Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One of the concerns expressed by the Standing Committee on Finance, not only with the Department of Finance, but with other departments, was in the computerization of government.
It seems to us that there is an enormous duplication of effort and as they say, the left hand did not seem to know what the right hand was doing. The committee is pleased to see that the Department of Finance is coordinating the development of a government wide informatics strategy. However, concern was expressed that the Department of Government Services, system and computer services division, seemed uninvolved. Further, that costs seemed to have gone out of control.
When we were going through department by department, there were enormous expenditures in computers in all the departments. It appeared to us that there was not an integrated approach to the thing. Clearly there is a need for a review. For example, the user costs for the government's financial information system has increased dramatically, and departments reported that they are not getting the information that they require to properly manage. There must be some control on the cost increases. There must be an integration of the systems and it must be more effective.