Deloitte's Second Act

18 Mar 2015

Hot off their success transforming the BC social services sector with “integrated case management”, Deloitte is now heavily staffing the upcoming transformation of the IT systems that underpin our natural resource management ministries.

Interlude: I should briefly note here that Deloitte’s work in social services involved building a $180,000,000 case management system that the people who use it generally do not like, using software that nobody else uses for social services, that went offline for several consecutive days last year, and based on software that basically entered end-of-life almost five years ago. I’m sure that’s not Deloitte’s fault, they are only the international experts hired to advise on the best ways to build the system and then actually build it.

Anyhow…

The brain trust has now decided that the thing we need on the land base is “integrated decision making”, presumably because everything tastes better “integrated”. A UVic MPA student has done a complete write-up of the scheme — and I challenge you to find the hard centre inside this chewey mess of an idea — but here’s a representative sample:

The IDM initiative is an example of horizontal management because it is an initiative among non‐hierarchical ministries focused on gaining efficiencies by harmonizing regulations, IT systems and business processes for the betterment of the NRS as a whole. Horizontal management is premised on joint or consensual decision making rather than a more traditional vertical hierarchy.  Horizontal collaborations create links and share information, goodwill, resources, and power or capabilities by organizations in two or more sectors to achieve jointly what they cannot achieve individually.  

Sounds great, right!?! Just the sort of thing I’d choose to manage billions of dollars in natural resources! (I jest.)

Of course, the brain trust really isn’t all that interested in “horizontal management”, what has them hot and bothered about “integrated decision making” is that it’s an opportunity to spend money on “IT systems and business processes”. Yay!

To that end, they carefully prepared a business case for Treasury Board, asking for well north of $100M to rewrite every land management system in government. Forests, lands, oil and gas, heritage, the whole kit and caboodle. The business case says:

IDM will improve the ability of the six ministries and many agencies in the NRS to work together to provide seamless, high‐quality service to proponents and the public, to provide effective resource stewardship across the province, to effectively consult with First Nations in natural resource decisions, and to contribute to cross‐government priorities.

Sounds ambitious! I wonder how they’re going to accomplish this feat of re-engineering? Well, I’m going to keep on wondering, because they redacted everything in the business case except the glowing hyperbole.

However, even though we don’t know how, or really why, they are embarking on this grand adventure, we can rest assured that they are now spending money at a rate of about $10M / year making it happen, much of it on our good friends Deloitte.

*Not that Secretariat...*

• There are currently 80 consultants billing on what has been christened the “Natural Resource Sector Transformation Secretariat”.
• Of those consultants 34 are (so far) from Deloitte.
• Coincidentally, 34 is also the number of government staff working at the Secretariat.
• So, 114 staff, of which 34 are government employees and the rest are contractors. How many government employees does it take to change a lightbulb? Let me take that to procurement and I’ll get back to you.

The FOI system charged me $120 (and only after I bargained down my request to a much less informative one) to find the above out, because they felt that the information did not meet the test of being “of public interest”. If you feel it actually is in the public interest to learn where our $100M on IT services for natural resources are being spent, and you live in BC, please leave me a comment on this post.

Interlude: The test for whether fees should be waived is double barrelled, but is (hilariously) decided by the public body itself (soooo unbiased). Here are the tests I think I pass (but they don’t):

1. Do the records show how the public body is allocating financial or other resources?
2. Is your primary purpose to disseminate information in a way that could reasonably be expected to benefit the public, or to serve a private interest?

I’m still digging for more information (like, how is it that Deloitte can bill out 34 staff on this project when there hasn’t been a major RFP for it yet?) so stay tuned and send me any hints if you have them.