Public Accounts committee  That is one of the fundamental things you expect to find when a new IT system is put in place. You expect to see the sign-off by the system owner saying that the system is ready to go into production. We couldn't find that type of documentation in the case of Phoenix.

Public Accounts committee  Well, I don't know about the minister per se, but certainly you would expect to find—as I said, it's just normal practice in putting an IT system in place—a signature from the system owner. I think perhaps they had some difficulty in defining the system owner, but in this case, y

Public Accounts committee  Are you referring to the Gartner report?

Public Accounts committee  My understanding is that the Gartner report was commissioned, yes, in December, I believe, of 2015, and it was completed in February of 2016 just before Phoenix went live.

Public Accounts committee  I wouldn't be able to give you a complete list. I'd have to go back, but the report was prepared by Treasury Board. My understanding is that Treasury Board gave it to the project executives responsible for the Phoenix project. Who saw it within Treasury Board or exactly everybody

Public Accounts committee  Again, once things get behind the doors of what goes to ministers, there's the world of cabinet confidence that we can't get into, so I don't know how that would have been distributed in terms of the minister or the minister's political staff. I wouldn't know that.

Public Accounts committee  It's the same message I often repeat: the importance of focusing on objectives and results. Of course, I understand and agree that federal public servants take their work seriously. They work very hard for Canadians. However, it is also important that the government create a cu

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to discuss the message that I included as part of our spring 2018 reports. I am familiar with the testimony of the Clerk of the Privy Council when he appeared before this committee last week. I first want to say that I agree

Public Accounts committee  Again, that's one of the cultural issues that I identified in the message, the fact of the tenure of deputy ministers in these positions. I believe there were four different deputy ministers, including Ms. Lemay coming in right at the very end in PSPC, in that time period.

Public Accounts committee  Again, that type of turnover of deputy ministers, I believe, is something that is problematic. We see it all of the time in our audits, when we do an audit and then come back with a follow-up audit, I think sometimes there is, in fact, a third deputy in the middle there. We do th

Public Accounts committee  But again fundamentally, I think it's the fact that there is so much churn, and so much rapid churn, at the deputy minister level.

Public Accounts committee  I think that statement is pretty clear. Again, it comes back to the fact that we couldn't find things like documentation for who actually said, “Yes, the system is ready to go. Let's go live with it.” There was also the number of deputy minister changes that happened. The deputy

Public Accounts committee  The message that I delivered was about the necessity to look to the culture and what needs to be changed and effected in the culture. I think we heard from the deputy minister today that they are doing some things within that department to try to identify where there could have b

Public Accounts committee  Again, I think there are two aspects to it. As you mention in your question, there's the cultural aspect, but then there's also the procedural aspect. I think the underappreciation of the problems got through too many people, partly because there was not oversight built into the

Public Accounts committee  Of course, we talked to these three people. We asked them questions about each of their decisions. We also reviewed the background documents that were discussed with the deputy minister. I'll ask Mr. Goulet if he has any details on each of these conversations.