Canadian Government Executive - Volume 22

/ Canadian Government Executive

// June 2016

Governing Digitally

Jeffrey Roy

he fact that Shared Services Canada

(SSC) has struggled mightily under the

weight of its immense agenda is hardly

news: press reports and a recent Audi-

tor General report weigh heavily in this regard.

In a recent issue of

CGE

(April 2016), editor Pa-

trice Dutil’s insightful interview with Ron Parker,

the President of SCC, underscored the breadth of

the challenges at hand.

What, then, are the prospects that a new Gov-

ernment will provide the necessary support for

SSC and its mission? At first glance, the Minister

responsible for the agency has defended it in the

House and the recent federal budget committed

some modest funding to “support the transfor-

mation of government IT systems, data centres

and telecommunications networks….in order to

achieve savings from economies of scale.”

Writing in the

Globe and Mail

, Barrie McKenna

observed that the “view of the new Liberal gov-

ernment is that Shared Services was set up to fail

by the Conservatives. The agency was hit with

severe budget cuts soon after its creation, leav-

ing it starved of the resources it needed.” McK-

enna quoted the Head of the Canadian Advanced

Technology Alliance in lamenting procurement

as a critical aspect of the struggles to date. In his

discussion with Dutil, Parker concured that pro-

curement has been a problem.

In fact, there are two major constraints plagu-

ing SSC – both a reflection of the inertia of tradi-

tionalism that continues to plague efforts to digi-

tize the federal government. The first is indeed

the procurement model – and more specifically,

its propensity for secrecy and an ongoing tenden-

cy to embrace proprietary solutions over open

source alternatives.

Refreshingly, this point was at least discussed

at a Parliament Committee in March when Lib-

eral MP David Graham (a former technology

journalist) quizzed SSC officials about present

infrastructure. SSC managers acknowledged

that maybe fifteen percent of all servers at pres-

ent run on open source, adding that more open

source solutions are always under exploration.

Nonetheless, the debacle of the single email plat-

form and the shared failures of Bell Canada and

CGI in providing help are a typical case study of

proprietary traditionalism gone awry.

This is hardly news. Back in 2011, a British

Parliamentary Committee published its own

comprehensive indictment of traditional pro-

curement and proprietary vendor solutions. The

report aptly titled,

Recipe for Rip-off

, calls for a

renewed procurement model predicated upon

openness and portability rather than customiza-

tion and secrecy.

The British Government has since created a G-

Cloud marketplace of pre-approved options pro-

viding interoperable choices for various govern-

ment entities. In some instances, central agencies

step in to encourage shared agreements; in many

cases they do not, preferring facilitation to or-

dainment. To quote the British Cabinet Minister

Francis Maude, such an approach is in keeping

with the characterization of a “tight-loose” phi-

losophy of IT governance.

Parker acknowledged, in his interview, the

value of more openness and the necessity of bet-

ter partnering. SSC cannot act alone in reshaping

government culture, of course, as other central ac-

tors, notably the CIO Office within Treasury Board

also matter. The mindset of control that pervades

central agencies unfortunately aligns all too well

with many attributes of proprietary traditional-

ism in industry and by extension the procurement

mechanisms that enjoin both sectors.

While many traditionalists invoke secrecy as the

ultimate justification for proprietary solutions, it

is simply not the case that open source is inferior.

A healthy mix of both approaches allows for the

collective openness of the latter to spur innova-

tion and competition. In a recent study of shared

services in the US federal government, Accenture

underscored this importance of “market fluidity”

in enabling strong planning and performance.

The second major problem facing SSC is the

dearth of political collaboration within the

Westminster model. A single Minister responsi-

ble for a government-wide transformation that

is itself predicated upon intense collaboration

across boundaries is unworkable and counter-

productive. In a perverse way, Ralph Goodale’s

public critique of SSC and its struggles to pro-

vide adequate support for the RCMP at least

shines light on the underlying political horizon-

tality at play.

Naturally, SSC has all sorts of inter-departmen-

tal working committees with Deputies and others

engaged to varying degrees. Yet until a group of

Ministers is charged with the means and the man-

date to oversee the Government’s entire digital

transformation — and openly held to deliver inte-

grative results, SSC’s prospects remain bleak.

effrey

is professor in the School of

Public Administration at Dalhousie

University

(roy@dal.ca)

Salvaging Shared Services Canada

Until a group

of Ministers is

charged with the

means and the

mandate to

oversee the

Government’s

entire digital

transformation

and openly held

to deliver

integrative results,

SSC’s prospects

remain bleak.

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