Thank you for that. Through that planning of your general office space, as you’ve pointed out for the record there, what type of work has been done to avoid market disruption? Has a study gone on and is that available for Members to take into consideration? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister McLeod or Mr. Guy? Mr. Guy.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, the market disruption was looked at during the work that the Department of Executive did working with ITI on the general purpose office space review. That analysis was done as part of that study. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
When was that market analysis done and would the department be willing to offer a copy to Members? Thank you.
That work was done over the last fiscal year. I think it was probably started around this time last year and it concluded during the summer of 2009. That report was prepared on behalf of the Department of Executive, so they would have to respond to the release of that information. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
How far along is this general purpose office space? How far along is it within the system? Has a particular space -- and when I say “space,” I mean property, obviously -- been identified at this particular time and, if so, how large is that particular space? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Guy. Sorry about that. Minister McLeod.
Yes, Mr. Chairman, right now we’re at the planning stage. We have, I believe, some money earmarked towards that in a supp and we have looked at a number of options in terms of sites and have looked at building size and things of that nature, but we’re still fairly early in the review.
Mr. Chairman, has a particular size of the general office space been decided upon at this particular stage? If I hear the Minister correctly and the DM, that this project is sort of in the early stages, but has a particular size of a potential building been identified? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, the size of the building that we would like to bring forward is 6,000 square metres and it’s around the same size as the Laing Building, I believe. Thank you.
In the market disruption study process, Mr. Guy has mentioned it had been done over the last fiscal year. Obviously it’s pretty recent, it sounds. As many people would know, the Bellanca Building is coming to a point here very shortly that it will be empty and I’m just wondering, was that building taken into consideration, knowing that that building will be empty in about a year, year and a half. Was that considered in the market disruption study? Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, yes, we took that into consideration. Thank you.
Is there anything that the Minister can speak to the size of the market, how it will change, or is that a better question for the Department of Executive? In essence, I want to get a sense of the type of impact this will have on the Yellowknife market at this particular time, knowing that potentially again -- we’re speaking potentially here -- of a new government office building and we also know that one commercial building is opening up very quickly here. So I’m trying to get a sense of the size and magnitude of shift in the market that may or may not happen. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, we can certainly point to the fact that the availability of office space has been practically zero in Yellowknife. The demand is certainly growing and we feel this is a valued investment. It would help in many different ways and, yes, the people that are planning to have available office space are quite aware of what we’re doing. In fact, they are working on some of the aspects of this new building with us.
Oh, I’m sorry; I should correct that. I just had a correction here. They are working on another building that will be opening up office space.
I know, of course, every fiscal dollar is an important fiscal dollar that we have and it’s important to use it wisely. Has the Department of Public Works considered the potential opening up of the Bellanca Building in the next year, year and a half, to consider it in the context of would it suit their needs as opposed to building a new building for general purpose office space? Has that consideration or discussion happened at all?
I’m not speaking in the sense of I don’t want investment in our territorial economy; I’m just concerned of the market disruption this will play. One of the things the department needs to hear, from both my point of view as well as the market point of view, is that when we... You know, I don’t believe we’re in the business to make sure that every leased space is picked up, but what this does is puts a lot of small retail spaces at risk as well. So it’s that type of disruption when a larger space becomes available, it can have many devastating ripple effects on our small little leasing market in our community. So I just wanted to find out if the Department of Public Works has even had a discussion with them in the context of possibilities whereas that space may be suitable. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, we see this investment as a positive move; we see this as an ability to open up new office space. We also have had discussions with the people that the Member is referring to. The Member is aware, I believe, that the people who are going to have the available office space are building a new building to put the very offices that they have into this new office space. So there’s been discussion. I think most of the major players in Yellowknife are aware and have had some discussion at least with the concept if not some of the detail. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Minister. Nobody else on the list on asset management, operations expenditure summary, $81.946 million.
Agreed.
Page 7-18, asset management, active positions. Questions? Agreed?
Agreed.
Page 7-21, Technology Service Centre, operations expenditure summary, $1.361 million.
Agreed.
Mr. Yake... Oh, Mr. Bromley, then Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I understand that the education authorities have been removed from the network and I’m wondering, first of all, have I got that right. Is there a cost associated with this? When is it going to happen? And, finally, is it difficult to do this? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Minister.
Mr. Chairman, no, the education institutions haven’t been removed from the service.
Yes, I realize they haven’t, but I understood that that was the plan. If that’s not the plan, I’m happy to learn that.
Mr. Chairman, we’ll have our TSC expert here speak on some of the more specific detail as to what we have done and what will be happening.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. There has been a lot of...
Just wait until the light comes on.
Sorry. Okay? Okay, good? Thank you, Mr... Not yet?
Thank you, Ms. Gault. Thank you, Mr. Minister. You just have to be directed through the chair, Ms. Gault. Ms. Gault.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. There has been a lot of change in the network and in the traffic patterns of all departments, Education in particular being a particular heavy user by the nature of their activity and with the students. What we are looking at is a redesign of our network. So this is not setting up separate or private networks for one department or other, but looking at all departments, looking at the traffic flows within the whole network and then finding what is the optimal traffic patterns for each. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Ms. Gault. Anything further, Mr. Bromley?
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the comments towards greater understanding here. Is there a cost that’s estimated to that budgeted for it and do we know is there a schedule yet for that? Thank you.
In working with the department, there could be a very small equipment-related cost specific to Education. That would be at their discretion for additional reporting for their usage. But the capacity that has already been forecasted and has been within the approved submission, so this is really a redesign of traffic versus an incremental cost.
Thank you, Ms. Gault. Next the chair will recognize Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. One question to this part here. In terms of the funding, it seems that it’s going up almost every year. Is there some type of control in terms of the Technical Services Centre in terms of the expenditures? Is it going to level out in terms of the increases that we’re seeing every year in terms of this piece of work here?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Minister.
Mr. Chairman, we’re looking at the change, and the change is as a result of a net change to the amortization expense of $94,000.
Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Yakeleya. Okay, thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Next I have Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just on the TSC area, I’ve always been a good supporter of the direction the TSC has been going. I think it made good sense when they were going the direction. One concern I’d like to highlight, perhaps it more of a myth as opposed to a fact, but I’m hearing a lot of concern about the size of the network sort of being pared down on employees. So, in other words, the usage, storage, those types of things are being pared back, if I can leave it as simple as that. Is there any truth to that, from this point of view? Are there any changes in our network that are reflecting usage for whether it’s employees who want to use the network or store things on the particular network? Of course, we are talking work-related issues. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Ms. Gault.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. There is no question storage growth is a real challenge for TSC and for GNWT. What we find as we manage to contain our storage through increased technology devices, departments more and more are requiring more storage because of applications that are required by the government. Each year we budget for additional infrastructure growth. At this point, it’s finding that balance, but we see it increasing, but more in a controlled fashion as the technology allows us to tier our levels of storage so that we can make that cheaper and more compact. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate that answer. I’m noticing it a little bit myself. People will start sending large attachments. I mean, we’re starting to see reports. I mean, there’s been discussion by this House. I think this House, the Assembly is trying to lead by example, where we keep more documents in electronic form rather than paper form. Things of that nature, and I see that challenge sort of coming up. I’m just wondering how the TSC is responding to the fact that, you know, I can open up my e-mail any day of the week and there are several attachments of three, four or five megabytes each and, you know, you always have to aggressively stay on top of your e-mail. And it’s difficult, because e-mail are also an important asset to people like us in our job, not unlike any other person in our government system where they need to keep information and store it and some of it is very relevant that we need to go back to it. The management of this type of information is extremely critical. I mean, any project officer will tell you they’ll probably keep every e-mail they’ve ever had on a particular project. Any MLA in this room here will probably tell you that they need to keep every particular e-mail concerning certain constituents because they’ve been through difficult situations and whatnot, ones that require a high level of management that you want to make sure that every detail and every step has been followed or followed through for them on their behalf, and that type of information. My concern being is it getting smaller, that capacity? Is it coming down on us? The fact is, people are using this technology more and more. Is it keeping pace with the demands that are coming forward?
Thank you, Mr. Chair. If I could hear some comments in that regard. Thank you.
To summarize, I think I can tell you about three initiatives to specifically address. One of these is in e-mail archiving that TSC is leading. This will condense the amount of space for e-mails. We’ll be looking to deliver that toward the end of this year.
There is an enterprise document management initiative that’s being looked at now to address the cross-government-wide use and proliferation of documents duplication. That’s probably a one to two-year horizon. As well, as I mentioned, the tiered storage. We’re hoping to move toward that over this coming year. So there are three initiatives we are hoping will address the growing demand. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for that. That’s good news to hear. I feel very sad to say I actually understand what you’re saying and I can see how it works too.
Just for the record one more time, has there been any change in restriction of flow or storage capacity that we’ve enjoyed in the context of doing work via e-mail or storage of our work? Thank you.
No, we have not done any restrictions. We will reach capacity or close to our certain limit and we will send a note out to departments and ask them to move some storage or to delete, where possible. But we have never turned down departments or told them to remove important documents. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks, Ms. Gault. Thanks, committee. We’re on page 7-21, TSC, operations expenditure summary, $1.361 million.
Agreed.
