Question Period Note: Article: “Ottawa has a chronic computer problem”

An article published on October 24, 2023, in the Globe and Mail covered the aging IT infrastructure platforms in government and its associated costs.

The Government is committed to delivering easy to use, seamless, digitally-enabled services that put Canadians first.

The Auditor General has correctly pointed out that there is much work to do to address aging technology within key government systems.

The Government of Canada has taken a number of important steps and invested heavily over the past four years to address this problem, and to improve the resiliency of our most important programs and services for Canadians.

Key programmes and initiatives to modernise technology and to transform services have been launched over the past four years, including:

Modernisation of the country’s most important social benefits programs: Old Age Security (OAS), Employment Insurance (EI) and the Canada Pension Plan (CPP)

Modernisation of the country’s Immigration system

Modernisation of our border protection and other security services; and

Modernization of key systems used to deliver pay and payments.

Results have already been achieved, while work continues:

Investments have allowed for the stabilization of existing technology used to deliver critical benefits like Employment Insurance, while modernizing operations at the same time.

Notably, the first release of a new, modern Old Age Security platform successfully took place in June 2023.

Key technology upgrades to Canada’s immigration system have taken place.

To strengthen the Government’s capabilities to lead and manage digital transformation and technology modernization initiatives, we have put in place a Digital Talent Strategy to allow departments and agencies to better-attract top talent, and to develop and strengthen in-house digital talent.

If Pressed (on Aging IT Infrastructure)

Recognizing the risk to critical programs and services, as pointed out by the Auditor General, the government has made significant investments over the past 4 years to ensure the sustainability of our most critical systems.

If Pressed (on Project Management and Digital Skills in the Public Service)

Over the past number of years, the Government has taken several steps to ensure it has a diverse workforce with the right skill set. For example, The Canadian Digital Service was created to support the Government’s digital transformation push, and recently joined Service Canada in order to strengthen efforts to modernize services to Canadians.

Through the Government’s Digital Talent Strategy, departments are putting in place teams with dedicated digital transformation and project management experience and skills. This has increased the level of competency and capability in important transformation initiatives such as BDM and Technical Debt Remediation at Employment and Social Development Canada, and Digital Platform Modernization at Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada. 

If Pressed (on Phoenix)

We will not have another Phoenix as we have learned from previous mistakes.

The Government has established strong Deputy Minister level leadership for key transformation and modernization initiatives, such as the BDM programme at ESDC.

Governance of major initiatives includes senior Government leaders as well as industry partners and experts. It also spans the Ministerial level through to the project level. 

Project reviews are conducted on a regular basis by project teams and third-party assurance, with findings and actions reviewed by programme governance.

Major programmes report monthly to dedicated governing bodies. All of these measures have been put in place to ensure we avoid the issues experienced in the implementation of the Phoenix system.

Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) is the largest federal service delivery organization in Canada, providing $136 billion in direct benefits to Canadians in 2019-20 through key programs including Employment Insurance (EI), Canada Pension Plan (CPP), Old Age Security (OAS), Canada Emergency Response Benefits (CERB), and other statutory transfer payment programs.

The Government of Canada first announced the BDM Programme in Budget 2017. The BDM Programme is the enterprise platform for the delivery of ESDC’s major statutory benefits – Employment Insurance, Canada Pension Plan, and Old Age Security.

BDM is critical to ensuring the ongoing delivery of EI, OAS and CPP, which are the core social benefits programs for Canadians. Large-scale transformation projects of this nature, particularly ones of this significance and importance, require large investments to ensure successful implementation.

Over the more than 10-year course of the Programme, total benefits to Canadians will amount to more than $1.5 trillion, while BDM will cost less than one half of 1% of that.

The Department is using extensive research, best practices and lessons learned from both the private and public sectors, Canadian provinces, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, which have successfully undertaken similar transformations.

The Department is following a phased approach in the implementation of the new systems to efficiently manage possible risks without interrupting benefit payments to Canadians by:

keeping the existing systems running in parallel during the transformation process of each particular system;

gradually introducing new systems and processes supported by a solid change management strategy; and,

minimizing the impact of potential issues by progressively transferring client segments into the new systems.

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