Public Accounts Committee on March 10th, 2016

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Mr. Glowacki, Mr. Parker mentioned that the staff was worth their weight in gold, but why is there this high turnover in Shared Services Canada?

[John Glowacki Jr.]

Again, Mr. Chair, if I may, I will say that this is something that is typical in this situation. The organization is four years old. I have to tell you that I spent 2014 as an adviser to this organization. I refer to it as the longest tour of Undercover Boss on record, because I got to see what the people were like with their bosses not in the room and to see what they were doing. My view is that the country needs to understand how dedicated and hard-working these people were.

Before I knew I was going to be part of the leadership here, I got to see what these folks were doing, and they have been working amazingly hard for a long time. The turnover is coming because we're reaching burnout in a number of cases. That's something that as leaders we have to manage. It's also a typical cycle, where the next team has to come in, pick up the mantle, and run with it.

[Ron Parker]

Finally, on turnover, we have a suite of data that compares our turnover to that of the broader public service. I believe the most recent data is for 2013-14. At that time, our turnover was somewhat less than the public service average, so based on the evidence to date, I think we have pretty typical turnover thus far.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

When my colleague was asking how we can measure your performance, you said that things are changing in that type of industry, and of course it is always changing. Even when you come up with a plan, by the time the thing is ready, the technology may have gone further. Maybe one day it will be secure enough that we may have to use cloud services, but that does not stop you from giving us specific things by which we can measure your success.

[John Glowacki Jr.]

I agree, Mr. Chair. That's exactly where we want to be.

Please don't take away that we don't have measures now. The problem is that this is very large and very complex, and it takes time to get the right systems in place. We inherited a hodgepodge of systems. Now what we're trying to do is move towards a world-class industrial set of systems and processes so we can produce those reports, not only for special events like this, but on a monthly basis, by which we would manage—

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

To take a step back, you mentioned the staff, the public service employees who are involved, but when asked when we'll have completion, Mr. Parker replied that the vendor will provide the date. You also mentioned that strong incentives are there for the vendors. It is dependent on the number of emails and built on emails, but what's after that?

[Ron Parker]

Mr. Chair, in the contracts, for example, there are service level targets that are embedded in the contracts, so the vendors have incentives to perform. We require them to perform as per the contracts that we've established.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

I'll use the chair's prerogative for a quick question.

Are there any other countries in the world, or any other jurisdictions, doing this? Madam Murray has already talked about British Columbia doing something similar, but are there any other countries that have gone from all these silos to one in the same type of project that we're looking at here?

[Ron Parker]

There are examples of other countries, perhaps not on the scale that Canada is attempting. There are also examples at the state level in the United States where this type of exercise or project has been launched—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

For any of the strategies, any of the plans, did we take best practices from there? You have looked at those jurisdictions and you've said that these are the best practices, but as you say, the scope of this may well be one of the largest in the world. Is that right?

[John Glowacki Jr.]

Yes, Mr. Chair, on a governmental basis this is absolutely one of the largest in the world.

I can tell you from my personal experience, if you take a look at the size of the public service being approximately 300,000, I personally won and stood up and led, manned a service engagement of 275,000 users. This has been done in industry more than it's been done in government, but there are plenty of examples that are very similar, such as the State of Texas, and the State of Georgia. The U.K. and Australia have taken different approaches, but they are trying to have very similar outcomes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Did any of those countries have the frustrations we are sharing?

[John Glowacki Jr.]

Yes. This is very typical, absolutely.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

All right. Thank you.

We'll move back to Monsieur Godin.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Earlier, we were talking about the employees, the teams that work with you. It is important to mention their work. We are all technology users and, when things don't work, we can put the pressure on. So please send them my congratulations and thank them for their dedication.

The Auditor General said earlier that you had made little progress. Following what the chair said, the question is simple: is the pill too big to swallow? Is it too late to change our strategic plan?

[Ron Parker]

First of all, I would like to say that it is essential to create an enterprise-level service when it comes to government computer services.

As for changing or adjusting the plan, should we delay one part in order to move another forward? This is something we are looking at closely in our work, right now. Of course, we will be dealing with this matter when we are writing the plan for this fall. We are going to listen to everyone, the clients, experts, and are making adjustments as necessary.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

I understand that between now and fall 2016 we won't have anything concrete.

Let's move on to something more concrete. The department intends to provide a single email system and consolidated data centres 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, to 43 departments, 50 networks, 485 data centres and 23,000 servers.

With that structure, can you tell us where our strengths and weaknesses lie? Where have we made progress? Where are we lagging according to the initial plan?

[Ron Parker]

We are behind in delivering email systems. That was supposed to be completed in March 2015. As we just discussed, we do not have a specific end date for this project.

As for the data centres, perhaps it's better to say that we are at least 18 months behind.

For the network consolidation, we are probably close to six to nine months behind at this point.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

What I can see is that we are behind across the board.

[Ron Parker]

There are delays with this project.

[John Glowacki Jr.]

Could I add quickly that there are points of progress, such as being able to deliver end-user devices, for instance, to client organizations. BlackBerrys, for instance, used to be very problematic. In some cases, it would take up to two months from the time a person ordered it to receiving it. We now have established a service level of five days and we are meeting that.

Maybe in terms of schedule things have certainly moved to the right, but now—

I think I struck a chord.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I waited for mine for a month.

[John Glowacki Jr.]

Sorry, sir. We don't support Parliament.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[John Glowacki Jr.]

In terms of cost savings and efficiencies, we can say that in the four years since we've been in existence, the cost of a gigabyte of storage.... Unit costs are very important in managing and demonstrating performance, and we have over 50% savings compared to what they were at the inception of SSC. There is a 20% savings in mainframe costs. The efficiencies are unfolding.

Our ability to present those to an auditor based on audit standards may not exist yet, but it doesn't mean we're not making progress and the rest of that will unfold. That's part of the plan that's being revised.