Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. In terms of how those decisions are made, and why they are made without a complete business case, we agree that business cases need to be improved. Let me clarify that when decisions are made, they are based on a very complete and fulsome Treasury Board

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, we agree that improvements have to be made. I would like to make a distinction between a business case, which has all the options with all the details and the cost-benefits, and the outline of the details, as to how those outcomes are going to be achieved. We believe

Public Accounts committee  In terms of the second question, on whether we should be doing smaller or larger projects, I pass it over to the chief information officer.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, Mr. Chair. In terms of AgConnex, you are correct that the project was concluded or stopped when it had only spent $14 million—which is still a significant amount of money. In dealing with Agriculture Canada officials and looking at what they had been able to accomplish, th

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, the expenditure management information system, the business case on that, was updated and was submitted to Treasury Board Secretariat and to Treasury Board ministers as well.

Public Accounts committee  That was this last fall. I don't have the exact date here.

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, we've committed to the President of the Treasury Board that we would have the policy revised by the end of the fiscal year. In looking at all of these implementation reports and this document and then pulling those ones together, Mr. Lemieux and I, in discussions on ho

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, maybe I'll start with that. I would like to just mention broadly the community and those ATIP coordinators. Before I had this role, I was in a department working with ATIP coordinators as one of the subject matter experts in a program area. Since I've been in this rol

Information & Ethics committee  On content as well as time, yes.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, exactly.

Information & Ethics committee  Let me begin, and Mr. Kratchanov can add more if necessary. The legislation gives very clear timelines and processes, but the legislation doesn't have anything that I'm aware of that says this subject area is higher priority than that subject area and therefore should go to the f

Information & Ethics committee  I'll start on it, and if necessary, Mr. Lemieux could add more. When there is a case and when there is some clarification, through the courts, of the application of a particular aspect of the legislation, that is shared immediately with the access to information coordinators thr

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, that's a very valuable comment. I think there should be a process, and it should be something that we attempt to keep up to date as much as possible. There are limited resources, as is the case with a number of areas in government. It's really a question of which hot i

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, on that one, I hear the facts as you're stating them to me. I understand there is an investigation by the Information Commissioner into all of the context around it, and he or his officials will be involved in that. I really don't feel that I can comment on the specifi

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, on any particular file, we really do not have involvement at all on reviewing how the file was treated. Much as Mr. Kratchanov was saying concerning the Department of Justice, we do not get involved in the review of individual files or the assessment as to whether the