Mr. Speaker, with regard to (a), Public Services and Procurement Canada, or PSPC, compensation officers tested the mPersona tool as part of their assigned duties to determine whether it could speed up payroll processing. PSPC employees received their regular salaries during the testing, and did not receive additional payments.
With regard to (b), the source code for the mPersona application is open, available and free to anyone wishing to use, modify or distribute it. PSPC paid no money to Symaiotics or any other company for its use, and no contract was awarded in relation to mPersona. The use of mPersona had no financial implications for PSPC.
With regard to (c), PSPC employees spent approximately 1,600 hours testing mPersona. After this point, PSPC determined it had gathered enough information to discontinue its use.