Debates of August 20, 2007 (day 13)

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will defer this to Minister Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Bell.

Mr. Chair, I think the important thing to note here is that NTCL, Aurora Village, Aurora World, Watta Lake Lodge, Mackay Lake Lodge, and Arctic Chalet, these are businesses that have a lot of history here. They will be here in the next government. The Premier’s role is to open doors for these businesses and no slight to Mr. Handley, but what is more important is that it is the office of the Premier. That is the compelling issue here, not the person who is in that role. We have the ability to use our Premier and his office to open some very important doors. It can open up new markets to these businesses. We don’t think that we can wait. We know that this winter, it is no secret, is going to be very difficult for our aurora tourism industry. They are under immense pressure. I don’t think we have time to wait to start to look to diversify markets. So there will be follow-up and follow through. The next Premier and the next government hopefully will acknowledge and recognize that this is a priority. But more important than who is going is the fact that the office of the Premier is going to open doors for these businesses. I know they are very appreciative of that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Following along the lines of my colleague, Mr. Ramsay, with respect to the PeopleSoft fiasco, is what I would like to call it just because of all the problems we have had with it and all the money that we have spent, and a system that is still not up and running today, as we speak, properly when you take the leave component module out of it. That is still a deficiency of some fair significance. When I questioned Minister Dent earlier in this sitting in question period about if we would do a report on what has happened so that we would have a sense, as my colleague Mr. Ramsay said, of how we could avoid this, where we went wrong, if there were any liabilities, if there was any blame that needs to be assigned on this, it is just good to know these things. Anyway, Mr. Dent, in response to that, suggested that a report might be a good idea, but he didn’t say there was a report, and now Mr. Roland has just said we have gone out to the Audit Bureau. So I don’t know what to think now. I didn’t get the sense from Mr. Dent’s answer that there was a report. Now the Minister says we have gone out to the Audit Bureau. What is the status of a report? What is the status of the involvement of the Audit Bureau? Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I should clarify in response that FMBS has done a report but not on the latest change from 8.3 to 8.9. I believe it was done in 2000, but Mr. Cleveland can give details as to the work that was done. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Cleveland.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Following the implementation of PeopleSoft in the late 1990s, FMBS contracted with an external contractor to review the implementation and examine the strengths and weaknesses of the implementation. That report was completed in I believe the year 2000 and was circulated fairly broadly at that point in time. The suggestion, I believe earlier, was that there would possibly be a further post-implementation examination. I have actually talked to Human Resources about that. We are looking at how we would develop a terms of reference for that. That probably wouldn’t happen for a couple of months yet, but that is the intention of our discussions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Cleveland. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So when Mr. Roland just made specific reference to go into the Audit Bureau, then I am to understand that nothing has transpired since 2000 involving the Audit Bureau in a report to look at the issue of a human resource management software. That is my question. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I would have to go back to see if I had actually mentioned the Audit Bureau as being the one, but what we have done, as Mr. Cleveland has stated, is the initial look at implementation done in 2000. But while the systems were still within FMBS before we created or just shortly after creating the Department of Human Resources, there was another activity looked at. We hired an outside group to review the work that was being done and how we were using the PeopleSoft system and how we continue to use our processes. That was done by the Hackett Group. It was mentioned here in this House actually in a similar scenario in a supplementary appropriation of the money that was requested to have them do the review and the functions we were using and not using and the recommendations made on that basis as we proceeded forward. That is the process going from 8.3 to 8.9 as we are now in process. I have been informed that all modules are working except for the absence management module, which is a new module that wasn’t being used previously. There were a number of them that were not being used. As I stated earlier, when the government had used it in a customized manner, there were a lot of pieces that were not being used. Instead, we continued to use our paper transaction style of doing business. When reviewing this, the question was why did we continue to do these transactions the old way when the program itself is actually built to do these things? When we looked at that, as well as the fact that we had to go from 8.3 to 8.9, a number of versions upgrade, we had to decide that we needed to go with the vanilla version, as termed, or the pure form of PeopleSoft 8.9. I don’t know if Mr. Dent may have further information to this, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think Mr. Roland has pretty adequately answered the question. The review in 2005, though, did determine that much of the functionality of PeopleSoft or the program had either been turned off or hidden and the recommendation was that when we got to a system that was not customized and could turn those on, it would make the system much more functional for us. As Mr. Roland has already noted, the big problem has been in trying to convert the data from a program where the program itself was modified in such a way that the new version of the program doesn’t recognize the information coming forward in most cases.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. What I am hearing both Minister Roland and Minister Dent telling us is that there is no report except for the Hackett report which was done in 2005 with respect to the implementation of this new software. There has been no report by the Audit Bureau that would speak to things like the confidentiality breach or things like the protocol that should have been followed by the government when they were implementing these changes to the software. There was no report that talked about that protocol that wasn’t followed before some of these pieces went live, so to speak. I just want to hear the Minister say that there is no report like that, because I have been told there is. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, as stated by Mr. Cleveland, in 2000 there was a post-implementation report done and 2005, after a number of issues that occurred, some of it not related to the program itself but to the equipment. In 2005, backup equipment and so on and realizing this fact that we’re not going to be able to continue to use the 8.3 version, that we would have to upgrade to the 8.9 version. We had that looked at by the Hackett Group to see what was being done and our processes and how that would best fit with going to the newer version. As a result of some of the incidents that occurred that the Members raised, there wasn’t any report done. The specific incident of the information that was out there as to a number of the problems that occurred, was looked at, not a report on the whole system but specific to that piece was done. Well, it was looked at. I don’t believe the Minister himself has that, but I know we looked at that, but we haven’t done a full implementation package. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Oh my goodness. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Now if that was not the most difficult thing to understand, that might win an award. Okay, so back to my question. Maybe I’m not calling it the right thing, but with respect to the recent difficulty that everybody is aware of, hello out there in the public service, everybody knows what I’m talking about, the implementation of the upgrade and the changes and the patches and things that were all done pre and post this thing going live and there being problems with it, and the denial by the Minister in this House that there had been a breech of confidential information. There was a report done on this. If there’s a report, I want to know where is the report? You said it is done, but the Minister doesn’t have a copy of it. Does anybody know what I’m talking about here? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, there was not a full report, as the Member stated, about all of the factors and it doesn’t go into the fact that the Member has raised about the Minister said no, there was no breech. There was a specific case looked at, but as a department we would look at doing a full review of the conversion back to 8.9 and implementation. Once it’s complete we would look at doing that. The specific issue itself, the Minister hasn’t been given a copy of the specific incident. That hasn’t been supplied to myself as Minister. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Next I have Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanted to ask the Minister on the Health and Social Services operations expenditures specific to the $150,000 that’s going to the Nurse Practitioner Program in terms of this funding that we receive from the federal government on these patient wait time guarantees in terms of how is this going to help people in our regions and our small communities in terms of this specific initiative? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I have to apologize. I was conferring on that. Can I have the Member repeat what his question was? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The patients’ wait time guarantees in regards to how this will impact or have an impact in our communities in the regions. I know there will be some with the larger communities with the hospitals, but I want to focus on the ones that don’t have that type of service in the larger centres, communities that are somewhat left out. I don’t want to say left out, but that hang in terms of services. So how is this going to work with our communities in terms of this patient time guarantees for our people in the smaller communities? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the patient wait times guaranteed trust funding, we’ve worked with the federal government to come up with a plan of how we think in the Northwest Territories would have best impact for front line and that is targeted at some of the smaller community issues. We have difficulty getting nurses into our smaller centres and having the adequate training to go into the smaller centres. So what we’ve worked on is a number of programs where we see front line being critical to the delivery of health care in the Northwest Territories. One is a Community Health Nurse Development Program and the Nurse Practitioners Program. The Community Health Nurse Development Program is something where we’re looking at taking our new graduates out of our Aurora College program or those from southern Canada, if they’re willing to come north, and provide them additional education opportunities so that they can have the adequate levels of expertise to go into our communities so that we can have nurses in those communities and not have to rely on agency nurses as we proceed forward. So there’s a couple of things there.

Another one is the Nurse Practitioner Program and that will also help in the delivery in our more remote communities as well as our larger centres. That funding is identified to help nurses in the field move to the Nurse Practitioner Program. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The other question I have for the Minister has to do with the $2.5 million for creation and implementation of a Tourism Product Diversification and Marketing Program. I’ll ask the Minister in terms of this project here in terms of I guess I’m curious as to where did this come out from in terms of a lot of questions around this here? So I’ll ask the Minister in terms of a very brief, very brief summary.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Can I ask Members to stick to the opening remarks of the Minister? It seems like sometimes we get into detail. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this request has come forward from the Department of ITI. The department itself came forward with its Tourism 2010 plan and it came forward for a request of funding. At that point there was not enough money identified as we felt and we gave it a bit of support. This is intended to increase that as well as deal with some of the impact of the changing environment that the tourism outfitters are working with in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Yakeleya.

I apologize, Mr. Chair; I got ahead of the boat here so I’m going to leave the rest for details. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Next I have Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to put on record I raised the PeopleSoft issue last week and it’s easy to sort of get all wound up and excited about a process and a problem, but when the Minister replied, it was Minister Dent at the time, that they were going back to the original platform sometimes referred to as vanilla, well I wish we would just clearly state for the record the original platform rather than mixing it up with all these odds and sod names.

I got some feedback from a constituent who actually is a government employee who was listening in and I want to say for the record…

…(inaudible)…

Wait until I make the statement. It’s a good news statement in the sense that there’s some satisfaction that the government is dealing with it and I think our employees are the ones that feel the integrity was not there for some time, but yet the response being the government has chosen to go back to the original program, the one that obviously works. So there is a satisfaction out there that it’s being dealt with. I think that also needs to be highlighted here.

Now there are other questions Members are raising and I don’t want to underscore the validity of those. They’re very important questions, but from my point of view when I was raising it last week it was about what are we doing and what are we doing to go forward, because there was some confusion. So the long and short of it is, I think that point needs to be put on record. I mean if we’re going to have a public service that has to have confidence in our system, we better make sure our system works very well for them because we can’t abuse that trust. I’d like to think I highlighted very well last week the issue of if our pay and benefits systems is eroded and falls out underneath us, I mean that’s a very important fabric of our life. If you can’t make that mortgage payment, you can’t make that child support payment, all those types of things, you know, your world almost ends to a larger part. No matter how many nice apologies you can get from the Minister of Human Resources, you’re still in a whole lot of ugliness until those things get sorted out. Like I say, I just wanted to put on record there was some feedback, the fact that going back to the original program was a satisfactory step from out there. Anyway, I felt it was important to put it on the record. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I, as well, have touched base with folks from my constituency and those that are involved. This program affects government employees and our programming is internal. A lot of the people outside hear it from those that they talk with in passing about the problems within government, computer programs and so on, but I’ve also heard from those who are involved in this process and feel that once the system is up and running the way it was designed, it will be a much better system. We’re hopeful that we can get there and get there soon, but there are issues that we will have to look into and do an evaluation of the whole process from beginning to implement to where it is today. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you. There is just one other area I wouldn’t mind highlighting while I have the floor here, which is there was some mention made earlier about some training and wanting to make sure our employees are up to speed on the return to the original program, and if the Minister has some highlights he can point out in this particular area I think that will just sort of end the areas of questioning I have at this time. I just want to make sure that our employees have the proper training to the new PeopleSoft if that’s the case or if we’re going back to the old version, the new old version, whatever, who wants to look at it as. At the end of the day, I want to make sure our employees are skilled in this area so they are provided practical and proper service for the rest of the public service. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, yes, the training is becoming a more and more important part of the whole program itself. The program that was designed had a training component that could be used, but with the way it was implemented was not a usual function of the platform that we finally put in place. Version 8.9 does have that feature available and we will be using that and working with all departments as has been occurring recently. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Next I have Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Maybe in thinking about the time here, maybe we could go into detail and I can ask specific questions as we move through the detail.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Does committee agree to go into detail?