Today, the Honourable Anita Anand, President of the Treasury Board, issued the following statement in response to the Auditor General's audit report on Modernizing Information Technology Systems:
"I welcome the Office of the Auditor General's report on modernizing information technology (IT) systems.
Modernizing the government's IT systems is key in making government services more secure, reliable, and easy to use.
While steps have been taken to improve the health of the government's IT systems, there is much more to do.
We agree and accept the Auditor General's recommendations and will continue to work alongside departments to address them swiftly, and efficiently.
Given the large size and critical nature of the government's IT system portfolio, this is a complex undertaking that requires diligent planning and oversight. A government-wide IT modernization strategy is being developed to help ensure that required investments of time, expertise and funding are appropriately planned and prioritized.
This work is currently being advanced as quickly as possible, and in the meantime, departments and agencies are closely monitoring the performance of existing systems to ensure that the services they support continue to be delivered to Canadians.
Additionally, key actions are already underway across government, to modernize legacy IT systems, address aging systems and applications, and strengthen the overall health of the government's application portfolio.
Key actions include:
- distributing $119.27M from the Application Modernization Investment fund to departments and agencies to assist them with the modernization of their systems
- tasking the GC Enterprise Architecture Review Board to review the architecture of major systems before they start development to ensure that the systems will be built using modern tools and standard architecture
- leading community of practices to guide departments on their migrations to modern technologies
- working on a new project to replace our aging GC Application Inventory system as well as a new methodology to assess application health
The Government of Canada remains committed to providing high-quality services to Canadians while modernization work is underway."
