Okay. We will have a short break.

---SHORT RECESS

Alright, committee. We will reconvene Committee of the Whole. We have agreed to start with the Department of Human Resources and Tabled Document 2-17(1). I would like to ask the Minister responsible for Human Resources if he has any witnesses. Mr. Abernethy.

Yes, I do, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Does committee agree that we bring in the witnesses?

Sergeant-at-Arms, please bring in the witnesses.

Thank you. Minister Abernethy, would you introduce your witnesses, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. On my right is Ms. Sheila Bassi-Kellett, the deputy minister of Human Resources; and on my left is Michelle Beard, who is the director of strategy and policy. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. I would like to now open the floor to general comments on the Department of Human Resources. Are there any general comments on the Department of Human Resources? Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to ask the Minister, in the proposed infrastructure for this purpose, the department now is going into an electronic era of doing their business and they are going to be shortly going through phasing out the existing manuals or manual for the government department. Just like us in the Legislative Assembly, we have these iPads now, not so many of these big 4 or 5 inch binders.

I want to ask the Minister just for a very backup to the security. You know, sometimes our satellite system, our electronic system is not as reliable as we hope it would be. You know, there’s always a chance that sometimes things go down and information gets lost or there are organizations or people out there that love to explore systems and that. I just want to ask very quickly if he can give me a brief response to the security of what we’re doing here with the infrastructure that’s being planned for this department to improve the efficiencies with the staff to do their business. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Madam Chair. With respect to the digital aspects of our GNWT human resource systems, we have been moving in that way for some time. We have PeopleSoft, which is our main human resource management system, and we, in the last couple of years, have added some additional modules to that. One of them was eRecruit, which is now used for all staffing actions in the Northwest Territories and has proven to be quite effective.

In this capital plan what we’re proposing is putting in our ePerformance module into PeopleSoft, and it’s kind of the perfect time to do it, because we are updating PeopleSoft in ’12-13 and it fits as sort of

the perfect time to bring in ePerformance as well. We’ll have the staff on site to do the upgrade of the PeopleSoft and they’ll be able to do the ePerformance as well.

ePerformance is kind of an interesting module. Right now all our performance management is done by paper. It’s all tracked on paper and it’s really hard when you’ve got as many departments as we do and as many staff, to ensure that we’re getting the performance appraisals in on a regular basis and tracking them. This ePerformance module will give us that capacity to provide greater statistics, greater monitoring and greater use, which will benefit our employees in the long run.

You also mentioned manuals. We’re not getting rid of manuals. We’re still going to have policies and procedures that we have to follow and utilize in the Government of the Northwest Territories. We may print less copies. We’ll be able to display more of them on-line than we currently do. All of them we’ll be able to put on-line, so we’ll probably get away with a little less paper, which I think is good for the environment, good for the department and good for the people.

With respect to reliablity and data security, I’ll pass that on to Ms. Bassi-Kellett to provide you a little bit of information on the reliability and security that we do employ within the department on our data.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Ms. Bassi-Kellett.

Thank you, Ms. Bassi-Kellett. Is committee ready to go to detail?

Alright, committee. If we would turn to page 2-2. The infrastructure investment summary page. We will defer this page until we have considered the whole department. Does committee agree that we will defer this page?

We’ll turn to page 2-4, Human Resources, activity summary, human resource strategy and policy, infrastructure

investment summary, total infrastructure investment summary, $300,000. Mr. Yakeleya.

Madam Chair, I see the numbers are quite substantially reduced to the actuals in the main estimates in 2011, 2012, 2013. Is this the final asking of this department on this specific initiative? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The previous year’s estimates, I understand, are for the shift scheduling software that we put in previously. That was an item that we worked on in ’11-12. The ’12-13 item of $300,000 is specifically for ePerformance and there will be $300,000 next year as well.

Thank you, Minister, for the explanation. With some of these future expenditures, are the regions also being upgraded in their computer capacity to be in line with the ePerformance or eRecruitment? I think that’s pretty well, but a lot of the communities also do not, and I appreciate the sensitivity. A lot of our communities also of Members do not use their computers or operate on their computers. Sometimes, for some odd reason, they still prefer the good old post a notice on a billboard and read it from there. But sometimes this hasn’t always been the case here. I just want to ask the Minister to ensure my residents in the Sahtu are aware of some of the challenges that they come into. Thank you.

This is part of a corporate IT system. PeopleSoft runs across the entire Government of the Northwest Territories to all communities. All employees enter their time in the Northwest Territories and utilize the system, so wherever the system is available now, ePerformance will be able to be used. As far as increasing capacity, that’s something that we’re always trying to work with our Public Works and Services colleagues to make sure that we have the bandwidth and the IT IS/IM resources we need to continue to run systems of this nature in all communities.