from Immigration and Refugees. The deputy this morning said, “Providing excellent client service is imperative”. What they should have said was, “Providing excellent client service is imperative and we failed.” That's what they should have said.
On page 8 of the report, paragraph 1.28 states:
We found that call centres were not focused on the needs of their clients when making decisions about call centre services and how they set service standards.
I'm going to run out of time quickly, and I know that. I'll just wait for the gavel to drop.
I'm glad to see that Treasury Board is saying that they're going to change their existing policy instruments, because at the end of the day, when we want to change behaviour, it's based on both the individual behaviour of employees and the policies that are being followed. If the policies aren't on there at that level, then we can't very well expect the departments to consider it a priority when the guiding Treasury Board Secretariat is not saying so. I am very pleased.
Again, these are some of the benefits that come out of the public accounts that really don't get registered as a dollar, but these things change behaviour and they change focus.
I have one question. It's not the most profound one I could ask, but it's the one that jumped out at me, I must say.
On page 15, at paragraph 1.60 about good old Shared Services Canada, the report says, “However, in order for departments and agencies to use these features”—new features for the phoning—“Shared Services Canada had to upgrade its existing information technology infrastructure—a task it overlooked during planning.” How can that be? How could something so important be overlooked during planning? It speaks to competency. It speaks to where senior management is not doing the job that they should.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
We will get an answer from Shared Services, if they would like to answer that question.