Government Operations committee  I would say yes in one case and no in one case. We certainly were beating the drum, in the sense that once you have your budget and your audited financial statements on the accrual basis, we feel it makes sense for your departmental accounting to be on the same basis of accounting.

Government Operations committee  It was essentially, “The accounting we have now works well. We're able to make decisions with it. We're very busy. This is going to take time away from doing the business of government, from serving the taxpayers of this great province.”

Government Operations committee  It was a bit easier to sell, because the accounting systems that we had in place.... I mean, the decision had been made to go accrual, and going accrual in the estimates appropriation wasn't that big a challenge in Ontario. It was getting all the departments to go to full-blown accrual accounting that was the big issue.

Government Operations committee  When I read some of the literature, the U.S. has decided not to go. They're very concerned about losing the front-end control on the cash basis, on the appropriation basis. That's my sense of why they decided not to go that way; they don't feel there's a big enough advantage. A lot of the Commonwealth jurisdictions are going that way, but a number have decided not to.

Government Operations committee  A key fiscal accountability measure is the budget deficit surplus, and the government comes out and says, “Here's our target”, at the start of the year. At the end of the year, you have an audit and you come out with a different number, and to some extent the public looks at that and says, “Here's how good a job you did from a fiscal accountability point of view.”

Government Operations committee  It's very important to get the people from the departments--the senior people, perhaps at the ADM level--sitting around a table like this and actually talking about it. Then you have to make it very clear that the decision has been made and you're going ahead. But at that point I'm not sure if you want the centre driving the decision and saying that transportation is going to do it this way and natural resources....

Government Operations committee  To some extent I think you're getting at a systems-based question. I just don't know enough about your systems right now, whether you have fairly sophisticated ERP systems, where you have some departments using Oracle and some using SAP—maybe it's a matter that you already have a pretty good system and just need what's called middleware to link them up to integrate them—or whether you need to basically go with the whole, full-blown....

Government Operations committee  From a materials perspective, I know—I was an ADM involved somewhat in the early stages—that the difficult part was getting the departments onside. There was a tremendous resistance: “I've been using Walker”, or “I've been using GEAC”, or “I'm content with my system”, or “Oh, here we go—another centre-driven activity.”

Government Operations committee  I guess I'll keep my Auditor General's hat on. What you're talking about is when four to six weeks before the end of the year you see a lot of computer trucks drive up to the door, and you get off the elevator and there are computers piled wall to wall because people are spending their year-end budget.

Government Operations committee  If I could jump in, I think the RFP was issued around 2000, and there were three main ERP vendors that they were considering. They put together a special office, a central office with an ADM in charge, to run the implementation across all the ministries and stage the various ministries in, because you didn't put 25 ministries on at once.

Government Operations committee  My understanding, from the systems perspective is, going back seven or eight years ago, that Ontario had clusters of ministries that had different accounting systems. An example would be GIAC. They had five or six ministries that were operating on GIAC and four or five ministries that operated on something else.

Government Operations committee  Yes, and they weren't integrated. They weren't even integrable.

Government Operations committee  When you're inputting an ERP system, you want to re-engineer a lot of your business processes. You're putting in an accounting system that's going to be covering 500 programs. All of these programs have a wish list, but you have to put in a system that doesn't require a lot of customization.

Government Operations committee  We're talking about the day-to-day decisions, like whether we should build a new prison. We can build a new prison. We can pay it back in three or four years. You may get a different decision, depending on whether you're looking at it on a cash or accrual basis. Turning to the advantages of the status quo of the cash base, I always think it's good to present the other side of the coin as well.

Government Operations committee  Just by way of background, the Ontario Auditor General's Office has about 100 staff--85 professionals. We're seldom at full complement because of the competition for accountants. One thing I'd like to mention is that we don't comment on government policy. We have no involvement in the budget or the estimates process.