Government Operations committee  We haven't done anything in terms of proactively reaching out to Canadians. There was a news release. You will find anyone who is interested in the business of the government would stumble across committee reports, but I appreciate that is probably a small percentage of the population.

Government Operations committee  We tracked it early on and it was getting a fair amount of attention. What we couldn't tell was where the attention was coming from. Was it internal to government? Was it media? Was it parliamentarians? We don't have any intelligence on who was looking at it. I don't know if Derek has updated stats or—

Government Operations committee  The information is exportable to a spreadsheet, but I must admit I have not done that myself. I will turn in a moment to my colleagues to explain how that is done. My understanding is that it's not done directly through this database; you actually go through open data and then export it to Excel or whatever tool you would like.

Government Operations committee  That is correct, the budget includes an estimate of amounts that will be spent. However, before spending the money, each department must draw up a detailed plan, which must be approved by Treasury Board. You are absolutely correct in saying you cannot exceed the amount of money that was allocated.

Government Operations committee  We have one financial system for the whole of government at a very summarized level. So if you look at the financial statements in the public accounts, there's one financial system to produce that. There is information that is much more detailed that is contained in each department's financial system.

Government Operations committee  I think it's twofold. When we think about parliamentarians and specifically the work done by this committee in producing its report on Parliament's scrutiny of the estimates, there were many questions and concerns raised about the volume of paper that an interested member of Parliament would have to go through to understand what was in the main estimates.

Government Operations committee  That would be correct, and also to really make it easier, to facilitate ease of use.

Government Operations committee  I wouldn't be able to give a firm number on the number of Canadians. I would say this. For anyone who is interested in learning about government spending, whether you are an expert or are just starting fresh, this is a great way to learn because you can get everything from the mandate of a department—what's their business—to some very high-level information, and if you are more inclined, you can drill down and get lots of details.

Government Operations committee  If there's a certain category in mind, they can certainly do searches on that, so that would help answer a specific question. If you're dealing with a more basic level of knowledge, someone coming at it fresh, the best place to start is probably with the main estimates themselves.

Government Operations committee  We considered it in the design by using tools that we thought most people would be familiar with, but I'll turn to Derek and see if there was any consideration of a tutorial itself.

Government Operations committee  That is on our list of things to look at. It is not there right now. There is a separate database with horizontal initiatives that you can access through the Treasury Board Secretariat, but it would be a very logical addition to this set of information.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. Indeed, it is very important to be able to explain the context in order to clearly explain the figures. As the database continues to evolve, it's very easy to put numbers on a page. What is a greater challenge is words, to get consistency. So you're absolutely correct that it would be helpful to have definitions.

Government Operations committee  Our biggest future challenge is providing information on program performance. It's very useful to know how much was spent on a certain program. What is a greater challenge for us is to be able to capture and produce performance targets and performance information about specific programs.

Government Operations committee  Yes, it is possible to do so. At this time, one can use the database to find information, but if one wishes to take the information and export it into Excel or a tool like that, you cannot do it from the database. But you can go to the Government of Canada's open data website, and all of the data that underlies this is available there.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Armstrong. Mr. Chair, as you know, the committee report contains 16 recommendations, but in fact, 8 of them target government operations. The database is one of those eight recommendations, and I did think it was worth spending a few minutes on it to give an appreciation of how it might be useful to committee members in studying estimates.