Public Accounts Committee on May 27th, 2021

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much.

We will now move on to our next round of questioning, which is a six-minute round, starting with Mr. Lawrence.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you very much.

I appreciate everyone's work on this. The transformation of the digital infrastructure within our government is one of the least—

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Sorry, Madam Chair, but I have a point of order. There's a great deal of echo in my colleague's office, which means that the interpreters can't do their job.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

My apologies. I've switched my microphone, so we're all good now.

As Mr. Fergus said, you'd think that 15 months in, I'd be able to figure this out.

Thank you very much. As I was saying, digital transformation is one of the key elements going forward. It is something that is very under-reported but absolutely important, because whether in order to deliver clean water to indigenous peoples or to operate government efficiently, we need that digital transformation.

Here are my concerns, though, with respect to what we're seeing here, and I think the challenges are significant. Agile came about in 2001. Agile is fantastic at developing user-friendly software for relatively smaller projects. However, articles started to appear in 2018-19 and so forth saying that agile has its weaknesses. What do they point to as potential weaknesses for agile, where it doesn't work best? They go to big data, because big data requires enterprise systems, and so the iterative process makes it challenging.

What are the organizations they say agile is challenging for? It's where we have poor communication. Well, in the Auditor General's report at paragraph 1.28 it says that we have poor communication, and we've seen that between the different industries and our departments within government. With ESDC and CRA you couldn't even tell who was filing what when, and now we're going to have these iterative small projects that we can't even get the government to control.

Another part where they say agile does not work particularly well is that there is poor tracking. Paragraph 1.55 of the AG's report says that. I think we are going to see a car crash here in a big way that will make Phoenix look small because of what we're doing here, because agile is great in certain circumstances, but it doesn't fit particularly well here.

Please, someone on this committee, allay my fears that we're not going to waste billions of taxpayers' dollars by using a thought process for agile procurement and agile software development that is not a great fit here, and that no one can see that.

[Paul Glover]

Madam Chair, I'll start with the response to the member's question.

While there is great promise with agile, I would agree wholeheartedly with the member that it is not a process we use all the time for every single project. It is dependent on the project, the nature of the project and its risk. There are times when agile is important. The outcome requires a certain speed, or the nature of the project, as the member said, is about building something.

I can elucidate on a number of other projects for which we say, “measure twice, cut once”. We go very slowly, very carefully. If we're closing a data centre that has mainframes in it, if we're moving a data centre, if we're making major changes to huge parts of the network, we don't experiment. We don't iterate. We make sure those things are well planned and well documented.

The key to alleviating the member's question and concerns is the precision and timing in when we use agile. It is about development and adoption.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Okay. I appreciate that answer. Thank you for that.

Let's drill down on that. When we're looking at software development or digital transformation projects across departments, how are we making sure that we're not repeating the same errors that are currently going on such that ESDC software cannot talk to CRA software, and thousands if not millions of Canadians are being left out in the cold just because two software programs cannot talk to each other within one Canadian government?

[Marc Brouillard, Acting Chief Information Officer of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat]

Maybe I can add to that.

Part of the work we do at the enterprise architecture review board, where these major initiatives come through as part of their governance process, is to ensure that alignment and interoperability. One of the recommendations we make is to make sure that there are interdepartmental teams, including governance teams, that are working together to allow for that alignment and that testing.

Also, maybe just to add to the previous question, that is part of some of the benefits of what agile does. It allows you to get some of those answers, some of those mitigations, out early before you get to the end and realize that things aren't working together. There are benefits to that side of the equation.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

I hear that, and that is definitely a benefit of agile, but one of the challenges that software developers who use agile software development all the time will mention is that, yes, you can develop and test these systems, but the challenge is often that you can't scale up. It works in its small component, but you end up testing and spending millions of taxpayers' dollars when you start to expand or scale up, which the government does.

It's often less expensive to get off-the-shelf software, and many democracies do the same work we do in a way that is very similar to the way we do it. Do you recognize that as an issue? Are we also looking at what the U.K., the United States and Australia are doing?

[Marc Brouillard]

Yes, and this could get into a very technical discussion, but there are a couple of elements that are important.

Scale is always a necessary factor, and that's why we look at enterprise architecture and interoperability: to ensure scale. When you can buy something that already does exactly what you need versus building it yourself—commercial and off the shelf—that is always the right way to go. The very worst scenario is buying something off the shelf that you then have to customize. That's part of what we saw in Phoenix.

These are important architectural discussions, and they're part of the ongoing process that we do as projects come through.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lawrence.

We will now move on to Ms. Vignola for six minutes.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My question is for Mr. Huppé.

I want to talk about NextGen. What steps will the Treasury Board Secretariat take to ensure that it works with senior departmental and agency officials, along with users of human resources, pay and management services, to identify real business needs so that we never again experience what we're still going through today?

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Madam Chair, I have a point of order, please.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

On a point of order, we have Mr. Blois.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

I'm sorry, Ms. Vignola.

I think you forgot me, Madam Chair. Maybe I'm wrong again.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

You are so correct. I am sorry. I missed calling on you.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

That's okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

If we can suspend Ms. Vignola's questions, we'll start over with you, Mr. Blois. My apologies.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

I was hesitant if it was on my end, sitting alone here, and I'm losing my mind in Nova Scotia—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

No. I looked down and—

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

You should wear a tie next time.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

That must be the problem.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

It's being that hour ahead. That's what it is.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

My apologies—

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

That's okay, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

My apologies to both you and Ms. Vignola.