I said several years ago, when all were certain that amalgamating everything under one virtual roof was impossible due to the intricacies and difficulties involved, that none of that mattered. It would be decided by a government driven by ideology, and at the stroke of a legislative pen the whole thing would be done. Only then would we have to go through the massive (and horrendously expensive)changes needed to make the idea into reality.
That will, I believe, be a prelude to a total contracting-out of IT services. It will be a chance for the government to remove itself from the NAFTA/business-imposed procurement process (a process albatross no business in its right mind would ever willingly accept for itself). It will be a chance to remove thousands of employees from the public payroll, move them to lower-paying jobs in the private sector, and give the difference in cost to the managers of the companies. And it will be a chance for the government to remove the contingent liability of a Defined Benefit pension plan by transferring the risk associated with a Defined Contribution scheme onto the backs of the employees without paying any compensation for that massively increased risk.
From the government’s perspective, what’s not to like? From the perspective of safety and security of Canadians, and from the perspective of Public Servants who have to make this thing happen, there’s a lot to question, beginning with the practicalities of the move.
It’s all well and good for people to say the private sector can be more efficient, can change directions more easily. But the private sector, when it has a product line that isn’t meeting its costs, can simply drop it, leaving its clients having to look for something else. Government can’t do that. It must retain its records for decades, and be prepared to compensate people regardless of cost, or provide suitable alternatives.
While there’s much about unifying and streamlining systems which makes a great deal of sense from a technical perspective, don’t even begin to think this is going to come easy, or cheap. We have too many systems, painstakingly develop over decades in response to numerous government edicts, and running on a myriad of platforms through a myriad of processes, to simply roll everything together into a one-size-fits-all scenario.

Great post! I liked Mark’s post (above) and David’s too

Couple things to add on this. The current procurement system is totally broken. There are so many middlemen involved in contracts with the government. I’ve heard of instances where four companies are involved in the delivery of work for a particular project. The focus on hiring individuals to do particular work rather than hiring small companies that work as a team is also problematic.

I do see the this Shared Services Initiative as putting even more contracts out of the reach of small Canadian businesses. Already so many of the contracts that are available through MERX are out of the reach of small companies. Unless you’ve got a dedicated proposal writing team, it’s generally not been worth following the opportunities there.

Although there are limitations on what can be done to promote a Made in Canada solution, the multi-nationals definitely have entrenched paths to federal $$. I find it frustrating that as a small business I don’t have access to people & resources (like GCPedia) that larger firms with embedded consultants do. It’s not a level playing field, nor is it cost effective.

Any large, centralizing IT initiative I’ve seen like this has simply proved to kill any initiative of small teams. I have yet to see the results of these efforts being productive (either inside of government or without). There is just so much rhetoric involved in the idea of sharing IT resources. However, forcing a centralized solution is far different than building a collaborative community.

For far too long IT departments have worked to create big solutions which have implemented the lowest common denominator of needs. This works for many instances, but unless you’re working in an iterative manner and have the flexibility to meet the needs users, you’re never going to get a satisfactory user experience.

Its big corporate thinking that leads to the IE6 problems that are still plaguing the civil service today. Building mission critical systems based on a selected vendor’s solution rather than standards. This thinking produces insecure outcomes and approaches which seem too big to fail but really are too large to have any chance of succeeding.

I want a Gov2.0 that is responsive, flexible, light, secure & knowledgable. The GoC employs more IT workers than any other employer in Canada (I believe), but again and again their efforts tend to benefit corporations more than they do the public who they are supposed to serve.

Provocative post Doug, I think you voice the concerns of many, and hopefully those leading the initiative will take head from the lessons of others. There are many things that can go wrong with shared services, but I prefer to think positively and hope that at least some of the change will be good. From what I know, which is not much, the services to be centralized are email, data and network, which by now are pretty much standard – I mean how many data centres and email systems do we need? Hopefully the more specialized things like ERP and Financial systems can be delivered in a cluster model that allows for some choice like we recommended in last year’s Canadian Government Executive magazine article.

I do agree that the procurement system is mostly broken, in fact having experienced it from both sides I think that it is not only inefficient but it actually encourages corruption of the very principles of fairness that it is trying to enforce. To my way of thinking a little more trust and a lot more transparency in decision making would go a long way. Enough said on that.

As for those that may be declared redundant in the new scheme, I really can only say, welcome to the real world. I don’t think it will surprise anyone if I say there is quite a bit of dead wood in the PS and and a sense of entitlement that is alien to those of us in the Private Sector. Fortunately I rarely work with that type of Public Servant, but we all know they are there. I only hope they are the ones to go and not the good ones.

I agree with Mike when he says “I want a Gov2.0 that is responsive, flexible, light, secure & knowledgeable”. Maybe those leading the initiative will take note, if enough of us say the same thing.

Thanks again for putting it out there.

Hey Doug, TL;DR.

Nah, I agree with what you say about the procurement system. Lets look at Fred Chow:

• http://goo.gl/hF6CH

He’s responsible for a lot of IT related goods and services.

I don’t want to point any fingers at Fred, because I’m sure he does his job well. Many procurement managers like him have very broad portfolios, and they need help from the end users to draft their tenders. But are the right end users involved in the procurement strategy? Probably not. And like you said, nobody got fired for choosing Microsoft.

Shared Services Canada presents some opportunities to consolidate a lot of the systems that are pretty generic and uniform across government.

There are many requirements for more specialized systems that they cannot, and should not, address.

Some of these can and should be addressed by smaller businesses with cutting edge software. But then, what happens when IBM buys that small business and transfers those products under the umbrella of a bigger IBM offering?

See where I’m going? Support ceases or gets transferred internally to people who don’t have the expertise to perform the necessary updates. Or the procurement process starts all over again. Or outside contractors are hired to maintain the systems that were provided by the defunct company.

I don’t know. Does any of this make sense?