Thank you for being here today.
My questions relate to “Report 4—Information Technology Shared Services”. Your report points to numerous failings in the implementation of stated goals for the Shared Services Canada initiative.
I want to begin with a generalized question. When we look back over the last five to ten years, some of the biggest public sector so-called boondoggles have been in the areas of IT. Despite the contentiousness of the original policy, the cost of the long-gun registry was really related to IT cost overruns. In the electronic health records initiative, the Government of Ontario reached $1 billion, vastly over its stated budget. South of the border, the implementation of the Affordable Care Act was besieged by a major IT problem when the health insurance exchange was launched online. It took a month and a half to get anybody registered to purchase through that health exchange.
Why is it that we—across governments, across party affiliations, across country borders—seem to have such difficulty properly implementing IT projects in government?