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June 19, 2019

GOVERNMENT SERVICES COMMITTEE

Pursuant to Standing Order 68,

Helen Conway Ottenheimer,

MHA for Harbour Main ,

substitutes for Barry Petten, MHA for Conception Bay South.

Pursuant to Standing Order 68, Siobhan Coady, MHA for St. John's West,

substitutes for Elvis Loveless, MHA for Fortune Bay - Cape La Hune, for part of

the meeting.

Pursuant to Standing Order 68, Ches Crosbie, MHA for Windsor Lake, substitutes

for Loyola O'Driscoll, MHA for Ferryland.

Pursuant to Standing Order 68, Brian Warr, MHA for Baie Verte - Green Bay,

substitutes for Derrick Bragg, MHA for Fogo Island - Cape Freels.

The

Committee met at 12 p.m. in the Assembly Chamber.

CHAIR (Bennett):

We need to nominate a Vice-Chair for the Committee.

Mr.

Parsons.

MR. A. PARSONS:

(Inaudible.)

CHAIR:

Can we get the microphone on for Mr. Parsons in the back on the Opposition side?

MR. A. PARSONS:

I don't care what I want to say either, but I nominate Mr. Wakeham.

CHAIR:

Do we have a seconder to that?

MR. WARR:

Seconded.

CHAIR:

Second by Mr. Warr.

Okay,

all those in favour?

SOME HON. MEMBERS:

Aye.

CHAIR:

I assume you accept, Mr. Wakeham.

Thank

you.

We're

going to, first of all, ask Members of the Committee and their staff to

introduce themselves. Broadcast, can we start down to the far end?

MR. MORGAN:

Ivan Morgan, Researcher, NDP caucus.

MR. LANE:

Paul Lane, MHA, Mount Pearl - Southlands. Not a Member of the Committee, but

certainly with the leave of the Committee, I may want to ask a couple of

questions.

MS. DRODGE:

Megan Drodge, Researcher with the Official Opposition caucus.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Tony Wakeham, MHA, Stephenville - Port au Port.

MR. A. PARSONS:

Andrew Parsons, MHA, Burgeo - La Poile.

MS. STOODLEY:

Sarah Stoodley, MHA, Mount Scio.

MR. WARR:

Brian Warr, MHA, Baie Verte - Green Bay.

CHAIR:

Now I'll ask Minister Osborne and his staff, please.

MR. OSBORNE:

Tom Osborne, Minister of Finance, President of Treasury Board.

I'll

ask our officials here, as well, to introduce themselves.

CHAIR:

Thank you.

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Dave Heffernan, Deputy Minister and Chief Information Officer for Office of the

CIO.

MR. HARDING:

Craig Harding, Executive Director of Corporate Services and Projects for OCIO.

MR. MOULAND:

Randy Mouland, Executive Director of Operations and Security, OCIO.

MR. GELLATELY:

Bruce Gellately, Director of Corporate Services, OCIO.

MS. KENDALL:

Cathy Kendall, Director of Application and Information Management Services for

the OCIO.

MS. WILKINS:

Susan Wilkins, Digital Government Lead with the OCIO.

MS. TRICKETT:

Wanda Trickett, Departmental Controller.

MR. BUDGELL:

Marc Budgell, Director of Communications, OCIO.

MS. ELLIOTT:

Susan Elliott, Executive Assistant to Mr. Osborne.

CHAIR:

Thank you.

With

the approval of the Committee, we'll give Mr. Lane an opportunity to ask

questions after both parties have finished.

All

those in favour?

SOME HON. MEMBERS:

Aye.

CHAIR:

Opposed?

Okay,

Mr. Lane.

We're

going to start off with item 4.1.01 to 4.1.05 inclusive.

We'll

start off with you, Mr. Wakeham.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Thank you.

I have

general questions first. The first one is: Can you give us an overview of which

projects you've worked on in the last 12 months and the status and budget of

each?

MR. HARDING:

That list is a comprehensive

list, between 30 and 40 projects. I don't have that list here directly, but I

certainly can provide it with the list of the projects and statuses of each.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay, so you will provide it to us.

MR. HARDING:

We'll provide it, yes.

MR. WAKEHAM:

I'd appreciate that, thanks.

Can you

give an update on the Digital By Design project?

MR. HARDING:

I think I'd defer that to

Susan Wilkins as digital lead.

MS. WILKINS:

We are in the year two of a

five-year Digital By Design plan. We just released our first phase in March and

that was called MyGovNL. All the details of the release are on The Way Forward

website. If you'd like more, I can elaborate, but all the details are there on

the website.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay.

And can

you give an update on LaMPSS?

MR. HARDING:

Right now it's more of a

maintenance project as opposed to a full-fledged implementation project, it's a

modification to some existing application and some functionality, but I can

provide a further detailed status if you prefer.

MR. WAKEHAM:

I'd appreciate that, thank you.

Can

you, please, give an update on the condition of critical hardware that

government has? Does it require upgrades? Is it in good condition?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

I would say that it's

ongoing. We always have a critical need for investing in our infrastructure and

so, at any one point in time, we always have requirements for upgrading our

hardware and we have a regular basis where we go about doing that.

MR. WAKEHAM:

There was talk a number of years ago where we had talked about potentially

moving to cloud technology. Has that moved anywhere in terms of where we might

go in the future? Has anything been done with that?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

We are always looking at

cloud services. I would say that we are not going holistically into cloud; we

are tepidly reviewing where we might go and use cloud. Eventually, vendors are

going to force us to use cloud-based services so we have to be looking at it.

We look

at the type of information that systems contain and we use that as a basis for

whether we even consider cloud. So we sort of followed the federal government's

guidelines around data classification and how you classify your data and if it's

sensitive and that sort of thing, and then we have guidelines around whether you

would use that type of information in the cloud.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Right. I think the

discussion at the time was around the shared service model which we would use

for all of government, not just in the health system, but rather a much larger

approach to a government service centre type of thing. Thank you.

How

does government decide when to have an outside agency build a solution or a

project, versus doing it in-house in OCIO? What kind of criteria do you use?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

I'd say it depends. The majority of our project is cyclical, so we can't really

staff up to meet that demand, so we have a high amount, I guess – or the

majority of our projects are handled by outside. So we bring in contractors as

we need, depending on the demand from the departments around the types of

projects.

So it

depends. If we have enough resources internally we'll do some of those, but if

they're larger projects we'll typically bring in outside help to help us.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Thank you.

What

does OCIO do with the old laptops, BlackBerries and computers that are upgraded?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

I believe they're recycled and I believe some of them go to computers for

schools, but I'd ask my executive director, Randy Mouland, to speak to the

specifics.

MR. MOULAND:

We leverage the provincial electronic waste program, wherever practical, to

reuse equipment. Sometimes there's trade-in value that may go back to a vendor,

depending on the nature and the information that's stored on it. And for the

most part, cellphones and BlackBerries are a departmental responsibility, so

each department would be managing those. Although we do arrange for secure

shredding of devices that might be sensitive – an MHA had a device that might

contain sensitive information, we typically arrange for shredding.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay.

Has

there been any discussion with Service NL and Justice about introducing new

motor registration software so that licence plates can be registered to a

driver, i.e., follow the driver instead of the car?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Yes, I think we're in ongoing discussions with both Justice and Service

Newfoundland and Labrador about that. No final decisions have been made on what

that would entail from our perspective. From OCIO's perspective, those systems

are fairly stable as they are, but we understand that they're eventually going

to need to be replaced. They are our older legacy systems, so we're working on

ways to figure out how we do that.

MR. WAKEHAM:

So you wouldn't have an estimate of what this would cost and a timeline to

implement it at this point?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

I think there were some early estimates a number of years ago, but they would

have to be revalidated again. We don't have an estimate today on what that would

cost.

MR. WAKEHAM:

It is something though

you're continuing to look forward to?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Yes, we did have some work, I believe, identified for this year to do some of

that analysis.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Has there been any progress

made on the consolidation of data centres with the ABCs? I know it was a hot

topic in Health a number of years ago.

MR. HEFFERNAN:

I believe there's work happening at the Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for

Health Information around consolidating some of the health technology into

NLCHI. We're involved in some of the discussions around potential for shared

services and IT aspects of that down the road, but nothing concrete about

bringing that into –

MR. WAKEHAM:

Yes, if I remember, I recall

I think there was some talk about actually having OCIO as having a data centre

as part of that backup plan?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Yes, that's correct.

The

OCIO has a data centre for government. We have capacity in that data centre to

be able to provide additional services and so we would be looking at that from

that perspective.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay and that was my next

MR. HEFFERNAN:

I'd have to ask Mr. Mouland to answer the specifics on backup procedures.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay.

MR. MOULAND:

Yeah, we have multiple layers of backup; we have multiple locations in which

data is backed up. There are some backups that happen predominantly inside the

data centre itself, but then we have a separate off-site location in the

Confederation Building complex where there's data stored and then there's a

third location approximately 10 kilometres away where we have an enterprise tape

system where a third copy is stored on tape.

MR. WAKEHAM:

My next question is: What

are your plans to address some of the aging systems, like the MCP system for

example?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

As part of our typical project approach and working with departments through our

client services, we're always looking at the applications that we have across

government and where they are in their life cycles, so which ones are getting

older, which ones are not meeting the functionality. We would be looking at all

of our systems with that same lens as how are they doing meeting the

functionality of the program area, how are they doing in terms of the type of

technology it is and whether we can support it, are we having continuing issues

and that sort of thing.

MCP is

another one of those legacy mainframe systems that's actually fairly stable

compared to the other systems you may have in government. So even though they're

older, they're very stable. I think the challenge you have then is: Are they

meeting the need down the road? It's the same process we go through with every

department, is assessing their needs and then figuring out how do we budget for

it, set up the priorities and that sort of thing.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Right.

Have

there been any situations where backup had to be restored in the last 12 months?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

I'd defer that to Mr. Mouland.

MR. MOULAND:

Yes.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Can you provide a little

more?

MR. MOULAND:

We would restore data. I mean, sometimes a user will have issues with a file. We

do individual file restores. Sometimes we may have system issues and have to go

back to a previous restore from the night before or even the night before that.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Right.

MR. MOULAND:

There are any number of instances. Data restores, I would suggest, are almost a

daily occurrence, but not necessarily of a concern.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Right, I was more –

MR. MOULAND:

We do plenty of restores all the time for a bunch of different reasons.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Right, I was more interested

in if there were any major issues that you might have had in the last 12 months.

MR. MOULAND:

No, nothing that causes concern.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay.

I'll

move into 4.1.01, Corporate Services and Projects. In the Salaries section,

fiscal '18-'19 Salaries went over budget by $329,000, yet in '19-'20 the budget

is being decreased. Can the minister explain the variances?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

The variance in 2018-'19 is a result of unexpected retirements. We had a

$329,000 deficit there as a result of unexpected retirements and then some

salary continuance costs for staff that left the OCIO.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay, so more to do with

severance and paid leave payouts and those types of things.

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Exactly.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay.

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Then for 2019-'20, part of our zero-based budget identified that we needed

$100,000 less than we anticipated and there was an attrition reduction of

$110,600.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay, thank you.

On the

supply side, in '18-'19 Supplies went over budget by $209,000. In '19'-20 there

was an increase in the Supplies budget to $709,000. Can you explain the need

that is driving this budget?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

I think it's important to provide some context here around Supplies for OCIO

versus Supplies for the other departments and agencies that you've reviewed.

Supplies for us is mainly made up on software purchases. It's not pens, pencils,

office paper, that sort of thing; it's always about the purchase of software.

In the

Corporate Services and Projects area, it's either software for the operations of

Corporate Services of OCIO or software related to projects that are ongoing. Due

to the nature of projects and where they are and delays in projects and that

sort of thing, sometimes that budget area will fluctuate; sometimes projects are

delayed, sometimes projects advance sooner. Sometimes when you go to RFP for

software related to projects, you end up having to buy more software than you

might have thought or the licensing cost may be higher. That's typically the

reason for the fluctuation and the variances in supplies.

MR. WAKEHAM:

If I look at this particular one –

CHAIR:

Your time is expired, Mr.

Wakeham.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay, sorry about that.

CHAIR:

Ms. Coffin.

MS. COFFIN:

Thank you very much.

CHAIR:

We'll get back to you.

MS. COFFIN:

Let's start off with a quick question – perhaps I should say thank you for

taking the time. We've had a little bit of a switchover of people here this time

now, haven't we? Thank you for the time that you're taking here today and the

time you put into preparing all of this. This is greatly appreciated. We

appreciate your knowledge and dedication.

Let's

go with Application and Information Management Services, so 4.1.02. Actually,

this is probably going to be a more overarching question. Can you tell me how

your attrition targets – if they've been achieved and how they've been achieved

in here? I do see changes to salary and it looks like we have a little bit of

stuff moving around here. Perhaps you can talk to me about Salaries and how

that's working with the attrition plan, please?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

For Salaries in '18-'19 we had a deficit there due to unplanned severance for

employees who retired, as well as some salary continuance costs and benefits for

staff who left. That's typically not budgeted.

Then,

in terms of our attrition targets, you'll see in 2019-'20 the Salaries reflect

an attrition reduction of $118,300. I defer to my Corporate Services director,

Mr. Gellately, to confirm this, but I'm pretty certain that we've achieved our

attrition targets.

MS. COFFIN:

That's good to hear. Congratulations on that.

As we

move down to Professional Services, I noticed that more was budgeted in '18-'19

than was actually spent and then we have a smaller amount spent in Professional

Services. Can you explain that variation, please?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Yes. In 2018-2019 the Professional Services associated with our application

branch; there was one-time funding identified of $400,000 for transition of the

pension corporation, but we didn't end up needing to use that. As a result, the

amount spent was actually lower by – I think it was a net of $370,000. That

project ended up being done in our Corporate Services and Projects Branch

instead and so we were able to do it from within.

MS. COFFIN:

What were you doing with the pension corporation? Are you moving the

administration of that into Provident10?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Yes.

MS. COFFIN:

Okay, interesting. The payroll rests with Human Resource Secretariat, right?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Yes.

MS. COFFIN:

So you're just managing the ins and outs of it all and doing that background

computer.

MR. HEFFERNAN:

We're managing the

transition, yes.

MS. COFFIN:

Okay, thank you.

I'm

just getting my head around all of the pieces, right?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Sure.

MS. COFFIN:

OCIO is not something that

I've had a huge amount of experience with.

Let's

talk about revenues. You had a big projected revenue in '18-'19 but that did not

manifest. It looks to be that in '19-'20 about the same amount as the revised in

'18-'19 is there. Is that some sort of guaranteed stream of income and you were

expecting something substantial coming in, in '18-'19?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

That's directly attributable

to the pension transition. As a result of the original estimate of needing

$400,000 in costs to transition pensions, there was an offsetting revenue target

as well to offset that. But because we didn't need to incur –

MS. COFFIN:

Money.

MR. HEFFERNAN:

– the costs, we didn't need

to incur the revenue to offset that.

MS. COFFIN:

Do you know if Provident10

is self-financing in that the systems and the support staff. Are they being

funded directly out of Provident10? This may not be a question for you; it may

be perhaps for the minister directly.

MR. HEFFERNAN:

I think that's a question

for Provident10.

MS. COFFIN:

All right, thank you. I'm

just curious along the way.

Property, Furnishings and Equipment; did someone get some really nice digs in

4.1.03?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

No. Property, Furnishings

and Equipment for us is one of those other areas that's a little bit different

for OCIO. Typically under P, F and E you would find hardware, so IT hardware for

network equipment, for storage, for just running our wide-area network across

government. That's where you would see those typical costs show up.

In this

particular case there was some critical computer equipment that had to be

replaced that we never budgeted for initially. So that's why you would see that

little bump in '18-'19.

MS. COFFIN:

Do you guys all have

standing desks?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

No.

MS. COFFIN:

That's too bad. Those are

healthier. Sitting is the new smoking, right?

Okay,

let's see. What else do I have here?

Revenue, again, under Operations and Security, dropped off a little bit. What is

the revenue for Operations and Security? Do you charge for anything in

particular there?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

There was a drop-off here

because in the past we used to host the mainframe system and storage that Bell

Canada was supporting for us. It was actually housed in our data centre. They've

since moved that to Dorval, Quebec, and so there was a small revenue that we

would get from that.

We no

longer get that because they're maintaining it themselves in Dorval. Then we get

some revenue from agencies like the Municipal Assessment Agency, Legal Aid and

the RNC for some of our security tokens they're called, that allowed them to

connect into our systems.

MS. COFFIN:

Okay, great.

MR. HEFFERNAN:

So there was a reduced need for that.

MS. COFFIN:

It's too bad we lost that stream of revenue. That's unfortunate. Interprovincial

trade, right, and all. I see Salaries jumped in Corporate Services and Projects.

Now, that's Salaries in Capital. How does that correlate? It's almost doubled

there?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

As part of our zero-based we identified that for the Digital Government program,

the salaries that were associated with that had to be capitalized. Basically,

it's offset from our Professional Services budget and we needed an increase in

the salaries for the Digital Government program.

MS. COFFIN:

Right. Okay, excellent. Let's see here, Professional Services kind of captures

that as well. I noticed that's an exceptionally large number that's dropped off

by almost $800,000 from the '18-'19 Estimates to this year's Estimate. You're

expecting to use that a little or were those Salaries that we found in the line

above offsetting some of the Professional Services there?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Yes, that's correct. The Salaries above are offsets from there and there was

removal of a one-time funding of $100,000 for Digital Government that was no

longer necessary.

MS. COFFIN:

Very good.

Speaking of the Digital Government, what do I see here? Can we have an update on

the Digital by Design project? Apparently, there was $2 million committed for

six projects in 2018. How are they making out?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

I believe we answered that question when we first got started here.

MS. COFFIN:

I was late coming in, can you just very quickly …?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Digital by Design is proceeding. Several initiatives were identified earlier

this year. There was a public announcement around the rollout MyGovNL, which was

sort of the portal where citizens can now come and start – if you log into your

bank you can access a number of services. That's the goal and intent of MyGovNL.

That

was just rolled out in March. That now includes two of the services that were

identified for this year: vehicle and licence renewal registrations. If you log

into that portal, that's where you can do those now. The other services, once we

get final decisions on those services, they'll roll out and be included as a

part of that as well.

MS. COFFIN:

Lovely. I've actually gotten emails on that already. Way to go, it is working.

Something that is a little closer to my heart is the Community Accounts. Do you

manage that website? I know that's populated by the Economic and Statistics

Branch and the folks over in the Newfoundland Stats Agency, but do you manage

that?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

If it's part of the websites that we set up and maintained, we would just

maintain the infrastructure behind them. The departments would maintain the

content on those websites.

MS. COFFIN:

I understand they do the

content and they do a fabulous job of the content, but it's a bit of a clunky

interface; the drop-down menus are a little bit difficult. I know there's a

tremendous amount of data stored in there, but sometimes it tends to be a bit

sluggish and it's not quite user-friendly. I'm just wondering if you have any

involvement with that, if there's, potentially, a nicer way to use it? No?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

No, I don't think we have.

MS. COFFIN:

Okay, I'm just trying. Data

is a good thing, right?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

It may be a good project for digital to look at user design and user experience.

MS. COFFIN:

All right, thank you.

Go back

to the pension very quickly. That work has been completed? We did speak about

the movement to Provident10, so that is done, yes?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

We're actively involved in the transition process right now, so it is not yet

complete.

MS. COFFIN:

Soon, she says, with a big

question mark at the end?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

I don't have an answer. I'd have to defer it to my ED of Corporate Services and

Projects, Craig Harding.

MS. COFFIN:

All right, I can certainly

fill in with them. I don't know what I can fit in, in five seconds, so thanks.

CHAIR:

Mr. Wakeham, any further

questions?

MR. WAKEHAM:

Yes, a couple of more

questions.

wanted to go back for a second to an opportunity, and I wonder if OCIO was still

involved with it. Back in '16-'17 there was a lot of movement afoot about trying

to consolidate and streamline the information systems in this province. We have

a very small population. Yes, we have a large geography but, at the end of the

day, every single regional health authority had its own operating system for

back of office, Memorial University has it and government has its own payroll

system, for example.

There

was a lot of discussion around, at that time, about how we would try to

consolidate all of these back-of-office functions and information systems, so

essentially have one for the entire province. OCIO were a critical part of that

discussion. I'm wondering: Are those discussions still ongoing?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Yes, they are. It's an ongoing process that we go through. As part of our annual

planning and our regular planning process, we'd look at the number of

applications we have, we would try and identify if there's duplication or

opportunities across government to consolidate applications. It's an ongoing

process that we go through.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Yes, I know the minister has

referenced it on a couple of occasions, the opportunities in the back-of-office

functions in this province of combining everyone who is on some kind of

government payroll or pay cheque or purchasing, there is an awful lot of

opportunity there to certainly be more efficient and how we do it.

Thank

you for that.

Back to

4.1.01, briefly. Again, I was talking about the Supplies and you were talking

about the projects. I was wondering which projects are driving the $709,000

cost.

MR. HEFFERNAN:

As my executive director

mentioned when he spoke earlier, there are typically anywhere from 30 to 40

active projects underway at any one point in time. I don't have the list here

with me that I can tell you exactly what's identified for '19-'20.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Can we get the list?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

As part of the commitment

made earlier, the list will be provided.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay. Thank you so much.

Under

Professional Services, again, in the same heading, 4.1.01. In '18-'19, there was

savings of $ 612,000. In '19-'20, we decreased the budget by $889,000. I was

wondering if you can explain.

MR. HEFFERNAN:

In '18-'19, there was less

money needed just due to the nature of projects. There were a number of large

projects that didn't get off the ground as quickly as initially anticipated.

That's sort of the project world, if you will, there are always reasons for

delays, whether it's in getting departments ready, whether it's in getting

procurements on the street, delays in procurement, delays in the implementation,

so there are always reasons for those projects to be delayed. So, the result

there was a number of projects were delayed and didn't get as far long as

initially anticipated in '18-'19.

As for

'19-'20, there was a $1.4 million one-time funding that was no longer there, so

there was a drop in funding of $1.4 million for the Digital Government program

there. There was $638,000 as part of our zero-based review we didn't think we

are going to need, just based on the projects that were going to happen this

year.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay. Thank you.

'18-'19, Purchased Services went over budget by $246,000. Again, can you explain

why that happened?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

That was a result of an

increase – again, Purchased Services here is related to a computer service that

we purchased from Bell Canada for our mainframe service and there was an

increase in cost to that service, which are typically born in our Operations and

Security Branch; however, the increase wasn't able to be all absorbed there and

so there was an ability here in our Purchased Services to absorb some of that

cost here to the software service that we purchased from Bell for our mainframe

support.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Under Property, Furnishings and Equipment, again, this line item went over

budget by $159,000. I was wondering how you determined the budget for '19-'20 of

$221,000?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Again, PFE here, Property, Furnishings and Equipment is typically for hardware

related to projects that we do. So, again, it'll fluctuate, depending on the

projects, where they are in our timing if we need to purchase the equipment in

the current fiscal year. If a project is too late then you can't purchase it in

that year. So this is typically a result of the nature of the projects and where

they are in their time.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay, thank you.

4.1.03,

in the Salaries section, in '18-'19, there was a salary savings of $353,000. I

wonder can you explain that variance.

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Yes, again, we had some planned vacancies there because we knew we had some

pressures in other areas of the OCIO, and there was actually some offsetting

increased costs there as well from retirements and severance. So, at the net was

a $353,000 lower cost.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay.

Under

the Supplies section, a significant expenditure. Can you outline what type of

supplies that would be?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Yes, again, this is the real big one that stands out when you look at Supplies,

but, again, it's not pencils and papers; it's software.

OCIO is

a shared service for all governments so this is not OCIO's software per se, this

is software that OCIO operates on behalf of all departments. It will include

things like our Microsoft Office desktop software that we support on 10,000

computers. It'll include things like the support software agreements for

Microsoft servers and for Microsoft Exchange and the email system that we run.

So,

it's the large corporate software subscriptions and licensing that we incur for

all departments and some very specific ones for certain departments as well.

There are over 150 different types of software that make up that number.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Is there any advantages of scale when it comes to purchasing this software from

large companies like that? For example, I'm thinking you were purchasing on

behalf of all government departments. What about the ABCs, for example, who

probably purchased this very same software, I'm not sure if there's actually any

economies of scale to be had.

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Yes, there are economies to be had and that's one of the things that we will be

looking at as part of shared services. We think over time that's where you can

find some of the economies, through the consolidation of those agreements. It

takes time, but you can.

MR. WAKEHAM:

I'm glad to see that's continuing to move forward.

Let's

move down to 4.1.04. Again, the Salaries, there's a significant increase in that

particular category from $490,000 to $1,000,000.

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Yes, and I believe I

mentioned that one earlier. This is a result of – we knew that the Digital

Government program needed additional salaries. Instead of hiring external

contractors, we used internal staff, and so we have to capitalize those

salaries. So that's where you see the increase there. We needed less in

Professional Services but more in internal staff.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay. Thank you.

On the

Supplies area there, there was only $260,000 spent out of $1.3 million. Again,

can you explain that variance?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Yes, again, it gets to the

nature of the variability of projects. So, typically, Supplies here is for

software that you need on projects, and due to the large number of projects that

were either late getting started or didn't need what we originally estimated for

software, we've seen a reduction there, but we've seen an offsetting increase in

the amount of hardware that we needed for some of the projects. So, you'll sort

of see lower Supplies but increased PFE as a result.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay.

Lastly,

under Property, Furnishings and Equipment, in '18-'19, this line item went over

by $1.2 million, and for '19-'20, there is a planned increase. Can you explain

the variance there?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Yes, in '18-'19, there were

a couple of critical pieces of hardware that we needed to purchase, and that's

why you see the bump there, that was part of our server upgrade program. There

were two critical pieces of server hardware that run a lot of our applications

that we had to upgrade. So, that's why it was a significant there.

Then,

in '19-'20, as part of the projects that we have underway as part of our

zero-based budgeting, we're looking at the projects that are coming. We

identified and anticipated increasing in the amount of hardware with an

offsetting lower amount on the software.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Was that an unexpected

purchase, as it hadn't been budgeted in the budget? It's something that came up

that you had to …

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Yes.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay. Thank you.

Thank

you, Mr. Chair.

CHAIR:

Ms. Coffin, you got any

further questions?

MS. COFFIN:

No, I'm good. Thank you.

CHAIR:

Mr. Lane?

MR. LANE:

Yeah.

CHAIR:

I'll give you a few minutes.

MR. LANE:

Thank you.

Pretty

much everything in the line by line has been covered, but I had a couple of

questions, so …

On the

that apply to ABCs? I'm thinking Newfoundland and Labrador Housing and those

areas, as well.

MR. HEFFERNAN:

I believe the intent is core

government, right now, but that's not to say that it can't extend further later.

MR. LANE:

Okay, so not at the moment.

How

the ABCs, or is there a reason why the ABCs can't be doing the same thing now

with their people that you're already doing?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

There's no reason why they couldn't be doing that today. I suspect some of them

are already doing that themselves in what they do, just not collectively across

the ABCs. I would say digital had a five-year road map, but it will be an

ongoing thing forever. Changing a government to be more digital is not a

once-and-done thing, so our plan right now involves a five-year road map, but we

suspect that it will become day-to-day business as we move forward.

MR. LANE:

Okay, thank you.

I guess

that ties into what my colleague, Mr. Wakeham, has said. I absolutely support

the idea of bringing everything together. I can't see why there wouldn't be one

sort of gigantic data centre, IT centre if you will, for the whole province, as

opposed to having everybody doing their own thing. From what I think you

answered in response to Mr. Wakeham, there is a plan at some point in time

getting to that. Is that correct?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

Yes, that's correct. That's a part of shared services and leveraging the

existing assets that we have, especially our big data centre that we have across

the way here.

MR. LANE:

Okay, that's good.

By the

same token, without physically moving people and so on, again, the question

about the software is there any reason why that couldn't be done now? If there's

certain software that you're using and there's software that the health care

authorities are using and the agencies, boards and commissions, why couldn't,

I'm going to say the IT guys, for lack of a better term, all get together, have

a conference call, and say: Yes, b'ys, this year instead of a thousand copies of

this, we're going to order 2,000 copies and just do it and be done. It may not

be that simple but you know what I'm saying.

MR. HEFFERNAN:

I wish it were that simple. It sounds that simple on the surface; the challenge

is when you're dealing with vendors like Microsoft and Oracle and all those

larger vendors. They look at the entity they're dealing with. They would look at

Newfoundland and Labrador Liquor commission or Newfoundland and Labrador Centre

for Health Information and say: You are a completely separate entity and you

cannot use the licences that OCIO owns. While it sounds easy enough, you have to

get to a place where you have a common entity that you can purchase for.

MR. LANE:

Okay.

final question – and I believe my colleague, Ms. Coffin, sort of alluded to it

when she talked about the sit-stand desks and so on – obviously, the people in

OCIO spend a lot of time, I would imagine, in front of a computer screen. I'm

just wondering what your stats are when it comes to workers' compensation claims

with neck, shoulder, carpal tunnel and those types of injuries, and if you have,

I guess, through occupational health and safety, a good ergonomics plan in

place?

MR. HEFFERNAN:

I would say to the latter part of that question, yes, we have a good focus on

occupational health and safety in the organization. We encourage people to get

up and move around, we have lots of activities all the time to do that. Not

everybody has stand-up desks; as much as we would love to, it's pretty expensive

to have stand-up desks. Since my time here I think I've seen one occupational

health and safety incident that was not related to that, it was more related to

the slip and fall type things.

MR. LANE:

Okay.

All

right, that's good to know. I highly recommend checking out Genoa Design. They

have it all down pat. I was down there for their grand opening. The sit-stand

desk, the lighting, even the colours on the wall and everything, I mean it's

just they have it down pat.

CHAIR:

I think Mr. Wakeham has one

more question.

MR. LANE:

That's it. We're done.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Yes, I have.

You

mention a lot of your budget seems to be based on project work, when it will

start or when it will finish and any delays and the variable nature of those

projects. I'm wondering if you could give us an overview of two or three of the

biggest ongoing projects that you have, what the status is and where they're to

or what I might expect.

MR. HEFFERNAN:

I'd say one of the bigger ones is our Digital Government program; that's a

pretty significant project and lots of potential benefit and efficiencies that

can be gained from that. I would have to defer to my executive director of

Corporate Services and Projects to speak to specifics on some of the other

larger projects that are underway right now.

MR. HARDING:

Some of them are direct project related and some are program related; for

example, we have an AMANDA program, which basically is a permits and licensing

solution that we're rolling out across multiple departments. There's a program

to do that for electrical permits and mobile inspections, those types of things.

It's a fairly significant project that's rolling out throughout. It's a

couple-of-year project.

Also

one for the Department of Education for PowerSchool, getting their new system –

it is a cloud solution –up and running and getting ready for September of this

year. They're probably two of our biggest projects that are on

schedule right

now.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay, thank you.

CHAIR:

Any further questions on

4.1.01 to 4.1.05?

There

are none.

Shall

4.1.01 to 4.1.05 inclusive carry?

All

those in favour?

SOME HON. MEMBERS:

Aye.

CHAIR:

Opposed?

Carried.

motion, subheads 4.1.01 through 4.1.05 carried.

CHAIR:

Okay, that concludes it. I

thank the staff and Minister Osborne.

Now,

we'll do a quick switchover again and we'll get into Human Resource Secretariat.

Recess

CHAIR:

I will ask Minister Osborne

to introduce his staff, please.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

Hi, Tom

Osborne, Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.

I'll

ask our staff to introduce themselves.

MR. SIMMONS:

Robert Simmons, Deputy Minister.

MS. TRICKETT:

Wanda Trickett, Departmental Controller.

MS. FOLLETT:

Tina Follett, Assistant Deputy Minister, Human Resources operations and

governance.

MS. LANE:

Elizabeth Lane, Assistant Deputy Minister, HR Client Support and Consulting

Services.

MR. BUDGELL:

Marc Budgell, Director of Communications, HRS.

MS. ELLIOTT:

Susan Elliott, Executive Assistant to Minister Osborne.

CHAIR:

Okay, we're going to deal with items 3.1.01 to 3.1.12 inclusive.

I just

ask Committee Members, when they're asking questions, if you're dealing with a

particular clause item, just identify which line item you're dealing with.

Ms.

Coffin, why don't you start off?

MS. COFFIN:

Sure, please. Let's start with some line-by-line stuff.

Executive Support, Professional Services was almost $50,000. What was that for?

MR. SIMMONS:

It was cost associated with a recruitment activity for the deputy minister

position.

MS. COFFIN:

I'm sorry?

MR. SIMMONS:

Cost associated with an external recruitment firm; recruitment for the deputy

minister position.

MS. COFFIN:

Is this normal that you use external hiring firms when we have a Human Resource

Secretariat, an Independent Appointments Commission and the Public Service

Commission?

MR. SIMMONS:

I wouldn't say it's abnormal, but it doesn't happen frequently.

MS. COFFIN:

Okay, $50,000 is an awful lot of money for a recruitment firm.

Professional Services, Collective Bargaining, so 3.1.02, I notice that there was

an underspend of about $50,000 from budget to revised, and that number bumped

back up again. You under spent for some particular reason, what was that?

MR. SIMMONS:

If you look at the Professional Services and the Purchased Services –

MS. COFFIN:

Yes.

MR. SIMMONS:

– arbitration costs come down during a round of negotiations, typically, and

printing costs go up for collective agreement renewals, so those are just

offset. We have a –

MS. COFFIN:

Okay, but budget revised – okay, because collective bargaining concluded halfway

through the year, which is why you didn't need the $143,000, but then printing

came in at what it should be, and then there's no printing, so you just used the

amount that you needed there.

MR. SIMMONS:

Correct.

MS. COFFIN:

Are we expecting more collective bargaining in '19-'20?

MR. SIMMONS:

'19-'20, yes. The cycle would actually start in again.

MS. COFFIN:

Who's up for negotiations now in this fiscal?

MR. SIMMONS:

For '19-'20?

MS. COFFIN:

Yes.

MR. SIMMONS:

RNC – well, there are still, I think, six collective agreements outstanding for

MS. COFFIN:

Still outstanding. How long have they been outstanding?

MR. SIMMONS:

They vary, but they would be in that same cycle of the large group of 35 where

the majority have recently been concluded.

MS. COFFIN:

Can we have a list of the outstanding collective bargaining that – I know that

Memorial has a number that they were waiting for, the NAPE and CUPE here in

government, and that then trickled down and then there were a number of other

issues at the university, why some of those had gotten delayed, but I was under

the impression that a great many others had been resolved.

Do you

have a list of what is outstanding and for how long?

MR. SIMMONS:

We can, yeah.

MS. COFFIN:

Yeah, that would be

wonderful. Thank you very much.

So, by

the time we get through some of those, are we anticipating the return to

bargaining with our main bargaining group, NAPE, as well as CUPE, over the next

fiscal?

When

does their term finish?

MR. SIMMONS:

A large majority of the

NAPE, CUPE agreements would expire March 31, 2020.

MS. COFFIN:

Okay, so we're going to move

into that by April 2020?

MR. SIMMONS:

Yeah, there's a –

MS. COFFIN:

So we'll see that show up in

the next fiscal.

Are you

anticipating finishing up the outstanding ones over this fiscal?

MR. SIMMONS:

Yes.

MS. COFFIN:

That's nice to hear.

Let's

see, Purchased Services are good. Classification and Organizational Design, I

notice that there was an underspend from budget to revised and a drop down.

What

does that capture?

MR. SIMMONS:

Sorry, where was that one

again?

MS. COFFIN:

3.1.04, Salaries?

MR. SIMMONS:

For the revised, there was a

period of time where there were some vacancies. If you carry this story across,

we've actually transferred some funds to the Public Service Commission to fund

the adjudicator position that's responsible for the JES appeals. So there was a

bit of just movement of money to fund that.

MS. COFFIN:

JES?

MR. SIMMONS:

Job Evaluation System.

MS. COFFIN:

Right, sorry, yeah. I'm just

getting back to government and I need a refresher on my acronyms, right?

Thank

you.

I'm

sorry, can our Chair give me the numbers again? Where are we concluding?

CHAIR:

We're doing all of 3.1.

MS. COFFIN:

All of 3.1?

CHAIR:

Yes.

MS. COFFIN:

Fun times. Okay, here we go.

Let's

continue with Classification and Organizational Design. In 2018, you noted plans

to clear the backlog of job evaluation appeals.

How has

that been going? Has the backlog been cleared?

MR. SIMMONS:

I'm sorry, where –

MS. COFFIN:

That's just a general

question under Classification and Organizational Design.

In the

last year's Estimates, it was noted that there was plans to clear the backlog of

evaluation appeals. Have they been cleared?

MR. SIMMONS:

Not cleared entirely, but we

have put additional resources and staff on that throughout this year, and we do

have a plan to continue that in an even more earnest way now in the current

year.

MS. COFFIN:

Okay, that's great.

How

many are still outstanding?

MR. SIMMONS:

I'd have to confirm the

exact number, but in JES it would be in that 2,500 range.

MS. COFFIN:

How many staff are required

to do that?

MR. SIMMONS:

Depends on how fast we can

get through them I guess.

MS. COFFIN:

What's the normal time from

when an appeal goes in to it actually being resolved, on average? I know these

things vary based on the complexity of it all and the uniqueness of the

situation.

MR. SIMMONS:

The time can vary. I think the issue right now, it's a bit of an abnormal period

where there was an initial large influx with the implementation of the system.

So, it's really trying to get through that backlog, and that was what created

the issue over the last couple of years.

MS. COFFIN:

Yeah.

MR. SIMMONS:

That's why things are kind

of building up behind. So, the plan is to kind of remove those roadblocks now

and get them cleared out.

MS. COFFIN:

Okay. Lovely.

Do you

have plans to develop a new appeal mechanism? If yes, what's the status of that?

MR. SIMMONS:

So, for the Job Evaluation

System, JES, the appeal mechanism is in place. There's an adjudicator hired.

That's that transfer of funds over to the Public Service Commission.

MS. COFFIN:

Okay.

MR. SIMMONS:

So, that's up and running.

For Hay, the management classification –

MS. COFFIN:

Yes.

MR. SIMMONS:

– that's always been up and running. That's also actually run through a

partnership with the Public Service Commission.

MS. COFFIN:

Right.

Can you

tell me what caused that big backlog? What happened for 2,500 people to just –

was there an initiative overall where everyone said, hey, there's an evaluation

process or an appeal process that's happening. Was there an event that triggered

a mass submission of appeals?

MR. SIMMONS:

It's going back a ways. If

you're looking at anything specific, I can probably get some more info, but my

understanding is that it's in that implementation phase. So, when it first went

in there would be a number of folks who, on that new rating, would've wanted

those ratings reviewed.

MS. COFFIN:

Okay.

MR. SIMMONS:

So, it's that initial blitz

of a large number of people with all new ratings.

MS. COFFIN:

Okay. Interesting. I was

just kind of wondering if there was a triggering event for that, because this

was a tremendous amount of work. It's obviously been a burden on your division,

so I was just wondering if there was something that was the catalyst for causing

all of this because if there was, maybe we could avoid that in the future,

right?

MR. SIMMONS:

Well, it would be the

implementation of the new and improved system.

MS. COFFIN:

Okay.

MR. SIMMONS:

So, it's really just the

growing (inaudible) –

MS. COFFIN:

So, it just made it a little

easier, so everyone said now that we can, let's go do that. That's a classic

example of making work for oneself, hey? Which is good. No, it's good that the

appeals mechanism is in place, I'm not questioning that at all. I was just

wondering, how did we get to here and how can we potentially address it, but it

sounds like it's well in hand at this point.

The

Centre for Learning and Development, 3.1.05, Salaries there were overspent in

2018 but then underspent in '19-'20. What was the anomaly there? Was that

severance that was included, or is the attrition model being captured here

somehow, or is it some combination of both of those things?

MR. SIMMONS:

It's both. For '18-'19, it

would be the severance for two employees, and then in '19-'20, it's actually a

reduction of two temporary positions.

MS. COFFIN:

Okay.

How are

your attrition plans going? Did you meet your targets?

MR. SIMMONS:

For the official attrition plan, yes, we have.

MS. COFFIN:

Oh, good. Well done then.

Supplies started off at almost $8,000, it went to $45,000 and then it dropped

back down again. What kind of Supplies do we get for $45,000?

MR. SIMMONS:

I may need to double-check, but I believe that was actually for training. It was

the purchase of some expensive equipment for first-aid training, the –

MS. COFFIN:

The AEDs?

MR. SIMMONS:

Not the AEDs but the –

MS. COFFIN:

NARCAN? I mean, what kind of

an office do you have if that's going on but …

MR. SIMMONS:

The ACTARs for the –

MS. COFFIN:

Yeah, the chest compression

things. Oh, handy. Great. I might want one of those at my hockey dressing room

as well, right? We always check in, like, who's gotten older, we all have.

Federal

revenue – we did not get the anticipated $60,000, but we have it budgeted again

for this year. Is that the same amount that just wasn't received and is getting

rolled over into the next year, or is this some consistent amount that the feds

chose not to pay?

MR. SIMMONS:

It's for services offered and there was just no uptake in the '18-'19 year. It's

for French services training that we offer to the federal government.

MS. COFFIN:

Oh, okay.

CHAIR:

Ms. Coffin, your time has

expired.

MS. COFFIN:

Thank you.

CHAIR:

We'll get back to you.

Mr.

Wakeham.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Staying with the attrition

plan for a second, I noticed in the salary detail some of your salaries by

department, comparing 2018-'19 and the list, there seems to be only two less

employees and the actual salary cost has gone up. I'm just wondering how you

reconcile that with your attrition plan.

These

are the

summary of salaries by department as of, I think, April 1, 2018, and I'm

looking at a similar

summary of salaries by department for April 1, 2019.

They're showing 7,178 as the total number of employees for 2019 and 2018 is

showing 7,180 as the total number of employees by department. I'm just trying to

figure out what this means. The total salary numbers are there, too.

MR. SIMMONS:

Sure. I'm not following exactly where you have that, but for the salary details

themselves, that number would be a bit dynamic. That's a snapshot or a point in

time.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Right.

MR. SIMMONS:

April 1 is where they get that snapshot and it's actual salaries on payroll at

the moment. So you could have any number of variables that come in on that day.

You could've had a certain number of vacancies, a few more vacancies in one year

than the other when the snapshot was taken. You also still had people moving up

their scales and people moving in and out of roles and they may get paid at

different rates. All that across a large department could impact those numbers.

For our

attrition plan, we were looking at savings of $114,000 over the two-year window.

So we've actually reduced two positions for that plan: A position in the

staffing division and a position in our Employee Safety and Wellness Division.

MR. WAKEHAM:

I was thinking of it more in terms of the total government attrition plan –

MR. SIMMONS:

Oh, total government.

MR. WAKEHAM:

– not just your HRS department.

MR. SIMMONS:

Okay

MR. WAKEHAM:

These snapshots are both taken at a same point in time: One is in April of 2018

and one is in April of 2019. They talk about how these are active employees.

MR. SIMMONS:

Yeah.

MR. WAKEHAM:

It lists every single department and the total number of positions. I'm trying

to understand if there's only a difference of two. All of those variances you

talked about, yes, are part of that, but at the same time comparing the snapshot

you took at April 1 one year, compared to the snapshot you took in April 2019,

only shows a reduction of two.

That's

overall. I'm just trying to understand. Have the numbers gone down or are they

held steady?

MR. SIMMONS:

They have gone down. The same logic would apply in terms of dynamic numbers.

It's probably one of the most difficult things to try to get a clear picture of

in terms of counting heads or counting people in an organization. It's always a

moving target. I could give you a number this morning and I guarantee it'll be

different this afternoon across such a large organization. But, yeah, the

numbers – we actually had a target of $2 million in attrition savings for last

fiscal and that was achieved and there were positions associated with that

savings.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Is there a percentage each year, a number of positions that you're targeting to

go down by?

MR. SIMMONS:

No. It's primarily fiscally based so it gives folks the flexibility, because

certain positions are valued higher than others. Within the departments you can

kind of scan your needs and figure out where you can achieve those savings.

MR. WAKEHAM:

If we were to look at this for previous years, we would see perhaps a lower

number of employees as of April 1. Do these change from year to year? You would

expect it to change. If there were a significant number of people having left,

one would expect that on April 1 you would still have a difference in the

number.

MR. SIMMONS:

You would expect it. Like I said, that method of tracking it is a little tricky

because of the dynamic nature of the workforce. If you're looking at a

difference of a hundred, we have currently 224 active recruitment files, so

depending on the timing of when they're filled and how that interplays with

April 1, the number could be off.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Yeah. Can you provide the

fiscal target for all departments for last year and this year?

MR. SIMMONS:

Yes.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Thank you. I appreciate

that.

In my

next question, there was $854,500 transferred from Education and Early Childhood

Development to Executive Council in 2019-'20. Why was that transferred?

MR. SIMMONS:

Sorry, that was the Employee Safety and Wellness? Is that…?

MR. WAKEHAM:

In Appendix II, page A-2 of this year's Estimates book, it lists an increase of

$201 million in the Consolidated Fund Services as a “provision for severance,

accrued leave and redundancy awards that may result from retirements or

restructuring within Government.” Can you give us a breakdown of this figure?

How much is for severance, how much is for redundancy? Are you planning to

restructure government?

MR. SIMMONS:

The first one was there for ESW, for the Employee Safety and Wellness, that you

want the $25,000. Was that your first question, sorry?

MR. WAKEHAM:

No, I'm just wondering. There's $201 million in the Consolidated Fund Services

as a provision, it says, “for severance, accrued leave and redundancy awards

that may result from retirements or restructuring within Government.”

I'm

asking if you could provide me with a breakdown of this figure. It's Appendix

II, page A-2 in the Estimates book.

MR. SIMMONS:

I don't have that with me here.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Can we get that breakdown?

MR. SIMMONS:

I'm not actually understanding the question but I'm sure we'll take it and have

a look.

MR. WAKEHAM:

You've got $201 million allocated for a “provision for severance, accrued leave,

and redundancy awards that may result” – and I'm quoting here – “from

retirements or restructuring within Government.

I'm

asking for a breakdown of that particular figure. It's a budgeted figure and I'm

asking for a breakdown of it.

That

will be provided to us? Thank you.

In the

3.1.01, Salaries, again, they were under budget in '18-'19, but are showing an

increase back up in '19-'20.

Just

wondering what that was about?

MR. SIMMONS:

In Executive Support?

MR. WAKEHAM:

Yeah.

MR. SIMMONS:

There were two vacancies in

the executive organization there through '18-'19. The deputy minister position

was vacant for about nine months and one of the ADM positions was vacant for a

period of time as well. There was also, I think, a shorter vacancy for another

position in the division as well. So the $640,000 now is just really rightsizing

that based on the current incumbents.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Just the filling of the

vacant positions?

MR. SIMMONS:

Correct.

MR. WAKEHAM:

In relation to my honorable

colleague in terms of the current unions, can you give us an overview of which

unions have the no-layoff clause in their contacts? What does that mean for

government's ability to use attrition or budget management, et cetera? How many

of your current unions have the no-layoff clause?

MR. SIMMONS:

Not sure of the exact

number, I think most have something along those lines.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Can you provide that to us?

MR. SIMMONS:

Sure.

MR. OSBORNE:

Any of the agreements that

have been ratified would have that clause, but also as part of the agreements,

business as usual can continue. So, we've had layoffs, for example, at the

Collage of the North Atlantic since that agreement was ratified because it was

business as usual. It doesn't affect our ability, through business as usual, to

lay off. What the clause essentially guarantees is that we won't have a mass

layoff of 500 people. Business as usual can continue, it has no effect on

attrition measures.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Thank you for clarifying

that.

CHAIR:

Okay, Ms. Coffin?

MS. COFFIN:

Thank you.

Let's

go to Centre for Learning and Development. Has there been an evaluation of the

current trend towards private trading venders and online modules?

MR. SIMMONS:

Has there been a review – sorry?

MS. COFFIN:

An evaluation of that?

MR. SIMMONS:

Nothing official, no, but we are constantly evaluating the programs and material

that we roll out.

MS. COFFIN:

Can you give me a sense of

the types of programs that were offered in house versus the things that are

outside and what's coming from private organizations? What are we contract out

versus what we can have inside, and sense of what some of those trading modules

are?

MR. SIMMONS:

If it's helpful, we can provide you with a list of what's offered from –

MS. COFFIN:

Yes.

MR. SIMMONS:

Sure.

MS. COFFIN:

That would be excellent.

Can you

also tell me what the Organizational Development Initiative is? The description

there is pretty generic.

MR. SIMMONS:

Sure. The Organizational

Development Initiative, that's 3.1.06?

MS. COFFIN:

Yes.

MR. SIMMONS:

It's money set aside to assist in the development of employees to fill,

typically, roles that are either hard to fill or may have a long lead time for

filling, and then also just to develop the applicant pool across government in

key areas. So, it's really to enable somebody to come out of their current role

and get that training or exposure without having to leave a hole behind them, if

you will, that needs to be filled.

MS. COFFIN:

Right. So, it's more of a

continuity of employment?

MR. SIMMONS:

Correct.

MS. COFFIN:

Okay. That seems to have a

lot of staff support to do that.

Nothing

was spent in Transportation and Communications, Supplies or Purchased Services?

MR. SIMMONS:

Sorry, and just – that's not

for staff support, that's the actual amount that's used for the program, the

Salaries, because it's actually used for salaries of the people who participate

in –

MS. COFFIN:

Okay. It's not clear because

everything is called salaries, right?

MR. SIMMONS:

Correct.

MS. COFFIN:

So, one would assume that

it's the support for the program

Okay,

so, it was budgeted at $340,000, but you only had just a, I guess, very small

number of individuals that were using the program, if the total salary

expenditures were $89,000?

MR. SIMMONS:

Yes, that was mainly a

pick-up in the latter part of the year. The program was a little dormant in the

first part. There was a lot of changes ongoing, some within HRS and then across

organization.

MS. COFFIN:

Right.

MR. SIMMONS:

But we did pick it up and

plan to use it in the current fiscal.

MS. COFFIN:

Excellent. Thank you.

Let's

go with a more general question here. This is, perhaps, something that I found

interesting earlier.

Can you

tell me the relationship between the Public Service Commission and the Human

Resources Secretariat?

I know

a long, long time ago, the Public Service Commission was the conduit for hiring

in government. You wanted to get a job in government, you went through that, and

the Independent Appointments Commission had the appointment to agencies, boards

and commissions. It seems now that the role of the Public Service Commission is

morphed into the Human Resources Secretariat.

there a relationship between those? Is there a division of: you do that and we

do that? Can you explain that relationship to me?

MR. SIMMONS:

Sure.

They

are separate entities. The Public Service Commission still exists and it has a

piece of legislation that governs its activities. The main role that they would

have with us would be oversight on our staffing activities. They would set out

the policies or the processes by which we select folks through a meritorious

process, if you like. They would hear any appeals, so if somebody had a

complaint or would like to appeal a recruitment activity, they would appeal it

through the Public Service Commission, and they would come in and investigate

our staffing division activities.

We also

partner with them on those classification activities that we do, so the Job

Evaluation System appeal process and the Hay appeal process.

MS. COFFIN:

Okay, that's interesting.

Do you

know why the move or why there was this shift in, I guess, the way that this was

done? Do you have that history?

MR. SIMMONS:

I don't have the history.

Tina,

if you would like …

MS. FOLLETT:

I can speak to that, Ms. Coffin.

Back in

around 2013, there was a government decision made to consolidate a number of HR

functions, particularly the transactional functions, so staffing was integrated

into what was created, at that time, the Human Resource Secretariat. The

oversight and governance pieces of staffing remained then with the Public

Service Commission.

MS. COFFIN:

Right. Okay, so it was just a matter of –

MS. FOLLETT:

That organization.

MS. COFFIN:

– they thought reorganization was going to be better.

MS. FOLLETT:

Yes.

MS. COFFIN:

I have enough of a history

of government to have seen, let's try and move this here and then here.

Were

you here through that whole process?

MS. FOLLETT:

Yes, I was.

MS. COFFIN:

You were. How do you feel, and, I guess – am I allowed to ask you a subjective

question? Have there been any glitches, how about that? Have there been any

glitches associated with that, or do you find that relationship is working well?

MS. FOLLETT:

Are you speaking specifically to the staffing component or the full integration

of –?

MS. COFFIN:

I guess the organization of that. Has this resulted in improvements in how

workflow happens and how the hiring process goes and then, of course, the

separation of the appeals process? I'm all about separating the actual functions

from the monitoring because you need an independent oversight committee. That's

how that works. Just getting kind of your perspective from an internal point of

view.

MS. FOLLETT:

Sure.

Yes,

overall, in general, there's been an improvement from that reorganization

because, to your point, with the segregation of function, it allowed the

Commission to focus solely, or for the most part, on the governance piece and

turn their activities to setting the standards for how we recruit and ensuring

that merit was being applied across the entire public service. And then allowed,

through delegated authority, other bodies, such as the Human Resource

Secretariat, to put their efforts in behind the transactional or the staffing

activity. So we found overall that, yes, it has provided improvement in those

areas.

MS. COFFIN:

Lovely. That's good to hear. It's reassuring.

Can I

have a sense of the number of grievances that are currently outstanding and the

number of arbitrations that are ongoing or impending? I know my last

organization, I think our grievances hit about 110 over the course of a year and

we had the highest for our organization across Canada. I'm just curious how

that's working here.

MR. SIMMONS:

The total number of grievances outstanding currently across government would be

about 800.

MS. COFFIN:

Wow.

MR. SIMMONS:

The number of ongoing arbitrations, I don't know. That number fluctuates a bit.

MS. COFFIN:

Of course.

MR. SIMMONS:

I couldn't give you an estimate there.

MS. COFFIN:

Yeah, I just know how onerous that process is. It's legally heavy and there are

a lot of complications. Of course, there are a lot of implications for staff

because when there's an arbitration, a lot of staff get involved in that. I'm

just kind of curious as to how that's sorting out.

Here's

another question that I've never really been able to get a good sense of: How

many people work in government?

MR. SIMMONS:

In the core government it's about 7,600.

MS. COFFIN:

Right and core government we're just talking about, no agencies, no committees

and no corporations. School boards are not counted and health authorities are

not counted in that, we're just talking about direct government, right?

MR. SIMMONS:

Correct, core government.

MS. COFFIN:

Core government.

Do we

have a sense of the nature of those and perhaps a sense of how that's changed

over time? What I'm thinking about is the number of full-time versus the number

of part-time individuals. I know it's very difficult to capture those because

casual is a different thing and then your students are a different thing. That's

why I understand how hard it is when I ask the question, how many people work in

government, no one can really answer that perfectly.

I'm

looking for a sense of that but also a sense of executive positions, management

positions, kind of that in-between position where we have directors and we have

managers, but we also have a whole range of individuals that are non-bargaining

but are non-management as well. I know for a long time there was an abundance of

policy and program analysts, so a sense of how many people are in that position

and also in the unionized and non-unionized position; the HS scales versus the

Hay scales and all of that, just getting a sense of those. How has that

composition of employment in government changed over time?

MR. SIMMONS:

I'm not sure. That's quite a

broad question.

MS. COFFIN:

It is, yeah.

MR. SIMMONS:

I don't know that I could

give you a story with 100 per cent confidence in terms of all those

sub-segments.

MS. COFFIN:

Sure.

MR. SIMMONS:

I could give you a snapshot,

for example, of what's in the system today.

MS. COFFIN:

Right.

How

about – and maybe this could be your homework for later, a teacher – perhaps, a

breakdown. How detailed a breakdown are you able to provide?

Are you

able to do that breakdown of unionized employees versus temporary staff versus

contractual versus people in that middle ground of you're not unionized, but

you're not really management, although you funnel in the management scale;

directors and executive support.

Can you

break that down over time, so maybe over the course of a five- or six- or

10-year period? Can you give me some sense of how those numbers have changed

over time?

MR. SIMMONS:

I'm not sure how easily

that's obtained, but I do –

MS. COFFIN:

Oh, I don't imagine it's

very easy.

MR. SIMMONS:

If I can maybe take that

away and (inaudible).

MS. COFFIN:

Yeah, so your homework will

be due, say – no, I'm kidding.

CHAIR:

Okay, your time is expired.

MS. COFFIN:

Thank you.

MR. WAKEHAM:

I want to go back to 3.1.05

and ask: What is the priority for the Centre for Learning and Development for

the next 12 months?

MR. SIMMONS:

I don't know that there's

anything new or a new program or anything they're rolling out in the next 12

months. Their priority is really to maintain the programs that are in place.

There's

a suite of basic programs that are required – so whether that be regulatory

training, some of the mandated training that we have across the organization –

and then they effectively respond to the needs of each of the departments

throughout the year. Their priority would be making sure that the mandatory

stuff is complete and then to achieve the programs and needs of the departments.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Thank you.

In the

past year there has been mandatory online training introduced for public service

workers. Has all this training been completed? What process is in place to

ensure that new hires complete their training?

MR. SIMMONS:

I don't have the statistics

on completion here with me. They do have a tracking system both for existing and

as new hires come on. There's a process to pick up most mandatory training

through the orientation process.

MR. WAKEHAM:

You can provide that to us?

MR. SIMMONS:

Sure.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Thank you.

MR. SIMMONS:

Just to be clear, what training program was it you wanted?

MR. WAKEHAM:

It's the one related to the mandatory online training, respectful workplace,

those programs.

MR. SIMMONS:

Do you know the number? Tina knows the number.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay.

MS. FOLLETT:

I can speak with respect to the harassment training. That particular mandatory

training was completed last year with pretty much a hundred per cent completion.

Again, that's a moving target because our staff turnover requires that those

that are new, obviously, take that training as they come in, but with that

particular module it was 99 per cent.

With

respect to the conflict interest, we're at about probably 60, 65 per cent, and

so we'll be sending a reminder to have that completed in the future months as

well. The in-person training that we conducted on harassment for executive was

attended at a hundred per cent as well.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Thank you so much.

MS. FOLLETT:

You're welcome.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Under 3.1.07, last year the ADM mentioned that government was exploring a new

health and safety system for government. Can you please provide some information

or an update on that particular program?

MR. SIMMONS:

Sure.

There

is a safety management system. That's a program that's based on a number of

elements. That's being rolled out across departments. In addition, we've taken a

bit of a prioritized approach outside of that program to really go in and focus

on key areas to drive our safety performance.

The

management system program is being rolled out across departments. I don't have

the exact percentage of who has them, but it certainly has improved

significantly since last year.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Can you tell what the cost was last year for workplace injuries within core

government?

MR. SIMMONS:

Don't have that stat here in front of me. That would be a pretty dynamic number,

as well. It's really …

MR. WAKEHAM:

Is it possible to get a number or a cost?

MR. SIMMONS:

I think I could commit to having a look to see what we could pull out of the

system, yeah.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Okay. I appreciate that.

3.1.11,

under the Strategic Staffing section, yesterday when we did Finance Estimates

there was a significant savings in Salaries associated with regular salaries –

we kind of had a little joke about it, because they kind of said they were kind

of waiting on HRS to fill positions. So I was just asking: Can you give an

overview of how long their recruitment processes take? After need to hire is

identified, how long does it take to fill the positions?

MR. SIMMONS:

I think some of the

vacancies that you would have heard of through the other departments – I heard

some of that, I think, yesterday, as well – some of that's by choice. So,

through trying to reduce the overall cost and trying to achieve some of our

attrition targets, we may defer hiring in certain areas.

If you

were looking to hire a given role, it really depends on the role. Certain roles

we can hire very quickly. I think the outside would probably be around that

6-month mark, if it was a more complicated process. The average would be less

than that, but that's kind of the range on recruitment.

I would

say, as well, we've put some new efforts or processes in place, internal to that

division, to try to make that process a little more efficient. We did have, by

way of example, about 500 or so outstanding recruitment files last year. As we

sit today, we have about 224, which would be a normal number of vacancies, I

would suggest, for the size of the organization in terms of the turnover that we

would have on a month-over-month basis. So, we've kind of caught up to that

process.

Like I

say, some of them would actually be kept vacant deliberately for short periods

of time to help with the overall budget savings.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Right. They indicated that

they needed to get all of their positions filled. They have budgeted for them

again this year, so they're putting a little plug in to get them all filled.

there a wait-list or individuals enrolled in the Opening Doors Program who do

not have placements?

MR. SIMMONS:

The way the program would

work is there would be an inventory of individuals who are looking for

placements, and then there's also the assessment that takes place to find the

roles within government. So, there is a matching process that has to take place.

It's not so much a: I'm waiting for a given role. It's really about trying to

match the individuals with the needs of the organization.

There

are about 82 positions that we have available in that program and, currently,

all but 10, I believe, are actively filled today.

MR. WAKEHAM:

Thank you.

No more

questions, Mr. Chair.

CHAIR:

Ms. Coffin, do you have any

further questions?

MS. COFFIN:

Yes, please.

Let's

go back and chat about Opening Doors. That was my next question, so excellent

segue. Thank you very much.

You say

there are 82 positions that exist in government to accommodate individuals that

have disabilities. Is that …?

MR. SIMMONS:

The program has 82 positions

funded, so it's not so much to necessarily accommodate folks with disability,

because we would accommodate anybody with disability, but this program is meant

to encourage or assist folks to enter the workforce, so it's a specific program

for persons with disabilities.

MS. COFFIN:

So it's designed for individuals who had just finished some sort of training or

who have a marginal attachment to the workforce, to get them in and kind of give

them that work experience. Is that correct?

MR. SIMMONS:

I don't think it would be

that restrictive, I think it's something that's pretty open.

MS. COFFIN:

Okay.

Within

this program, if you have an individual that comes in with a disability, then

accommodations are put in place; there's money to accommodate the individual.

So, say you are hearing impaired or you have a visual impairment or you might

need, I don't know, a particular work station set up, that's included in this

program?

MR. SIMMONS:

Those sort of things we

would do, even outside of this program. If you're looking at this program, for

current fiscal, it's $3.7 million total. Those are salary dollars for

individuals, that's how we pay a portion of their salary in those roles.

MS. COFFIN:

All right.

MR. SIMMONS:

It's offset by some funding we get down below from the federal government the

(inaudible) program.

MS. COFFIN:

Yes.

MR. SIMMONS:

Separate from that, there would be $100,000, which is really a cost-share

program we use to help within core government. That actually also extends out to

the ABCs to help provide subsidies to encourage folks to bring in individuals

with disabilities into the workplace.

MS. COFFIN:

Okay, that's the subsidies. Okay.

MR. SIMMONS:

So that's what that money in

this budget is for. For somebody who may need specific accommodation, that would

happen anyway, there's not a specific budget in this

section for that.

MS. COFFIN:

Yeah, if an individual came in under Strategic Staffing and they had particular

limitation, then you would accommodate that, normally. Okay.

I say

this because on the campaign trail I meet a number of individuals who were

hearing impaired and a couple of wonderful young women who had been looking for

jobs but had not been able to find the right in in that. So if I sent them over

to Opening Doors, there might be a possibility that that would be that

transition into the labour force that they needed.

Would

that be a reasonable use of that?

MR. SIMMONS:

So if you have anyone who's

interested in the program, absolutely, contact the Opening Doors Program,

there's a fantastic individual over there who can help them out.

MS. COFFIN:

Right, lovely. I'll pass that along. I think I had the name of the program wrong

when I suggested that.

Grants

and Subsidies were down by almost $30,000 – $25,000 there. What was that about?

MR. SIMMONS:

So that's the grant program

that we would provide to departments and, in some cases, ABCs. I believe that

was just related to the timing of a – so an arrangement that we had in place but

the timing was a bit off towards the end, so it's really just an accounting

issue.

MS. COFFIN:

Okay, that's nice to know.

Staying

with Opening Doors, it's kind of an interesting thing here, what percentage of

participants transition out to permanent positions in government or even

elsewhere because I assume that this doesn't mean that they're just going into

this program to move into another government program but this is providing them

with that, I guess, gateway into full time or a larger labour market attachment.

getting at the success of this program now, has that transition happened and

what's the success rate?

MR. SIMMONS:

My sense is it's successful.

I don't actually have that stat.

MS. COFFIN:

That would be a handy thing

to have, right. It would be nice to see if it's not at a very high rate then

perhaps what would be that impediment, right? Just to make this program more

successful this would be another perspective that we could have a look at.

Corporate Services, I see a big spike in Salaries there and then they drop off

again. Is that your attrition model, the severance first and revised and then

attrition in the second one?

MR. SIMMONS:

Under –?

CHAIR:

What number are you on?

MS. COFFIN:

4.1.01.

CHAIR:

Sorry?

MS. COFFIN:

Did I get excited and go on?

CHAIR:

Yes, you're gone too far.

MS. COFFIN:

I did, I went on. Okay, my

bad. Very sorry about that.

I think

that might be all my questions in this section. Sorry about that.

CHAIR:

Thank you, Ms. Coffin.

Mr.

Wakeham?

MR. WAKEHAM:

I have no more questions,

Mr. Chair. I just wanted to thank the officials for coming twice.

CHAIR:

You have a couple of quick

questions, Mr. Lane?

MR. LANE:

Yes, I do.

first question relates to the 10-week emergency hire process that occurs. I've

had people raise concerns with me in the past over that, that a lot of people

feel it's abused in the sense that it's a foot in the door for people by getting

hired through departments without having to go through Public Service

Commission, without having to go through proper processes, hiring processes and

so on.

understand that emergencies can happen from time to time, but I guess the

question is: Is that process monitored to ensure that it is not being misused,

if I can put it that way, and to ensure that we don't see situations where you

hire someone for 10 weeks and extend them for another 10, another 10 and another

10 and that type of thing happening?

What

kind of monitoring is taking place to ensure that wherever possible – except for

the case of emergencies, which is why it's supposed to be called emergency hires

– to make sure it goes through the Public Service Commission?

MR. SIMMONS:

There are a couple of checkpoints. For bargaining unit positions it's actually

contained in most of our collective agreements, so certainly the ones within

core government. There's a 13-week window where folks can come in without

competition when there's a short-term need or an emergency as you say. For

management positions, it can go upwards of six months and that's in accordance

with the Public Service Commission policies.

The

collective agreement has the rules in there for a bargaining unit. The Public

Service Commission also oversees our hiring activities and they are the ones who

do the check and balance there. Then, just generally ourselves, there's value in

actually going through that recruitment process, so it's not something we would

try to avoid. We would be pushing and looking for those competitions to occur as

well.

MR. LANE:

Yeah, okay.

Again,

it is something that I've had some constituents in the past – and very recently

actually – come to me. They felt there were opportunities that were – and I

guess sometimes you get a situation where somebody comes in through the 10-week

program, then they apply because then they can apply for other jobs. They go in

and all of a sudden there's someone who's been working there for a number of

years, seeing that person surpass them that, in their mind, got in through the

back door, so to speak, and I guess that's where some of that comes from.

It was

an overall sense of why doesn't everybody go through the Public Service

Commission is really the theme of it. It's supposed to be for emergency

situations but there seems to be a lot of those emergency situations occurring

throughout government. That's been an ongoing thing I believe.

MR. OSBORNE:

If I could.

MR. LANE:

Yeah.

MR. OSBORNE:

Yeah, I don't think it's as common as you think. Tina, you may be able to

elaborate on that. The vast majority of those are either a director up to the

manager, up to the ADM level but, anyway, go ahead, Tina.

MS. FOLLETT:

As you mentioned, Mr. Lane, the 13-week placements are normally for emergency or

operational needs within the organization. As Robert has alluded to, we within

HRS, monitor the activities associated with those temporary arrangements. The

Commission also has a function wherein they monitor what's happening. At one

point they actually would reach out to respective employers by flagging

positions that were in excess of 13 weeks and asking for our plans associated

with that.

They do

conduct a fair amount of diligence around that. I appreciate the concern,

obviously, that someone may have expressed to you, but we normally are pretty

diligent in ensuring that if we have individuals that are in there in temporary

arrangements, that we're then going on to conduct a broader competition.

Normally we'll have people that come in for less than 13 weeks because it's

really short work, a short period of time; it's a piece of work that has to be

done fairly quickly. Oftentimes, it might be a situation where a position needs

to be staffed and it's going to take a period of time to staff the position.

Someone might be required to go into that role because of operational need, but

we proceed on with the competitive process.

normally require our hiring departments that if they're in that situation – and

it's a short-term, temporary arrangement, we have to go to competition – that

they make the requests for both those staffing needs at the same time, so that

while the position is filled temporarily, we can proceed on with the competitive

process as well, so that we're not exceeding those 13-week timelines.

MR. LANE:

Let's say if you have an emergency-hire situation. How does a member of the

general public know so that they can put in a résumé? Do you know what I'm

saying?

MS. FOLLETT:

Yeah.

MR. LANE:

Because in theory, if not, a department says, oh, we have a position open here

for 10 weeks now and they can call up whoever and say: Give me a résumé. I

suppose they have to be qualified. I don't even know what screening – I mean, I

would imagine they would, but I don't know what kind of screening, what

competition or what, in theory, happens in that.

I'm

just wondering: How does that process work and how, if there was a 10-week

position or a 13-week or a half dozen 13-week for a short-term project comes up,

how does a member of the general public have the opportunity to apply for that

13-week opportunity?

MS. FOLLETT:

Right.

MR. LANE:

How do they even know about it?

MS. FOLLETT:

First of all, we have inventories within our staffing division whereby if

short-term, temporary work arises we'll normally go back and seek candidates

through that process. I can assure you –

MR. LANE:

Through what process, sorry?

MS. FOLLETT:

Through the inventories that we have in the staffing division. We have

inventories –

MR. LANE:

Oh, résumés that people had already –

MS. FOLLETT:

Right.

MR. LANE:

– handed in.

MS. FOLLETT:

Yes.

MR. LANE:

Okay.

MS. FOLLETT:

Yeah, exactly.

So,

we'll seek assistance through those inventories.

MR. LANE:

Okay.

MS. FOLLETT:

But I can assure you that with any position that HRS is involved in, in the

placement of an individual, qualifications are in the fore. You have to be

qualified in order to enter into any position within the public service. Our HR

staff are normally assisting hiring departments in that regard as well.

MR. LANE:

All right, thank you.

temporary positions – and this is another issue I hear all the time. Somebody's

on a temporary position for two, three, four years. Really, everybody knows it's

a permanent position because the person has been doing the job forever and yet

they are still temporary. What is the rationale?

Why is

it that once you get to a point where you know it's going to be an ongoing

position, why do you leave them temporary for numerous years? If I could get you

to explain that?

MR. SIMMONS:

There are a couple of

factors at play.

One of

the more predominant ones is a bit of a daisy chain that occurs when somebody

moves. There are numerous examples; we have a lot, unfortunately. I think out of

our just under 200 staff within HRS, I think close on 80 are actually in some

temporary capacity right now. They're often permanent employees but they're

moving around in those temporary roles and it creates that system where folks

own that permanent role but they're moving into different opportunities.

We are

looking at ways to make that a little more efficient or in different ways, but

it is where folks have that ability to maintain rights to previous roles when

they take on temporary roles.

MR. LANE:

All right.

The

last question I have relates to Opening Doors. I have sent a couple of people in

the past to the program, and the expectation I had or thought was that it would

be around obtaining employment within the provincial government. Basically, the

least experience I was told of was more of we'll do some résumé writing and some

coaching on how to get a job occurred through that office, but it wasn't about

getting that person a job in the provincial government.

I'm

trying to understand. If you said there were 62 positions – I thought you said –

and there are10 not filled, how does one go about applying for one of those 10

jobs under Opening Doors? Are they permanent jobs actually working within

government? Is that for people with a physical disability or what about someone

with an intellectual disability?

MR. SIMMONS:

In reverse order, it's for

any disability.

MR. LANE:

Yeah.

MR. SIMMONS:

The positions are there. As

I mentioned earlier, it's a bit of a matchmaking exercise.

MR. LANE:

Yeah.

MR. SIMMONS:

It's not about just coming

in and then trying to fit an individual into an existing role. There has to be

that match in terms of the skills and abilities required to do what's required

from the department, and then finding that individual who can fill the role.

terms of what the division or what the office or the program offers, it does

look to match up those individuals and roles. It does look to try to use that

grant money to leverage that within departments and ABCs. In addition, like you

mentioned, that additional service is there to help people find employment

elsewhere. It's a place where folks can go to get help with résumé writing or

interview prep or whatever that can be done to help, if not within our program,

in other areas of society essentially.

MR. LANE:

Okay, thank you.

CHAIR:

Your time has expired.

MR. LANE:

Could I get a list of

(inaudible)?

CHAIR:

Is the Committee okay to give him extra time.

MR. LANE:

(Inaudible) request for some information. Can I get a list? Are we able to get a

list of the 62 positions in government, what they are and the 10 that are not

filled?

MR. SIMMONS:

Sure, it's 82 positions.

MR. LANE:

Or 82 and the 10 that are not filled.

MR. SIMMONS:

I think so. Yeah, that should be –

MR. LANE:

Okay, thank you.

appreciate that.

CHAIR:

Hearing no other questions,

shall 3.1.01 to 3.1.12 inclusive carry?

All

those in favour?

SOME HON. MEMBERS:

Aye.

CHAIR:

All those opposed?

Carried.

motion, subheads 3.1.01 through 3.1.12 carried.

CHAIR:

Shall the totals for the

Executive Council carry?

All

those in favour?

SOME HON. MEMBERS:

Aye.

CHAIR:

All those opposed?

Carried.

motion, Executive Council, total heads, carried.

CHAIR:

Shall I report the Estimates

for Executive Council carried without amendment?

All

those in favour?

SOME HON. MEMBERS:

Aye.

CHAIR:

Opposed?

Carried.

motion, Estimates of Executive Council carried without amendment.

CHAIR:

Before we adjourn there are

a couple of little items.

MR. OSBORNE:

Mr. Chair, if I could?

CHAIR:

Sure.

MR. OSBORNE:

Just on your request, I just

want to ensure – if somebody has a disability and we identify the position, we

may be identifying somebody with a disability.

MR. LANE:

How about the 10 (inaudible)

MR. OSBORNE:

Yeah. I think that would probably be–

MR. LANE:

– that doesn't have anyone attached –

MR. OSBORNE:

Yeah.

MR. LANE:

– so that I know what's available, basically, is all I want to know.

MR. OSBORNE:

Yeah. Fair enough.

CHAIR:

I just want to thank Minister Osborne and hisֹ staff.

We have

a couple of quick items. We did appoint a Vice-Chair; however, the person we

appointed is not on the Committee so we have to appoint a new Vice-Chair.

Can we

call for …?

MR. WAKEHAM:

I nominate David Brazil.

CHAIR:

David Brazil has been nominated.

All

those in favour?

SOME HON. MEMBERS:

Aye.

CHAIR:

Opposed?

Okay,

David will be the Vice-Chair.

The

next item, a call for a motion to accept the minutes of the Government Services

Committee for June 17 and June 18 as circulated.

MS. STOODLEY:

So moved.

CHAIR:

So moved by Sarah.

seconder?

MR. WARR:

Seconded.

CHAIR:

Brian Warr.

All

those in favour?

SOME HON. MEMBERS:

Aye.

CHAIR:

Carried.

motion, minutes adopted as circulated.

CHAIR:

If there's no other business

I'll call for a motion to adjourn.

Sarah

Stoodley.

adjourn.

motion, the Committee adjourned.