Government Operations committee  I believe the small and medium companies, and particularly Canadian technology and Canadian innovation, could be showcased here, even through the big organizations. A lot of the big organizations source some of their technologies from younger companies. I will give you one of my

Government Operations committee  I'll make two comments on this. One, the project scope is well defined, and when industry has lined up to quote something, I assume and I would believe most of my members will deliver within the price they put out. The risk is always that the scope keeps changing, and the buyer w

Government Operations committee  Thank you. The risk is always there, depending upon how you plan it. The risk is always there. It really comes down to the execution of the plan, which pieces of the competency you must keep within the government and which things you could get outside. A certain level of compete

Government Operations committee  Thank you. I will answer this question slightly differently. It is not something you're doing new: you have an existing cost that the government is already incurring in running its IT and delivering the services, right? So the issue is where you go from here. Unlike a new proje

Government Operations committee  I believe the overall IT needs to be centralized. There is no other way to move forward for any institution. For any institution of any size and scale to have completely separate organizations running IT infrastructure is, in today's technological sense, really unheard of. So in

Government Operations committee  Thank you. As I mentioned, the way we did a project was to have very clear governance at the outset—the framework as to who does what. The second piece that goes with that from an accountability point of view is to establish something like a scorecard model. If you have clear

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  Would you clarify the question? There will be a collaboration of these data centres in what context?

Government Operations committee  Depending upon which one you pick first—you have three elements now, with e-mails, data centres, and the network—the easiest one would probably be e-mails in terms of sequencing. The hardest one would probably be the network. The data centre would be somewhere in the middle. The

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  That is the easiest one to look at. The footprint of consolidation is seen not only with the building but with the energy costs, maintenance, support, security—you name it. All aspects have to do with cost and are of immediate net benefit to the project. There's no doubt about it

Government Operations committee  I don't know what the next step would be, but the question that's always on the table for government to consider is that government should do what they do best and let the private sector do what they do best, which is manage the technology, and deliver the latest technology, and

Government Operations committee  That's a very good question. I think this is where, in setting up the projects, it's very critical how you break them up. A big part of the initial stage is investment, but a big part of the downstream investment should be fed by the benefits you garner in the early years. That's

Government Operations committee  I don't know in this case. I couldn't answer that question. But if it is a five-year project...for the ones we have done, I'd say by about 20% to 30% of the way in, you should starting getting some significant benefits.

Government Operations committee  Yes.