There are a couple of technological advancements that are actually changing the way employees do their work in a very fundamental fashion. You've probably heard about case managers who we are now equipping, on a pilot basis, with mobile technology. That would allow a case manager to meet veterans at any point, be it in their home or in a Tim Hortons, and to work with them as to what benefits they are getting, what benefits they might need. They would be able to open the veterans' files electronically and track where an application might be. That is one example of how a case manager's work is changing.
Other elements of the technological epiphany in Veterans Affairs have to do with how we are securing records from both DND, from which we secure service records, and Library and Archives, the organization that holds the records after a veteran has left the government. In both cases we used to get paper copies of these documents and move them around within the department on a need-to-know basis, in a physical way. At this stage of the game we secure, not completely, but increasingly those records in an electronic fashion, which would allow more than one employee to work on the same record in close succession.
The important thing about securing electronic records and working more digitally, if we can say that, is that at the same time the organization has to be very careful to ensure that only those who should have access, do have access. That brings us to yet another group of employees who, by virtue of the transformation, are doing a different type of work. Those would be the employees in our information technology and information management sector, who are continually monitoring our systems to ensure that access privileges are as they should be, that an employee who needs access to records gets access by virtue of passwords, etc., and that employees who do not need access to records are not allowed entry into systems.
There is a very pervasive change in the department at many, many levels as we move into this electronic world.