Lack of clarity on new agency puts promised savings in question
The Conservative government doesn’t have any business plan to follow through on last week’s pledge to create an agency that would consolidate federal information technology networks. Cabinet ministers Tony Clement and Rona Ambrose announced the initiative last week, promising that it will cut the government’s IT costs by at least $100 million per year. But Public Works has so far been unable to explain how those savings were calculated. The idea behind the initiative is to manage the government’s information networks as one entity, rather than as a disparate system of independent networks. Sebastian Bois, a spokesman for Public Works, told Postmedia News that, although no business plan exists over how to consolidate these networks, one will be developed “as we move forward with the new organization.” NDP MP Charlie Angus criticized the government for lack of planning, saying the solution to IT difficulties would be to produce a business plan for Parliament to look at.