Evidence of meeting #5 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 transformation.
A video is available from Parliament.
9:50 a.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
It's a combination of Bell Canada and CGI. Those are the core vendors.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Did Service Canada include any penalties for delays in...?
9:50 a.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
Mr. Chair, there are service credits that accrue in the event of delays.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Consolidation of data centres from 485 to seven: when will that be done?
9:50 a.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
Mr. Chair, this is a question we're looking at carefully in the context of the revised plan. I do not have a precise date for the completion of the data centre migration at this time. All of these measures or issues depend on a balance among the scope of the projects, the amount of time the projects will take, and the funding of the projects.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
According to the report, you're at 436, at least at the time of this publication. What is the number of data centres you have right now?
9:50 a.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
Mr. Chair, all together, about 80 or so old data centres have been closed.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
9:50 a.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Shared Services Canada
I would like to clarify that these are not all data centres. Some of them are closets that have servers in them. I know the report refers to data centres, but I would refer to them as server locations. There is a distinction. In one case we're closing down very large, expensive facilities; in other cases we're simply taking a server from a room and putting it in our in-state data centre.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Is that distinguished from servers? Because we have those marked separately in Mr. Parker's remarks, where he says there are 23,000 servers that need to be consolidated. Are you distinguishing between them and the data centres?
9:55 a.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Shared Services Canada
No. It's a combination. That's why this gets a little complicated for simple answers.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
I guess the challenge for us in measuring success is we don't know what we're measuring.
9:55 a.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Shared Services Canada
Mr. Chair, if I may, this industry that we're in actually lends itself very well to measurement and is very precise once you understand everything you're dealing with.
Our dilemma is, and again, this is very typical of the industry, when you come into this kind of situation, there often isn't a baseline. The organization spent two years learning what it had and two years developing a plan. In the dynamic nature of the IT industry, it's very common to come in two to three years into it and say, “Okay, the world has changed again. We need to revise our plan.” We're at that point right now.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
If there is a way to measure success, why then aren't we measuring it?
9:55 a.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Shared Services Canada
We are, Mr. Chair, absolutely.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
The president stated his goal was one email system for all 500,000 inboxes, seven data centres instead of 405, and consolidating the 23,000 servers. That would then seem to be his definition of success, doing all of those things, but you're telling me now that this would not properly measure success.
How are we as a committee supposed to judge whether you are succeeding if we don't know what your goals are?
9:55 a.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
Mr. Chair, our goals are outlined very clearly in the report on plans and priorities for 2016-17. We've established the baseline and the processes of establishing metrics by which you can measure us. In terms of the progress of the transformation plan, we're in the midst of updating that plan and we will have the metrics that go with that plan in the fall of this year.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
TJ Harvey Liberal Tobique—Mactaquac, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I have a few quick questions and I ask these with the utmost respect.
We've talked a lot about timelines and some of my other colleagues have asked a few quick questions. Do you think there is a possibility you could provide us with an updated overall timeline for the implementation of the entire original mandate? If you were to say today, what we originally agreed we were going to do, we're going to have done by.... That's question number one.
9:55 a.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
That's a question we're examining in the context of updating the transformation plan, and the balance and trade-offs between the scope of the projects, the budget, and the time. It's an interplay across all of those three variables and I think that's pretty normal.
