StatsCan wants its freedom from central federal IT department: documents

OTTAWA — The country’s chief statistician believes Statistics Canada must have complete control of its own digital systems rather than having to turn to the federal government’s central IT department.

Workers at the statistics agency were told earlier this year that it was antithetical having someone else look after IT services when the Liberals vowed during the election to make Statistics Canada more independent from the federal government.

The details are contained in documents obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act that included speaking notes for chief statistician Wayne Smith.

“Dependence on another party for informatics services impedes our ability to deliver our programs, to innovate and transform, (and) to better address new and emerging data needs,” Smith’s speaking notes read.

“As such, this dependence is incoherent with the notion of independence, not to mention protection of the confidentiality of respondent data.”

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Shared Services Canada and the statistics agency have had a rocky relationship amid outages and sluggish systems critical to Statistics Canada’s mandate.

Smith also wrote in response to a staff question that “programs have suffered and continue to suffer delays” since Statistics Canada handed over oversight of its systems to Shared Services Canada, creating “challenges in terms of reliability, timeliness, effectiveness and affordability of IT architecture.”

A spokeswoman for Shared Services Canada said in an email that the IT department is working with Statistics Canada to “ensure its operational needs are met.”

Stephanie Richardson said Shared Services Canada has proposed moving Statistics Canada systems to a new “world-class” data centre “in order to reduce incidents.”

The Canadian Press