Pursuant to notice of March 29, 2023, moved:

That the Senate call on the Government of Canada to replace its outdated program delivery and information technology systems by urgently accelerating the implementation of user-friendly, digital solutions that transform the public service delivery experience of Canadians, and ultimately reduce the cost of program delivery.

He said: Honourable senators, surveys reliably report that most people would rather lose their wallets than their phones. Yes, I’m speaking about that device that I’m competing with right now for your attention.

Do you ever wonder why we call it a phone? Take a minute sometime to check your settings. Don’t do it now, please, but when I did it, I found that, personally, I use my phone, my mobile device, for 2% of the time. The other 98% of the time I’m benefiting from a diversity of conveniences that I could hardly have imagined a generation ago.

We get frustrated when things can’t be done quickly or easily on our phones. When the Rogers network crashed on July 8, 2022, over 12 million Canadian citizens and businesses lost wireless and internet services. People couldn’t call 911, businesses couldn’t process payments, and other information services that we rely on, minute by minute, were suddenly gone.

These conveniences are always so accessible, we take them for granted. We constantly expect better, more reliable services in all facets of our lives, whether it’s virtual banking, virtual medical appointments, collaborating on documents through the cloud, booking flights or ordering just about anything to be delivered directly to our doors. The organizations that provide the best, most trusted, most convenient services are the ones that succeed.

Conversely, when digital government services do exist in Canada, they’re often complex, confusing and clunky. There’s a wide and growing gap when comparing government services to the convenient digital experiences in other aspects of our lives. That gap is increasingly concerning to me because trust is earned when people believe in your motives and your abilities and respect what you accomplish when you apply those motives and abilities.

A positive experience fosters recurring use, word-of-mouth referrals and an enhanced reputation. I offer to you that to be credible and trusted, governments need to meet citizens where they are, not where they were. This reality demands that governments must start to deliver a level of convenience and service to citizens and businesses that they’ve grown to expect in our increasingly digital world.

That’s my motivation behind Motion No. 107: to relay a sense of urgency to the government so that the ministers and public servants who desperately want to make these changes benefit from increased political support.

The Speaker has just read Motion No. 107 again to you. The tabling of this motion triggered a study on the part of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, or PBO, released about two weeks ago, on September 15. Over the next few minutes, I’ll briefly review the state of digital government services in Canada, and then I’ll review some of the PBO’s findings and other issues that need to be managed if Canada is going to make progress in the delivery of digital government services.

Let’s start with what is happening today. Canada is falling behind other countries in the race to embrace digital transformation. Despite having exceptional capacity with leading research programs, universities and companies, Canada is not a digital competitiveness leader. In the United Nations E‑Government Survey 2022, Canada placed thirty-second, down from third a dozen years ago. Boston Consulting Group’s e‑government ranking suggests that Canada’s digital government services are the lowest of 40 nations.

Unsurprisingly, ServiceNow found that 8 in 10 Canadians believe consumer companies provide better customer service than government, and 8 in 10 Canadians think navigating government services would be simpler with more digital tools. Canadians also identified that lengthy and confusing processes are high on their list of complaints.

Simply put, Canadians want better digital government services, and our governments are not keeping up as the rest of the world accelerates. But convenient access to government services is far from the only challenge. Limited technology investment increases cybersecurity risks and their incalculable costs.

In her annual report last November, Auditor General Karen Hogan raised concerns about the Canadian government’s cybersecurity controls, highlighting inconsistent practices that may place sensitive information and digital infrastructure at risk of cyberattacks. She also highlighted that Canada’s public servants are more hesitant to adopt new technologies than their global peers.

The last point was confirmed by Accenture when they reported that only 28% of public servants in Canada received cybersecurity and data security training — this despite 100 plus world-class digital and data courses available through the Canada School of Public Service that are supported by global technology leaders. Not enough of our senior public servants are insisting that they themselves and their teams prioritize this essential upskilling.

Convenient and secure digital services are becoming commonplace in other countries, even countries at war. You’ve heard me speak many times about Ukraine’s Diia app. Regardless of where they are in the world, Ukrainian citizens use their mobile devices to access their most important credentials, like driver’s licences and passports, as well as all of their most important government services. Today, more than 90% of Ukrainian adults interact with their government digitally, not because they have to but because they value the convenience and ease. This success was thanks to President Zelenskyy making the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine a political priority and recruiting both top technical talent and experienced policy and regulatory experts to the cause. Both skill sets are critical to ensuring progress.

We need to find a path forward, so let’s look at the PBO findings. The PBO highlighted the need for greater transparency. Budget 2021 allocated $1 billion to be invested in digital transformation over seven years. However, clear and insightful answers are difficult to find, such as how projects are being prioritized, how funding is allocated or what results and benefits are being achieved.

I found it concerning when the PBO observed that:

It is possible that some of this funding may be used to maintain existing systems rather than expand the digitization of government services.

It’s very worrisome that the government’s billion-dollar commitment might not be invested in digital transformation at all and could be consumed by the ever-increasing maintenance and repair costs of legacy systems. Simply, we have to learn how to build reliable and convenient alternatives to our old clunkers before they finally fall apart. Transparency is crucial to tracking progress and establishing effective incentives.

Furthermore, the combination of security and convenience offered by a single, high-security log-in credential should be a priority. Currently, there are over 270 different log-in points to digital services in the federal government. This isn’t just inconvenient, but it also increases the cyber breach risk by 270‑fold.

I’m of the view that improvements in the quality and convenience of service delivery to Canadians should be the driving force behind the digitization of government services. Yet, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, or PBO, could not find any key performance indicators to guide improvements over time. Also, there’s no analysis of expected cost savings compared to those actually achieved. Since departments don’t track this information, they were unable to provide it.

Another recurring theme was that past practices block the adoption of best practices. To be fair, this problem is not limited to government. It’s an issue within any large or long-established organization. Too often, a change-averse culture prevents the needed transformation and reinforces the status quo — we see this problem in the Senate. Costs continue to rise, but calls to make efficiency-enabling changes are rebuffed.

Amanda Clarke, Associate Professor of Public Administration at Carleton University, as well as a thought leader in this space, spoke about this problem during her appearance before the House Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates on November 17, 2022:

. . . very little has been done to hire and train public servants such that the government could make sensible, accountable and strategic decisions about technology.

She continued:

. . . leading digital-era governments are now aggressively hiring technologists. . . . [and] appointing senior leaders . . . who have a deep understanding of technology and its role in the policy process.

There are also structural barriers preventing transformation. To this end, the PBO offered that “Internationally, other governments have identified existing legislation as a potential obstacle to digital service delivery.”

Canada’s legislative structure enshrines the siloing of departments, which reduces the interoperability of government programs. This is frustrating for citizens and inefficient for government. To get around this problem, over the past decades, over a thousand highly specific data sharing agreements have been created between programs, agencies, departments and provinces. If government is to become more citizen-centric, departments need to be empowered to build a common software architecture that can deliver dramatically more convenient services for those citizens who choose to interact digitally with the government.

The PBO identified that the Privacy Act, the Financial Administration Act and the Access to Information Act need to be clarified if citizens are to be provided with the right to control the use of their personal data across departments and agencies, and between levels of government.

I would offer that Ottawa still faces another obstacle when it comes to digital transformation: the ghost of the Phoenix payroll debacle. Beginning with the earliest planning work in 2007, those who structured the Phoenix project ignored the software industry’s agile and iterative development practices. Our National Finance Committee’s 2018 report documented the issue well, but I’ll highlight one point: The identified benefits of this investment were minuscule relative to the risks.

When issued in 2011, the $310-million contract to create one centralized federal pay system was expected to save about $70 million per year. In isolation, that sounds like a reasonable return, but the enormous project was destined for failure when you consider the complexity and risk. At the time, Canada had 290,000 federal employees governed by 105 collective agreements with more than 80,000 different pay rules, and a total payroll of $22 billion per year. Experts report that if Phoenix had been broken into component pieces, with each being robustly tested and systematically scaled, the resulting problems would have been avoided.

I think the lessons of Phoenix have been learned. Consider the remarkable speed in which the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, or CERB, was designed, implemented and systematically scaled out to Canadians in April 2020 — at a time of enormous crisis in our country. It wasn’t perfect, but it indicates that there are both leaders and practices within the public service that know how to avoid past mistakes and design new platforms.

In recent years, ownership of and responsibility for digital transformation has bounced between departments almost like it’s being shunned. Clearly defining who has responsibility, authority and the resources to deliver digital government services to citizens is crucial to making progress.

Colleagues, to summarize, we need to prioritize end-to-end digitization of convenient and cost-efficient government services over the slower and more costly analog, paper and people-based services.

Success depends on increasing transparency — not just related to costs, but also to the savings and quantified improvements in service delivery. It depends on prioritizing best practices over past practices by enabling legislative, regulatory and policy changes necessary for ensuring that government services become citizen-centric. It depends on becoming comfortable with iterating our progress, learning from both successes and mistakes. Finally, it depends on empowering those ministers and public servants who are determined to transform the citizen experience.

Let me finish where I started: To be credible and trusted, governments need to meet citizens where they are — not where they were. This requires governments to deliver a level of convenience and service that citizens and businesses have grown to expect in our increasingly digital world.

Colleagues, I invite you to speak on this motion, and I ask for your support on this motion when it comes time for a vote. My hope is that we help empower the dedicated and talented public servants who desperately want to make this change, with the political backing that they need.

Thank you, colleagues.

Senator Miville-Dechêne, there are only 35 seconds left. Did you want to ask a question?

Senator Deacon, in order to answer the question, are you asking for leave for five more minutes?

Yes, please.

Is leave granted, honourable senators?

Leave is not granted.