Public Accounts committee  I think it's important to take a step back. The expenditure management information system is a collection of pieces of software that we use to collect information from departments, to assemble the various vote structures, and to publish the main estimates and the supplementary estimates documents.

Public Accounts committee  I'll try to be brief. The Treasury Board put a policy in place effective in April 2005 called the management, reporting and results structure policy. As of last year, the main estimates that come to Parliament have a set of strategic outcomes for each department—program activity architectures.

Public Accounts committee  The expenditure management system is that, yes.

Public Accounts committee  We have not actually gone to Treasury Board to ask for the approval to spend up to that $53 million even this year, so we remain under that limit. As I said earlier, that was a multi-year plan. We replanned the project's starting to last year. We had an internal audit that came along just before the Auditor General's audit, through the large IT projects.

Public Accounts committee  We are now scheduled with the replan project to have a replacement integrated system in operation and fully tested this November. We plan to maintain the legacy systems on a parallel basis for the balance of the next estimates year, but our current plan with the blueprint that we're just approving this week, actually, is to switch over as of November for the production of the 2008-09 main estimates.

Public Accounts committee  That would have been, depending on the timing—That is a multi-year cost estimate, not a one-year estimate; some of that cost would have been reflected in the mains, actually, this year.

Public Accounts committee  It is very little, in my view. I personally put in writing to departmental senior financial officers twice a year a reminder that they should not spend; they are not to spend.

Public Accounts committee  We have no way to judge that. The one way in which departments could, while respecting Parliament's authority, move ahead on some initiatives is if they were working within a vote that did not name the activity. For example, for a grant and contribution, you can't come up with a new grant and contribution without coming to Parliament.

Public Accounts committee  I think there are two pieces of evidence that you do have. One, the public accounts will show any department that spent in excess of its vote. Some years, no one will have; and if anybody has, they will be very clearly listed. The Auditor General is, of course, paying close attention to that.

Public Accounts committee  To the best of my knowledge, sir, we have information on the annual use of authorities, as opposed to the daily, weekly, or monthly use of authorities.

Public Accounts committee  Do you mean the annual cost of operating those systems?

Public Accounts committee  The annual cost of operating those systems is about $6 million.

Public Accounts committee  Sure. I have two examples. In the 1997 budget, as we were just coming up to a balanced budget, there was a total for 1997-98, the next fiscal year,of $600 million in new direct program spending proposals. The supplementaries in total that year were $3.7 billion of voted spending.

Public Accounts committee  In fact, we highlight the aggregate amount of operating budget carry-forward in the supplementary estimates documents. The one just tabled by the president last Thursday, for example, pulled together all the operating budget carry-forward items to show Parliament exactly what they added up to.

Public Accounts committee  Some departments perform better, it’s true. However, I cannot personally comment on their success in implementing or following-up on policies.