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.