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2003 November Report of the Auditor General of Canada

November 2003 Report—Chapter 1

Exhibit 1.6—Examples of other electronic service delivery projects

We noted several projects for delivering on-line services that are not fully accountable to the GOL Project Management Office.

For example, before the advent of GOL, the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA) had implemented various electronic service delivery (ESD) projects to enable the public to file tax returns electronically. These included NETFILE, EFILE, and Internet T-4 Filing. CCRA's efforts to develop these projects clearly supported the GOL vision of connecting citizens to government services on-line.

Another example is the government's recent transfer of more than $50 million from the Employment Insurance Account and the Canada Pension Plan to pay for ESD projects in these areas.

Although partially funded by the Treasury Board Secretariat, the AgConnex project is another major initiative that falls outside the GOL Project Management Office. This is a major Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada GOL initiative to provide better delivery of farm financial programs to its clients, primarily farmers and rural Canadians. The Department expects that the new project will significantly increase services to its client base and also improve recording and reporting of program performance and financial information. As of June 2003, the Department was still at preliminary project approval stage and had estimated "an indicative total cost" at $177 million to 2006-07. However, the Department has advised that it is currently redefining and restructuring the concept into separate, manageable discrete projects that individually are to be lower cost and risk. At 31 March 2003, the Secretariat had provided $4.3 million in GOL funding toward this project.

In addition, we noted that by March 2003, the government had invested $1.1 billion in Canada Health Infoway Inc., an independent not-for-profit and non-governmental organization. The organization received these funds to build an on-line infrastructure for sharing the health records of Canadians in collaboration with the provinces and territories. In 2002, the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology recommended providing a total of $2.5 billion to the Infoway project over a five-year period.