PACP Committee News Release
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Standing Committee on Public Accounts |
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Comité permanent des comptes publics |
For immediate release
NEWS RELEASE
THE CANADA BORDER SERVICES AGENCY NEEDS TO ENSURE THAT ITS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INVESTMENTS SUPPORT CORPORATE OBJECTIVES
Ottawa, June 17, 2015 -
OTTAWA – While the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) has put in place a comprehensive framework to manage its portfolio of information technology (IT) investments, it needs to apply the framework appropriately and consistently in order to ensure that its IT projects will meet the Agency’s strategic corporate objectives, according to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts’ report presented today in the House of Commons by Committee Chair David Christopherson.
To help fulfill its mandate of managing the access of people and goods to Canada, the CBSA’s portfolio of IT investments is budgeted at more than $1 billion, primarily consisting of the Border Modernization initiative, involving eight projects, and the Beyond the Border Action Plan, which includes 32 government-wide initiatives.
In its Spring 2015 Reports, the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) released a performance audit that examined whether the CBSA had the corporate and management practices in place to enable the delivery of IT investments that align with and support the CBSA’s strategic corporate objectives.
Overall, the OAG concluded that the CBSA had the necessary corporate and management practices to deliver on its IT investments. However, the CBSA had not put into practice all of the elements of its project portfolio management framework to ensure that its IT projects would support strategic corporate objectives. The OAG noted that the CBSA had several challenges, such as a duplication of effort, project delays, and projects not delivering what was expected. Also, the committees overseeing project portfolios did not have sufficient information to fully exercise their responsibility to ensure that project requirements and conditions were met at each stage of approval.
In order to improve the implementation of its IT project management framework, the Committee expects that the CBSA will strengthen the governance process for IT investments, clarify IT systems requirements to ensure project benefits are realized, and establish consistent procedures and practices for the collection and reporting of project status information.
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