The Information Technology Working Group
January 2002 Report
The Information Technology subcommittee of the CERC met on January 7, 2002. The following notes are the impressions of the OPSEU delegation.
Four Systems Officers/OPSEU activists met with four representatives of the OPS Employer from the Negotiations Secretariat and the Corporate Chief Information Office (CCIO).
We communicated to them our view that Information Technology branches and clusters in the OPS were degraded as a direct result of the increased use and reliance on high-priced outside contractors as well as large Information Technology Consulting houses such as Accenture and EDS. Ministry branches are hiring their own
consultants to work on their new IT systems. We pointed out that this process was causing an erosion of labour relations as well as a degradation of the IT branches. The public and the public sector suffer by these practices with inefficiencies, dependencies and high costs.
The Provincial Auditor, Eric Peters, chastised this practice late last year.
We explained that a number of factors were contributing to this practice:
· A disproportionate relationship between ODOE funding vs. DOE funding from the Central bodies
· The absence of a comprehensive training program for regular full-time civil servants
· The exodus of too many managers from the Civil Service to the consulting companies, creating conflict situations
The OPSEU Information Technology Working Group hopes to utilize this subcommittee as a forum to:
· Express the specific concerns of Systems Officers and OPSEU to the attention of the Corporate Chief Information Office
· Work to change these privatization tendencies in Information Technology practices in the OPS
Some specific items we brought to their attention were:
· The use of outside consultant staff and large consulting houses as opposed to the deployment and development of civil servants
· The availability of training opportunities for regular staff
· The impact of legacy systems phase out as newer technologies are applied
The employer representatives expressed their desire to use this subcommittee to share information on IT directions. They made clear their concern that this forum not be used to duplicate or take on the mandate of established joint committees (e.g. CERC, MERCs, LERCs).
With respect to that previous point made by the employer representatives, our position is that the merging of Ministry IT branches into IT Clusters creates unique challenges to the effective use of those traditional committees to deal with IT issues. Therefore this IT subcommittee should broaden its mandate.
OPSEU leadership has already adopted this approach by granting the OPSEU IT Working Group that broader mandate.
The process to schedule our next meeting and agenda is underway. Contact us at systemsofficer@opseu.org to tell us your suggestions, comments, experiences with these issues or other IT related matters.
