Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, About four years ago, the Treasury Board Secretariat, in conjunction with a number of interested departments, went down the road that said that the secure channel, as it was originally conceived way back in 1999 and 2000, really was not serving us well.

Government Operations committee  You've seen the numbers before. We've said that we have about 300 data centres. That breaks down into 20 large ones, with 65 in the middle, and a balance of smaller ones. In aggregate, that adds up to about 600,000 square feet of data centre floor space. I've had an opportunity to actually visit 18 of the original 20 big ones.

Government Operations committee  We believe—and this was the nature of the conversation with the associations—that we needed to have this conversation on a sustained and continuing basis for it to actually serve us both well. It was important to have transparency around what are we doing and how we are doing it and clarity on the best way to do it.

Government Operations committee  Two of the associations we're working with represent SMEs. We work very hard to make sure their voices are heard. ITAC is an interesting association, because it represents both very large companies and small companies, whereas CITPA and CABiNET really do represent small companies.

Government Operations committee  The background behind the government's decision to create Shared Services was the recognition that it was time for the government to start to consider that a new model was necessary in order to support the entire government. That was a kind of underpinning that came forward at that time.

Government Operations committee  Thank you. This came about, as Liseanne mentioned in her speech, because at the beginning, when we first created Shared Services Canada, we knew that we had to have a very sound and fluid relationship with the private sector in order for us to be successful. We engaged all of the major associations like ITAC, which has appeared here, CITPA, CATA, and Communitech out of Kitchener-Waterloo, etc.

Government Operations committee  What we wanted to do was just work through what they thought was appropriate in terms of a sound working relationship. We touched on all kinds of issues around how innovation actually flows into the Government of Canada, what they thought about the existing procurement processes, and the best way forward in terms of us defining our requirements and this sort of thing.

Government Operations committee  That's correct.

Government Operations committee  That's a really difficult question. In the private sector, because of its competitive nature, you do get benchmarking services, and they are so focused on costs that the ability to actually compare is very well developed. In government, it's not quite the same thing. By way of example, the U.S. government and the Canadian government are closely aligned in terms of organizational structures and mandates and those sorts of things.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll try to answer this in a straightforward manner, although sometimes it gets a little bit complicated. The reality today is that most of our systems are interconnected, because departments communicate with each other. Our purpose now, through a number of initiatives that we've worked on with Public Safety and with CSEC, is to in fact establish a much more solid foundation upon which to move forward.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If you understand, we've organized our work around e-mail, data centres, and networks. In terms of the e-mail transformation, we're very advanced. We've completed all of our current state. We know exactly how much money we were spending and where. We have a very good idea, because of our consultations with the private sector, what the art of the possible is.

Government Operations committee  Thank you. In terms of the data centres and telecommunications activities, we are almost complete; it's that complete inventory of everything we have in terms of the number of people, where they work, what they work on, the amount of the physical facilities we own, the amount of technologies that are deployed in these two areas of data centre operations and network operations, as well as all the software that supports both sets of activities.

Government Operations committee  I think you've covered it well.

Government Operations committee  As the minister has mentioned, I worked in banking for almost 10 years. We went through a similar journey as has been described here, where in fact we consolidated 22 data centres down to two. We did the same sort of thing around the telecommunications front, where we reduced the number of networks substantially and built up a global network.

Government Operations committee  As the minister has mentioned, we have to deliver 5% and 10% reduction targets, as other departments have. We have a commitment to do that within the first three years. At the same time, we're developing our plans for the major transformational activities around e-mail, the data centre, and telecoms.