Public Accounts Committee on March 10th, 2016

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

That being said, on page 8, the second paragraph says, “in updating our plan, we recognize some legacy infrastructure will remain operational longer than we originally anticipated. We will therefore continue to reinforce the legacy infrastructure to prevent outages in the delivery of services to Canadians.”

Do you guys have an anticipated extra cost that will be incurred to maintain that extra infrastructure that you hadn't originally planned on over the life of the project?

[Ron Parker]

We're in the midst of putting together our budget plan for the coming year. Our plan will include the specific estimates and I'd be happy to make those available when we have the specifics available.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

My third and final question is with respect to the industry. I understand that IT is a sector that changes very rapidly. I understand that things are fluid and that leads to some of the problems that we've talked about today.

Having said that, and given the fact that we're way behind on our original timelines to start with, do you think there's a distinct possibility that if we maintain the trajectory we're currently on, we might not ever catch up?

[Ron Parker]

Mr. Chair, again, this is a combination of do you change the scope, do you change the funding, or do you change the time? All of those three elements will come into play, so I hesitate to speculate about which of those elements will change in the updated plan until we have an updated plan.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Harvey.

We'll go to Ms. Shanahan.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

There's no question that this is a huge problem or that there's been trouble in paradise, but we want you to succeed, Mr. Parker. We really do.

Can you talk to me about the people in your department? What are the qualifications of the employees: permanent, temporary, contract staff, and outside providers? Just paint us a picture of how your department works and how it moves through this incredibly complex project.

[Ron Parker]

Mr. Chair, I'd be happy to provide that background.

The vast majority of our staff are technical experts in the CS category, which is the computer sciences category in the government. There's a wide variety of skill sets ranging from data centres to telephony to networks. They bring a wealth of experience and skills to the job every day. There's also, obviously, a group of internal services staff, financial among others, who support us well through this period.

In terms of the overall, I'll say, mix, my view is that we have extremely good staff. We inherited staff from the various departments when we were formed, including large blocks of staff that just moved holus-bolus. You can see this particularly in the procurement area and some of the data centre areas as well.

It is a challenge with 43 departments. They come with different cultures, different experiences, and different ways of operating. This has been one of the challenges that we have faced to get everyone on the same page, moving in the same direction, with the same process and the same understanding of how to work. That's a large part of what we need to do to get the service management nailed down, get everybody understanding the processes of how to work together, how to talk to clients, and how to relate to clients. In that regard, one of the changes that was recently brought was, we've stood up account teams who are charged specifically with talking to the clients and engaging in planning with the clients, and there are service delivery managers who have the responsibility of delivering to the clients and organizing the services that are required to deliver what the clients need.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Parker and Ms. Shanahan.

We'll go to Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Very good. Thank you, Chair.

Before we move on to a new subject, I'd like to afford the Auditor General an opportunity to give any concerns or comments he might have around the draft plan and when it was going to be submitted. I've been around long enough to suspect that he shared some concerns around open-ended words like “to be approved”.

It's just an opportunity for you, Mr. Ferguson, to comment on what you've heard and whether or not it meets your standards.

[Michael Ferguson]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In actual fact, there are a number of different plans in the whole conversation. I think that the concern about the comments in the Treasury Board's opening statement is valid. The opening statement implied that the plan was going to be complete by the end of March, but then there was going to be some other approval process, which we've heard today will be an approval by the secretary and is expected to be done by June. I think that's something that the committee should, as you mentioned earlier, specifically look for.

There's also the new transformation plan that Shared Services mentioned will be completed later on in the fall. I think that's also something the committee should be seized with and interested in seeing when that's completed.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Very good. Thank you, sir.

I'll move on to another matter that's been raised on which I'd like to follow up. It's the business of the projected savings being removed from the budget before the savings were actually in place. There was a three-year plan. You had a baseline of $128 million. You were projecting to save $72 million a year in a three-year plan. The plan was delayed by at least a year, and yet you went ahead and took the $56 million out of the 2015-16 fiscal year.

First, I'd like to know why you did that before you had actually achieved the savings. Second, what are the implications and collateral damage from having removed that money before you should have?

[Ron Parker]

Mr. Chair, Shared Services Canada always understood that there would be a challenge and risks around capturing savings before they actually materialized. It poses a challenge in terms of the email transformation, for example: $50 million was taken from the reference levels of Shared Services Canada at the beginning of this fiscal year, and the $50 million saving has not been realized and will only be realized once the migrations occur.

Mr. Chair, the department was asked to provide cumulative savings, and that was the rationale for the—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

So it was outside pressure coming on you to find this money, and even though it made absolutely no common sense to take the money out before you'd realized the savings, you went ahead and did it anyway, because you were pretty much ordered to find the money.

Am I getting it right?

[Ron Parker]

Mr. Chair, I was not in the department at the time, so I was not party to the conversations.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

What about you, Mr. Glowacki?

[John Glowacki Jr.]

No, sir, I was not here at that time.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Isn't that interesting. Nobody is here who was there at the time of the robbery.

I still haven't heard a good.... I'll ask Treasury Board, then. Why the hell did they allow them to do it, or were they the ones who put pressure on them to find the money?

We all know what this was. This was about getting ready for the election and making sure there was a balanced budget. They were holding up money, and they've done it everywhere that we've seen in government. This is just another example of it. Tell me otherwise.

[John Messina]

I have no comment, Chair. Unfortunately, I wasn't in Treasury Board at the time.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Oh, isn't that sweet. Every one of them, “I wasn't there; it's not my fault.” Well, Chair, they run the risk, but we can still go back and find those who were there, and maybe that's something we ought to consider. Do we have that power? This kind of stuff is not acceptable to hear on crucial questions, “Oh, I wasn't there.” You go to the next one, “I wasn't there”, and then to the next one, “I wasn't there”.

That's not good enough, and it was one of the reasons we made deputy ministers accounting officers, so that they couldn't do that. I have to tell you, Chair, this stinks to high heaven. In terms of governance issues, removing that money before the money was saved makes no sense. I'll give a pass to Shared Services. At least they're not trying to say that it was an okay idea, because it wasn't. It sounds as though they got pressure from on high.

I'm not hearing an answer from on high as to why they sent that through. At the end of the day, we still have an unanswered question here as to why money was taken out of a budget before it should have been, and nobody can answer. That's not acceptable.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Christopherson.

Mr. Arya, please.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Mr. Parker, you mentioned that the capacity of the industry to meet your requirements varies. Did we make the mistake, for ideological reasons, of depending on the industry for everything from design to implementation?

Our public service employees have good background experience and knowledge. There's a lot of corporate knowledge there. Maybe we did not use it at all, or if we did, we did not try to build that corporate knowledge so that we would have the advantage of having it over a long period of time.

Was that one of the major problems?

[Ron Parker]

Mr. Chair, as Mr. Glowacki noted, we have what I'd say is a very hybrid model between the provision of services by private sector companies and from within Shared Services Canada. Our sourcing strategy is to look at this type of issue on a case-by-case basis to assess the business case for the provision of services from within the department or the provision of services from private sector vendors.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

But is it not true that the bulk of it has been done by Bell, CGI, and others?

[Ron Parker]

In terms of the email system, the requirements for the system were developed by public servants in co-operation with private industry. Security requirements are determined by the Government of Canada.

More broadly, in terms of the services we're providing, you have the networks and the fibre that's run, and you have the telephones, and it's very much in those areas where you see private sector involvement.

[John Glowacki Jr.]

I could give you a brief answer, Mr. Chair.

The core of the transformation plan was developed by public servants. It was augmented occasionally by industry. But those people are actually still in our organization.