Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe we did share, with at least the Standing Committee on Social Programs, the consultant’s report that we had on collaborative or shared services, or what we commonly refer to as the back office. In order to move towards these collaborative services, of course it requires a great deal of change. We spent some time with our consultants, asking for recommendations on what the priorities were and what the quick wins were. As a result, the Joint Leadership Council has directed that we move forward with a couple of key areas.

The first one is procurement. We now have a project manager putting together a work plan for moving towards shared procurement. The second area is in information systems and technology. When I responded to the question on electronic medical record, I talked about the move to get all the authorities on the TSC on similar platforms using the same information systems. The third area is in accounts receivable and accounts payable. As basic as that sounds, right now the authorities are using different financial systems. As a first step we are actually moving them towards common manual systems towards accounts receivable and accounts payable to set the stage for moving towards common financial systems.

These are just three of about 65 areas that could eventually be brought together into a virtual back office because this work is being done over and above people’s day-to-day work. We are moving slowly. We are trying to demonstrate some success. Right now we are developing governance structures, templates and work plans for those three areas. We’d like to roll those out over the next year and then, based on that, we will determine the next priorities.