Government Operations committee  They're probably to some degree dependent upon the outcome model. If you go to a cloud for various aspects, then a significant amount of internal management could be moved out. That's one scenario. If you replicate what you have today, but just modernize it, then you continue to have a more skilled labour force of the same number or maybe a smaller number, because you consolidate functions.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for that question. I think in a lot of the areas in procurement, we have worked very closely with the government at the federal and provincial levels. When you look at the shared services side, it's not just procurement. A significant amount of effort is upfront planning and setting the right model that would work.

Government Operations committee  Thank you. I won't make the supposition that the cultures are all bad—it would be a bad premise to start with—but they are different. If we start with the assumption that there is some difference in culture in different departments, it would take some amount of time within each of the department's leadership to meet with the SSC's current leadership and establish what the protocol is, how they would operate, and that there is transparency within the management, up and down.

Government Operations committee  No. I think the projects we have done in the private sector are single-threaded. They were not 43 departments or 43 companies merging at the same time, and the scale and scope were not as large as what you're seeing here. I would not dispute the PricewaterhouseCoopers study. What I'm saying is, transformation-wise, IBM should have been larger than HP, just given the sheer size of the organization.

Government Operations committee  If there is one significant challenge that the shared services would face, it would be that you're talking about 43 departments that are all operating differently, with different cultural tones. Merging them into one organization with similar values and cultures—that's where the challenge would be for the leadership.

Government Operations committee  I cannot recommend specifically what would work for the shared services, because I don't know the composition of the organization. I can play back to you what I have seen work, which is to have the projects very well defined with a start and an end date, a very “blocking and tackling” approach.

Government Operations committee  Sure. From a private sector point of view, when we embark on anything of this magnitude, there are really two dimensions to it. One is the effectiveness and the other one is efficiency. The efficiency one is a lot more easily understood because you're centralizing things and your overall cost is going down.

Government Operations committee  Yes, I believe so. Cloud computing is a big issue in today's world in terms of the cost of delivery and efficiencies. Just in that context, it should play a big role within Shared Services decision-making. I'm almost certain.

Government Operations committee  It's an interesting question because there's no clear answer, largely because the financials vary from project to project or from overall program to program on a transformational project, and they come in different sizes and shapes. I can only talk about the one I was personally involved in.

Government Operations committee  I would go against my own recommendation and be a little more prescriptive on this answer. If you don't have the skills, go hire the people who do have these skills and spend the money to do it right. That would be my recommendation to SSC. But when you have this large an organization, I'm almost certain that you have these necessary skills, and you'd be able to save a significant amount of money there.

Government Operations committee  That's a very good question. Thank you. In my personal experience when we did this in the company I was involved with, the biggest issue we struggled with was trying to create one massive project versus breaking it into multiple projects. So you could not track the progress and you could not see the benefits at each stage of the way.

Government Operations committee  I do not know what the project structure is in Shared Services. I know that there are three things they're looking at, but I don't know what the approach is. I don't think they're there yet, at least from the information I have, in regard to what kind of project they have, how they're breaking up each of the items, whether it's the e-mail network or data centre, and, for each one of them, how it's broken up into multiple projects.

Government Operations committee  I do believe that whenever a project of this nature is undertaken by government, it does allow a huge opportunity for Canadian companies to showcase their technology, and to almost make government one of the first customers to showcase what they're building. That needs to be done within the construct of the business objective.

Government Operations committee  Yes, I do believe the SMEs do a lot of the applications, a lot of the work. Some of the applications could be very relevant to the types of services you're going to be delivering to the population, and in any sector, because as a country we are moving towards a digital society. Everything you and I consume and dispense is done digitally.

Government Operations committee  I would not comment on Ontario's specific case. To answer your question a little more generically, I think, it would be what kind of competency you have within the government, in the organization that's being consolidated. If you do not have the requisite skills to run a project of this magnitude and this complexity, then you would need to go to the people who have done it in the past and have the necessary experience.