Public Accounts committee  They made those decisions. As we explained in the report, they had an original IT budget of $155 million. When they went to IBM to say what they wanted the system to do, IBM said it would cost $274 million. That was when the project executives decided to reduce the functionality

Public Accounts committee  Again, the budget would have been approved by Treasury Board when the project was approved. To me, though, the fundamental issue here was that the department, in my estimation, had a responsibility to go back to Treasury Board either to ask for more money or to tell Treasury Boa

Public Accounts committee  Again, yes, they decided to cut back on the functionality, and as the product progressed, the importance of those functions that they had decided to cut back on became more and more evident. They should have been able to realize that cutting out things like being able to pay peop

Public Accounts committee  Once again, it's hard for me to answer that, because we haven't done any audit work on those figures, or on the work accomplished since our audit. Clearly, there seems to be progress, but it is very important for the department to clearly describe it, and provide all the approp

Public Accounts committee  Certainly, we said that the people responsible put the emphasis on delivering the project within time and on budget.

Public Accounts committee  As I explained earlier, you can go through all the different decision points in the steps, and it is comprehensible to understand those decision points and when different decisions should have been made to correct the problem. What's incomprehensible, as you said, is how nobody

Public Accounts committee  Yes.

Public Accounts committee  They work for Public Services and Procurement Canada.

Public Accounts committee  I believe that two of three of these executives reported directly to the deputy minister.

Public Accounts committee  They reported to the deputy minister. All three of them were department employees. I thought your question was aimed at finding out whether these executives reported directly to the deputy minister.

Public Accounts committee  All three of them were department employees.

Public Accounts committee  Certainly, there is that nuance to that word “incomprehensible” in this context. Yes. You can look at it and you can understand all of the different decision points that were made and how those decision points or decisions that were made at those points led to implementing Phoeni

Public Accounts committee  The way I've described that is, again, with all of the different controls in place in government, which are there to prevent something like Phoenix from happening, how was it possible that it could have happened?

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to present the results of our second audit of the Phoenix pay system, in which we looked at building and implementing the system. Joining me at the table is Jean Goulet, the principal who was responsible for the two audits of Phoenix. In

Public Accounts committee  Again, that's the difficulty, and I think what you are struggling with is the difficulty that we had as well, as we were trying to work through the time frame on this project. Again, as far back as 1986, there were indications that the bridge was deteriorating or that it needed