Digital Government Minister Joyce Murray has been tasked with overseeing Shared Services Canada, the federal agency responsible for consolidated IT services that has drawn criticism for its slow progress in completing major projects and fractious relationships with other departments.

An order-in-council (OIC) published on Nov. 20, the date of last week’s cabinet shuffle, changed responsibility for Shared Services from the Minister of Public Works and Government Services to the newly created Minister of State (Digital Government) position, now held by Murray.

Another OIC published that day designated the holder of the digital government post as a member of the Queen’s Privy Council and as a minister for the purposes of the Shared Services Canada Act. Legislation brought in the by Liberals earlier in their term mandates that ministers of state receive the same salary top-up as other cabinet ministers.

This past March, Murray was named president of the Treasury Board and Minister of Digital Government after Jane Philpott resigned from the role amid the SNC-Lavalin scandal. In last week’s cabinet shuffle, she retained the digital government portfolio but was replaced as president of the Treasury Board by Jean-Yves Duclos.

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Michael O’Neill, a lecturer at the University of Ottawa and former Treasury Board Secretariat senior policy adviser, said moving Shared Services to Treasury Board and appointing Murray as the responsible minister signifies that “this government is strongly committed to a digital government agenda.”

He said the agency still must demonstrate that it’s capable of delivering on its marquee projects, including transferring all government email addresses to canada.gc.ca, though these sorts of efforts might be helped by the move to the Treasury Board and appointing a separate minister to take the lead.

“This is really saying ‘we’re going to give direct ministerial attention to this very important initiative,’ ” O’Neill said in a phone interview, arguing that while Public Services and Procurement has “many coals in the fire” and competing priorities, Treasury Board Secretariat is unencumbered by line responsibilities and can advance digital governance with fewer distractions.

“So this is probably a good sign in saying digital government is important and we’re going to give dedicated ministerial attention to this and that means that it elevates the issue to cabinet as well,” he explained.

O’Neill also noted that it made sense to bring Shared Services under Treasury Board because it’s already home to all of the government’s other digital initiatives, such as the Chief Information Officer position and Canadian Digital Service.

Debi Daviau, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, which represents many Shared Services Canada employees, said it’s “probably a good thing” to have Murray take over at Shared Services, explaining that the union was able to “work well with her” when she was president of the Treasury Board.

She also viewed bringing all of the government’s digital initiatives and the IT systems and services managed by Shared Services under one minister as a positive step that would ensure it’s “dealt with as a priority.”

“[Murray’s] got a great attention to detail and she’s not going to glaze over about the technical details. And so I hope that it will be a positive experience,” Daviau said in a phone interview.

Considering that Treasury Board is responsible for developing the replacement to the troubled Phoenix pay system, Daviau said she’d guess that this project would eventually “find its way under Shared Services,” (or Shared Services would at least have a role in it), which she viewed as likely a positive step considering the agency’s mandate.

She said her members just want to know that they’ll be “moving alongside the government” with its digital modernization plans, and “not considered as baggage.”

“Shared Services is a bit of a mess, but it’s under good leadership and with the right approach, there’s a lot of potential there,” Daviau added.

Shared Services was launched by the former Conservative government in 2011 and tasked with delivering email, data centre and network services in a “consolidated and standardized manner” and to offer optional technology-related services to government organizations on a cost-recovery basis.

However, the agency has drawn criticism over the pace of progress in completing major projects, such as the consolidation of federal computer and email systems. As CBC News reported, in June 2017, a government-ordered report by U.S. consultancy firm Gartner said Ottawa “vastly” underestimated the scope and complexity of consolidating IT systems, and that they “lack confidence” in the abilities of Shared Services and the broader federal government to complete the project.

Shared Services also has faced some resistance from other parts of the federal civil service as it has assumed more control over digital infrastructure over the years. Most notably, Wayne Smith resigned as Canada’s chief statistician in 2016 in protest of what he saw as the agency’s threat to Statistics Canada’s independence, particularly Shared Services having control over servers hosting Statistics Canada data.

The Trudeau Liberals have largely blamed the former Harper government for the issues at Shared Services, accusing their predecessors in office of poor planning, lack of funding and non-existent service standards.

Changes introduced in the Liberals’ 2017 budget implementation bill somewhat weakened the agency’s monopoly on digital services by allowing some organizations to “opt out” of using the agency in “exceptional circumstances.” The bill also restored the ability of individual departments to purchase software and digital hardware themselves, instead of conducting all business through Shared Services.

O’Neill said he believes where an initiative is placed in government “really matters,” and placing Shared Services under the Treasury Board, one of the central departments in the civil service, gives the agency some additional clout.

“You’ve now elevated [Shared Services] to the central agency which is responsible for the administration of the Government of Canada. You’ve elevated it’s importance across the whole of Government of Canada,” he argued.

For example, O’Neill said differences in terms of Shared Services’ priorities, such as the issues it had with Statistics Canada under Wayne Smith, would likely not have elevated if Shared Services was under Treasury Board because central agencies carry more clout.

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