Particularly at the CFIA, in some instances it is a question of the sheer volume—thousands of import/export certificates every day and numerous inspections occurring in facilities right across the country. Also, we've gone from a system in which we were very prescriptive—all we and our inspectors and front-line staff and industry needed to do was to follow the rules—to having to comply with something that's a little more sophisticated, from which we're starting to better understand the value of those data sets that we now have and how to mine them so that we can work more intelligently. In the case of procurement, the Auditor General found that we did do data mining to figure out where our risks were and to tighten our contracting procedures.
One of the recommendations was around our systems, to follow up on where there had been conflicts, and the report noted 185 days. We moved very quickly—by April 1—to put a new system in place in less than six months. That's down to about 40 days. That's an example of where we were able to say to staff that the mining this data could be valuable and could have a profound impact in changing the way we work, so that we work smarter and better and achieve better results for Canadians. We're starting to see that.
In some ways, having more examples that are positive like that gets people more excited, which gets them more interested in trying to do better on these sorts of things. At the border, where we have three thousand or four thousand import/export certificates every day, we're mining that data, working with CBSA and RCMP to be more targeted on where we think the potential risks are and where to intercept. Our success rate is going up, now that we are able to better mine that data. I think we've been a little slow to figure out the value of the data, but now that we're seeing that, I think you will see a significant acceleration in our interest in this area.