Minister Handley.

Mr. Miltenberger.

Minister Handley.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Voytilla.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The knowledge management strategy is really our informatics strategy that we are updating. We hope to have that done by June.

Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Voytilla.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The $190,000 is to put together a comprehensive government wide, knowledge management strategy, informatics strategy by another term, so we will be able to assess what our ongoing needs are. It will give us a planning framework. It will help us decide what capacity we need in bandwidth. It has multiple purposes, but it will be for the whole government.

Thank you, Mr. Voytilla. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Voytilla.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The last informatics strategy we put together for the government was about five years ago. It was a comprehensive strategy at the time. It guided a lot of our investments over the last few years.

It was through that strategy that we determined that a government wide digital communications network would be necessary for us to take advantage of technology development. That strategy was in place, but because of the speed with which technology changes these days, no strategy has a shelf life that is longer than three to five years. What we have found ourselves with in the last few years was a strategy that no longer met all of the government needs and requirements.

We have determined that it is time, a critical time, to update that strategy and put into place a framework that will help us make decisions and plan for technology for the next number of years.

The current investment that we are making in the strategy of $180,000 is relatively small in comparison to what the government actually invests each year in systems and communication and data processing. In fact, we are probably spending well in excess of $10 million a year on that kind of development. We see this as a significant, but still appropriate, level of investment to come up with a strategy that will help us manage that better.

I think we had been making a lot of progress in the last few years with respect to our systems. I know a tremendous amount of work was done on our systems, upgrading them in the last two or three years as we prepared for the year 2000. We see significant opportunity to reap the benefits of further technology advances over the next two years. That is why this strategy is considered important to the government.

Thank you, Mr. Voytilla. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Voytilla.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member is right. There are many systems that still need to be upgraded and developed. Many of our systems are outdated. Hopefully, through this strategy, we will be able to co-ordinate the investment we make in fixing some of those problems.

I would mention that we have invested, and all of our departments have invested in a lot of systems improvements in the last few years. There has been work done on a new student financial assistance system. There are case management systems that are being developed. We are attempting to co-ordinate all of that development through a co-ordinating committee of deputies, as well as initiatives as bringing in and updating our informatics strategy.

I would be the last one to say that all of our systems are state of the art and meeting all of our needs. Keeping your systems current, getting the information out of them that you need to get and getting information into them is a constant struggle. That is something you have to keep working on.

The key thing is to work on it in a coordinated fashion, so you solve the problem of systems not being able to talk to each other and data being captured inconsistently. Those are certainly our goals. I think the Member raises a good point, which is we are not there yet.

Thank you, Mr. Voytilla. General comments? Mr. Miltenberger.