Public Accounts committee  I would simply say, Mr. Chairman, that I appreciate the input from the committee. I always welcome it. We're not going to let it go. We want to continuously improve and get our fundamentals right. Thank you.

Public Accounts committee  No, not automatically. Within the department, I have a standard IT services management function. Public Works and Government Services has its own systems.

Public Accounts committee  One of the responsibilities of the chief information officer, or CIO, is to manage our IT needs. He is also responsible for shared services options. Here are a few places that we're exploring: Data centres, Networks, the networks you mentioned, and Desktop management, desktop com

Public Accounts committee  I don't have that document, Mr. Chairman. I would say that, in the case of networks, the deadline for getting the business case was the end of March. We're nearly at the end of March, and I haven't had any news from my manager on that matter. We'll be dealing with that in the com

Public Accounts committee  As I previously mentioned.

Public Accounts committee  Do you mean having external members in place?

Public Accounts committee  Yes, I am compliant. I am chairing that committee. I have three external members. If I may, Mr. Chairman, I only want to clarify something so that I'm not misleading the committee. The procurement ombudsman annual report will be tabled by September 2009. I had said June, but it'

Public Accounts committee  That's a good question, Mr. Chairman, and the answer falls into two areas. The first one—frankly, Madam Fraser and her team picked it up—is that good planning should allow you to try to think ahead as much as possible when you put your contract in place, so you have the right h

Public Accounts committee  Yes. Before I answer this, I'll say that one day, because I heard about MERX, I said, “Can I have a demo, see what it looks like on the screen?” I had a demo, and frankly, I thought it worked pretty well. But it's a site that has a fair amount of information, and you have to fil

Public Accounts committee  Yes, we do that, and it's quite impressive. As Madam Meredith said, we have regional offices, we have the central office of OSME, and the number of phone calls this small core of people dealing with OSME—they're like the face of Public Works, the government, vis-à-vis the small a

Public Accounts committee  I'll start by saying that as a manager and as the accounting officer for the department, I always make a distinction between mistakes and wrongdoing. Wrongdoing is not good, and I'll let Madam Fraser speak to that issue. I don't think we're dealing with wrongdoing issues here;

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question. Mr. Chairman, I said earlier on that Treasury Board guidelines allow for the use of external help in putting requests for proposals together, or some assistance, for reasons of either workload or complexity. That's the point you made--complexity. It

Public Accounts committee  Well, you know, it's simply.... I made references to the review we carried out. It's a lesser number of cases. People are driven by wanting to do the right thing for an outcome. They need some help and assistance, and they have to think it through. But it's not sufficient to th

Public Accounts committee  I understand the question. I just don't have the answer. It's a very straightforward question; I just don't know. Daphne Meredith, I don't know if you would have an answer to that.

Public Accounts committee  I would say that the department has gone through, and is going through, a business transformation. We are going through a business transformation. I'll give you an example. We used to do a lot of building maintenance. Now we have a contract with SNC-Lavalin ProFac. They carry o