Public Accounts Committee on March 30th, 2023

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much.

In some ways, we've come together with many different departments. I'd say that, oftentimes, when different departments are tasked with doing one big job, there's an issue of trying to figure out who's in charge of doing that work—in particular, the other aspects of what may not be the focus of the departments. Because of the broadness of engaging several ministries and departments, there are things that sometimes slip. Some of those things, which I think the Auditor General points out, were among some of the findings under “environment”. From paragraph 7.59 onwards, to the conclusion, there are recommendations on environment.

I noticed that, in particular, of course, Treasury Board has a mandate to ensure there are sustainability plans and environmental aspects pertaining to the work of government. It's noticed, in the report, that Public Works and Government Services was not active in the requirement to see the contracts between some of the cloud service providers to maintain information or data collection on environmental outcomes.

I just want to better understand how that process is going. This audit is a bit older, so we've had some time. I think the department has accepted the findings of the Auditor General, so I suppose my questions are for Paul.

In relation to that, what progress can you report regarding Shared Services' and PSPC's collaboration to further align the approach to the cloud procurement?

[Paul Thompson]

Thank you very much for the question.

I'm happy to indicate that we have now made modifications to the terms and conditions, so the supply arrangements used for cloud service providers, as of next week—as we begin the new fiscal year—will be modified to include the new requirements with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. This pertains to the broader set of procurements, but also to cloud procurements.

I'm happy to say this will be in place starting next week, so any new call-ups against those supply arrangements, or any new activity, will be subject to these new greenhouse gas emissions requirements.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

If I understand that correctly, the 14 contracts that are currently in operation won't have those requirements.

[Paul Thompson]

It will be for any new call-ups against those contracts—any new activities done by these pre-qualified suppliers that are qualified for these new activities under these existing arrangements. It would require them to comply with these attestations on greenhouse gas emissions.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

The process these providers would have to go through, in terms of declaring their greenhouse gas emissions.... Is that similar to, or consistent with, how the Canadian government collects that data, to date?

[Paul Thompson]

Thank you for that question, too. It's a good question, because we're actually changing a broader set of procurement instruments.

At the same time, there was an announcement, a couple of months ago, I believe, on broader requirements for procurement. This fits into the requirement for all procurements above $4.5 million to require this attestation, based on recognized standards for tracking greenhouse gas emissions and having a plan in place towards net zero.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

To follow up on that, it's my understanding that your department also accepted the recommendation to look at standardizing the templates, moving forward. What's the progress on those standardized templates for these contracts?

[Paul Thompson]

On that one, too, I'm happy to report we have standardized contract language. A working group has been established, which is noted in the Auditor General's report. It was established over the course of the audit. We now have, essentially, a single window to work with departments and ensure we have standard language. My colleague Sony Perron's team and mine worked very closely on these new aligned instruments.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Who currently monitors the environmental impact of digital services within the government?

Perhaps it's a better question for Catherine.

[Catherine Luelo]

I do not know the answer to that, but I will refer back to the committee with a better answer than what I'll give you on the fly, here.

Thank you. It's a good question.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thanks for that. Any supply of written documents on that would be helpful, as well.

[Catherine Luelo]

Yes.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I'll move on toward some of the other representatives, in relation to training.

It's my understanding that the—

Perhaps it's actually still for the member from Treasury Board.

There has been mandatory training, within the civil service, to look at sustainability and aspects of environmental declaration for information, in terms of how the government either pollutes or doesn't pollute.

How do you ensure there's actual compliance by other departments you partner with to report that information?

[Catherine Luelo]

Again, it's a wonderful question, but as the chief information officer of Canada, that's not within my purview. I will make sure that I go back to our greening government folks, who will have a very good answer for you on that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much. That is the time.

I'll turn to our second round.

Mr. Kram, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.

I'll start with Ms. Luelo from the Treasury Board.

Why is the Government of Canada migrating data and systems to the cloud?

[Catherine Luelo]

The Government of Canada is migrating systems and information to the cloud for a couple of the reasons I outlined.

One is it gives us speed and agility. We've seen some of the challenges we've had in meeting service levels to Canadians. Our hope is that we create digital environments that are elastic and changeable in a different way from some of our old, more monolithic systems, if I can use that word.

The second thing is that it gives us a platform for a more modern toolset, which is a really important way for us to attract digital talent into government. I've talked often and loudly about the digital talent gap in Canada, but particularly in the Government of Canada. Part of our attracting great talent into the government to work on this mission-critical work that we do is having modern tools for those professionals to use.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Your first answer was speed. Is that speed in implementing a project from start to finish or speed in other ways as well?

[Catherine Luelo]

Yes. It's the speed of implementing new projects, and also the speed of changing systems. Imagine introducing a new policy or program. Some of the exceptional things that were done throughout COVID were done in ways that were extraordinary. In a normal organization, where you have a good cloud footprint, you're able to stand up and build things in a much quicker fashion than in our traditional environment.

I would also note that there is an advantage to using these large-scale organizations whose full-time day job is running these environments. There are benefits for security, generally keeping things modern and not getting behind that cloud environments provide to us. I think it's a dual purpose.

If any of my colleagues would like to comment...but I think got that okay.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Okay.

On page 15 of the report, it said that there was no costing model in place. Is there a cost-benefit analysis done before every IT project?

Is that safe to say?

[Catherine Luelo]

There's a cost-benefit analysis done on every project. Part of that cost-benefit analysis is what type of posting Sony provides, whether it's the cloud or the data centres.

Because we are very much at the beginning of the beginning in the Government of Canada, I would say we were not fully appreciative some of the costs of moving to the cloud, so we found it more difficult to make the move. In some cases, we did not take the opportunity to simplify and reduce the platform of what we moved to the cloud, so that increases your cost. Also, we did not have good visibility on what it costs to operate and run an environment like the cloud, because we relied on the Shared Services group to run all the data centres. It's very difficult to compartmentalize how much it costs to run Stats Canada versus CSE, versus ESDC.

Part of the great opportunity of having done a small component of this is now we have some real-world data. The other cool thing about the cloud is that we can now take environments that are in there and we can simplify and decrease them. As our consumption goes down with a cloud provider, our bill goes down. There are advantages as we start to tune and calibrate that will be reflected in cost savings.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Is it safe to say that for a cost-benefit analysis for a particular project, the time savings up front in setting up a new data centre would have been included in the cost-benefit analysis for a particular project?

Is that fair to say?

[Catherine Luelo]

That's fair to say.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Would it ever be the case that there is a project whose sole purpose is to migrate data to the cloud?

When you have an old legacy system and you're looking to redevelop it from scratch, would investigating the cloud as an option come to consideration?

[Catherine Luelo]

There are two scenarios that we would look at, and I'll turn to my colleague from SSC to complement the answer.

One is that we're moving something old into the cloud. Very simply put, that would include the thing the system does and the data that allows the system to do the thing it does. The second thing is that we could be standing up a net new system.

There are two reasons why we would move to the cloud. One is to get out of an old data centre and manage that risk. The second is that we're building something net new, which we did during COVID and will continue to do. It made more sense to do it in the cloud, because we could turn up an environment—which is where you build something—in days versus months.