This blog is a part of my body of research that seeks to analyse civil society's and academia's understanding of national security models from an academic perspective with a focus on Canada, Israel and the UK.
11 February 2014
Canada.com: Union raises security concerns over $400-million federal email deal with Bell Canada
OTTAWA – Small businesses and a union representing professional public servants are raising fresh questions about the value and security of a federal government deal that is now underway with Bell Canada – worth up to $400 million over seven years – to restructure email services.
“I think it’s more about supporting their ongoing ideology about supporting corporate business,” said Debi Daviau, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada. “And at one point, Canadians’ data is just there to be exploited.”
The contract, announced last June, is expected to convert 63 separate email systems into a single system with a “@canada.ca” email address for all government employees, including those who deal with requests for services from the public.
Treasury Board President Tony Clement says that the entire federal government strategy, which includes the consolidation of Internet services, will simplify services for Canadians.
“The whole idea about canada.ca is having a single portal with a super-duper search engine to eliminate the frustrations that Canadians have with having to go through thousands of websites to try to find the information required,” Clement told Postmedia News. “This is responding to citizens’ complaints, I think very valid ones, and it’ll make it a lot easier to search for the answers that they seek from government.”
Shared Services Canada estimated in June that the contract would save the government about $50 million per year starting in 2015-16, but Clement said savings were not the main objective.
“Well, it’s not designed for that particular purpose, but we do believe it will certainly save time for citizens as they are seeking answers,” Clement said. “And certainly, when you look at reducing the number of email platforms and the number of data centres, that is savings in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”
A spokesman for Bell Canada said Monday that he was working on responding to questions from Postmedia News.
In a speech last October, Public Works Minister Diane Finley, the federal minister responsible for the email transformation program, said the government was going to the private sector to prevent problems, noting that a special federal task force was also in place to monitor the situation.
Finley stressed that there was “no place” for untrusted equipment and services in federal government networks and that a special security task force was also in place to monitor the situation.
“We know this is risky business with a lot at stake,” she said in October. “From day one, the idea was to learn from the many other governments and major corporations that have already gone the shared services route – to learn from their successes and their shortcomings. The idea was to learn from private sector tech sector leaders who understand what current and emerging tech tools and strategies can deliver.”
Daviau said her union has been advocating for standardization of emails for years and believes that it is a “smart business” decision. But she suggested that public servants could have implemented the plan with existing resources.
“I’m not sure the goal is what Tony (Clement) says it is,” said Daviau in an interview. “That task could have easily been completed by the existing staff in government. So why the $400 million? It’s not clear.”
She warned that deals of this nature with the private sector could lead to cost overruns, similar to the problems surrounding a recent Internet website project pursued by the Obama administration to promote its health-care plan.
She added that each level of contracting or subcontracting could also result in watered down security.
“We think it’s extremely risky in terms of the security of Canadians data,” said Daviau. “As public servants we’re security cleared and have an oath of loyalty.”
Jeff Lynt, the lead consultant at an information technology firm – inRound Innovations – in Ottawa, said the email deal shouldn’t be used as a model for other services, since it forces firms to make deals with large corporations such as Bell Canada to get contracts instead of dealing directly with the government.
“We know that in these mega-contracts when things go wrong, you just keep throwing money at it,” said Lynt, who also chairs a national coalition of small IT firms.
He also said he supported the overall goal of consolidation, but didn’t approve of the competition process which set conditions on the size of firms that could bid on the project, while inviting only four large corporations, Bell Canada, Dell Canada, HP Canada and IBM Canada, to participate. He suggested that bidding processes could be more effective if they have more of a focus on performance standards with more flexibility on who is allowed to submit bids.
“I just don’t see the justification of throwing everything but the kitchen sink into one big contract,” said Lynt. “There’s no justification for only one supplier to do this.”
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