Government Operations committee  Thank you, Minister, and thank you, Chair, for the member's question. Absolutely, we are aware of these issues and I'm pleased to report that the situation is improving each and every day. The number of calls that were being directed to ESDC and CRA by Canadians were literally unprecedented, so steps have been taken to improve the system's ability to handle the number of calls that are coming at it and route them quickly and properly through to agents.

Government Operations committee  Yesterday, there were none.

Government Operations committee  With all respect, it would depend on the definition of “dropped”. There are busy signals where, because there is a limit to the technology and the number of calls, or how long the system knows an average call will take for somebody to be placed on hold, it gives them a busy signal, so they don't even get in.

Government Operations committee  We'll provide that through the clerk. I don't want to estimate. I do know that there have been a number of steps too. There were problems with calls that weren't dropped, but frankly, simply never got answered. That was another issue. People would get in and the call would never get dropped; it would just never get answered and the business would shut.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Minister. We have definitely done security assessments of all the different pieces of software to make sure their uses were appropriate. That is what translates into the guidance that the minister referenced, which the chief information officer then communicated to all departments.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, if I may, I have something else to add. Science today is increasingly about data—access to data and large datasets—so we are looking at the information technology to support the work in the labs. Also, science is often collaborative, so we're making sure that federal scientists have the collaboration tools to work with international colleagues and partners.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. With respect to the requirement for independent third party review on this project, the committee can have confidence that it was done. We did receive it and we did act on it. That was what changed from trying to do all 221 at once to scale: Start with those that need it the most, the most complex, and learn the lessons.

Public Accounts committee  I think that we have absolutely seen that shift you've talked about in society, but I would like to assure the members of the committee that Shared Services, on behalf of the government in supplying technologies and platforms, wants to make sure there are multiple channels that function so that those who want to work online on an app or on an iPad can do that, those who want to pick up the phone can do that and those who want to walk into service centres can do that and have a modern, effective experience.

Public Accounts committee  I would start by saying the government's IT infrastructure is absolutely large and complex because of the very diverse nature of the services the departments provide, from the Department of National Defence to Veterans Affairs to the RCMP to highly operational border security guards.

Public Accounts committee  Absolutely, Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity. In looking at 221 call centres, I think it was assumed at the beginning that a call centre is a call centre and that the technology would be consistent and the same. However, as we moved through this experience, we realized that we needed to be more precise, to roll out technologies that were appropriate to the call centres and to better take into account the existing technology.

Public Accounts committee  To respond to the member's question, it will be Shared Services that is responsible for the provisioning of that infrastructure and working with the vendor community and departments to make sure that we provide solutions in line with the needs of those departments. As I said, we started with those that were the most complex and represented almost 50% of the total call volume.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to speak to the committee and answer your questions concerning the Auditor General's report focused on call centres. As I'm sure you are aware, Shared Services delivers a wide range of IT services to departments that support the delivery of government programs and services, including call centres.

Government Operations committee  We have worked to set up the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, so there is a centre of expertise that is responsible for identifying what those best practices are and identifying what the security profile needs to be for the Government of Canada. We work very closely with them to make sure that we understand the threat profile and what the appropriate response mechanism is.

Government Operations committee  That conversation is absolutely happening at multi-levels. As we heard earlier, we are looking at new procurement processes that are agile and are meant to move small but fast to see what the level of risk is, understand what's working and be able to scale those up quickly. We also have processes that ensure the supply chain integrity of anything that we are procuring so that we're able to see, not just the end vendor, but the whole supply chain that resulted in a product or service being provided to us so that we have confidence in it all the way through, are able to see all of the potential areas where there may be a threat risk and are confident that those have been properly mitigated.

Government Operations committee  We are constantly working with partners to assess the threat landscape, see how it is evolving and make sure that we have the tools necessary to respond. It is a process of continually assessing, working with our partners in the security agencies, and then making sure we have the technology, the firewall, the perimeter, properly protected so the government services and employees are able to function within our network safely and securely.