Government Operations committee  It will be available for other departments to see, and we will be tabling it with the deputy minister committee on policy innovation.

Government Operations committee  It's a very good question. The $32 million is not for one project. There's a multitude of projects that we will undertake underneath that. I'll talk to two big projects. One is the e-cabinet project, and that is where you look at the flexible kind of project management. We have certain deliverables that we want to meet on a regular basis, but we also don't want to lose opportunities as we're going through it.

Government Operations committee  We work in collaboration with the Communications Security Establishment . They are going to be hosting the top secret network for a number of departments. In the past, our top secret network was built and designed and housed within PCO, so it wasn't transferred to Shared Services Canada.

Government Operations committee  Yes, exactly. There are two things and they're both about hardening the security posture for PCO. The top secret network will provide us with a stable, secure system. When you have systems in different departments that you're responsible for, sometimes you can't have a common, enterprise-wide approach in addressing your security needs, your patching needs, in order to understand what your most immediate threats are.

Government Operations committee  Right now, it takes about three weeks to do security clearance.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, one of the important roles that we play in PCO is that challenge function and if you think about all the central agencies that would exist in government like the Public Service Commission, the Privy Council Office, Treasury Board Secretariat, PSPC, the Department of Public Works and Government Services, the role that PCO plays is really fundamentally in the role of policy, legislation, and administrative processes.

Government Operations committee  In terms of how we do it, we really focus on what's coming forward on the mandate commitments that the government has identified. What PCO really does is support the Prime Minister and the functioning of the cabinet. It's looking at how we structure our agenda to make sure that the priorities of governments move through the system the way they're intended to, working with our various departments.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, can I just get a point of clarification? When talking about the investigation, are you talking about the commission of inquiry?

Government Operations committee  Okay, in the Privy Council Office we provide administrative support to the commission of inquiry. When I talk about that—and I understand your point—what I'm referring to are our financial processes, the actual payment of bills. When we talk about the information technology, it's about the computers that we provide, access to email services, shared drives, those types of things.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, in terms of human resources, it doesn't take five weeks. The commission has a lot of latitude with regard to determining how to best bring people in. It has the opportunity to do a process internally. It can go out and seek people who can come and help. It's up to it to determine what the right processes are.

Government Operations committee  Sure. Within the $32 million, we have the big bucket that is roughly around $29 million for IM- and IT-specific projects. We have another $1 million that helps support our e-cabinet initiative. There is another portion to help with purchase of equipment for our business continuity plan, so technology, like putting in fibre optics.

Government Operations committee  No. What we're going to see—

Government Operations committee  No.

Government Operations committee  It might be a question more appropriate for my colleagues at Shared Services Canada, but maybe I can talk to you about what we're doing at PCO, from a cybersecurity perspective, in terms of understanding the current environment we're in and the steps we're taking. Specifically to your question with regard to cellphones, we all recognize that when using cellphones, it is open for people to listen to conversations, to access them.

Government Operations committee  Within PCO, we have an innovation hub, an impact and innovation hub. They have the role, right across Canada, to think about different processes, behavioural aspects, of looking at how we do innovation. This study was really to help us get a bit more insight into the leading-edge study that's going on and what we could do further.