Public Accounts committee  Once we enter definition, that will be the time at which we launch a competitive phase, a request for proposal. Depending on the value, this will involve our colleagues at Public Services and Procurement Canada and elsewhere, such that we go out to the marketplace for the solutio

Public Accounts committee  Not an indicative, as of yet. As we approach definition, we'll have that from what we call a rough order of magnitude. Looking at scaled options, we've scaled some options anywhere from $300 million to $1.2 billion, again a rough order of magnitude cost, as we've talked to differ

Public Accounts committee  In this context, it would be full implementation of that technology. It might take some time, but our intent is to have it as a road map for continuous improvement. As you indicated, it's a technology that's moving very quickly from RFIDs to satellites and other things, and we r

Public Accounts committee  We are aware of some. We also work internationally. Canada has been one of the leaders in setting up an international partnership consultation around inventory management with our closest allies. We are aware of companies that do it. For an enterprise system, we use SAP as the un

Public Accounts committee  Other militaries are having struggles similar to ours, which is again not about so much where they have it and where it is, but the valuation and the accounting process, etc. It is not something many militaries had automated a decade ago, and we recognize collectively that this i

Public Accounts committee  I talked about the culture initially. That might be the issue. In an organization that is fully focused on military operations and the related tasks, this might be viewed as secondary. We talked about the changes that have been made. Inventory management is now recognized much m

Public Accounts committee  Yes, there are organizations like that in Canada. We said that National Defence accounts for 82% of inventory in Canada. In the federal government, our department is truly unique because of its value. We also have our NATO partners. A number of them have the same problem and we d

Public Accounts committee  Sort of; more and more of our partners are using those products. At our department, we often have to issue calls for tenders. We do not choose who our supplier will be. Once we issued a call for tenders and SAP was chosen. In Canada and many other countries, including the United

Public Accounts committee  We are talking about finishing recording the inventory, especially the value of the inventory. When we are verifying our inventory, we see how many spare parts we have and items that are no longer useful. They have to be eliminated and disposed of, which is quite a complicated p

Public Accounts committee  Our plan is to complete most of the stocktaking by 2020. I cannot guarantee that, one day, there will not be a single error left in our record of past inventories, even though that is our goal. We want to reduce the backlog, especially as regards value. We have to remembered as

Public Accounts committee  Yes, indeed, but one of the reasons we are discussing this with you is the high value in relation to government accounts.

Public Accounts committee  I will talk about what we have and then give the floor to my colleague. As to our holdings, the Auditor General said that we had made a lot of progress.

Public Accounts committee  Okay.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question. The defence resource management information system is what you're talking about. When we describe the convergence of all of these systems we had, that's what we're talking about. A decade ago we even had two separate instances of SAP. We had a materie

Public Accounts committee  The system I'm talking about, of course, is the information system. It is one system for our department. I think I mentioned early on that some of our allies will have different systems for army, navy, air force. We do not. We track that inventory, whatever it is. It brings a com