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Global Case Management System

STATUS REPORT ON MAJOR CROWN PROJECTS

Description

The Global Case Management System (GCMS) is a multi-year program that will replace several business systems of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) with an integrated, case management-based set of applications and infrastructure components that will support CIC’s and the CBSA’s client operations.

Once in place, GCMS will improve overall program integrity, effectiveness and client-service delivery, and facilitate communications and data sharing between CIC and the CBSA and with our other partners. GCMS will also provide the technological foundation to support new business initiatives and capitalize on innovative technology.

Project Phase

The GCMS project is currently in the implementation phase.

Leading and Participating Departments

Prime Contractor

Major Milestones

Progress Report and Explanation of Variances

• Preliminary project approval was obtained from Treasury Board on March 1, 2001, with a planned cost of $194.8 million.
• Effective project approval was obtained from Treasury Board on January 31, 2002, with a planned cost of $194.8 million and a completion date of March 31, 2005.
• Shortly after the preliminary project approval, a decision was made to acquire and configure a commercial client relationship management software package rather than custom develop the functionality required for GCMS. This necessitated a lengthy competitive procurement process that began in March 2001, with an expected completion date of July 1, 2002. Cumulative procurement and contracting delays beyond CIC control, totalling nine months, prevented the contract from being awarded until March 26, 2003. This delay affected activities and resources highly dependent on the outcome of the procurement process. While the project undertook steps to mitigate the impact of the delay, the cost of the delay was assessed at $7.8 million.
• Approval of an amended effective project approval was obtained from Treasury Board on October 9, 2003. In recognition of the impact of the procurement delay, Treasury Board increased the project spending authority by $7.8 million to $202.6 million, but did not fund the additional cost. Subsequent implementation plans addressed the impact of the procurement delay and adjusted the overall project completion date to December 2005.
• The first GCMS business component—Citizenship—was scheduled for implementation in June 2004, but was implemented only in September 2004, three months after the target date. The main reason for this change was to minimize the risk that the quality of the product would be negatively affected by a schedule that was too aggressive, and to ensure that the foundation established by the initial GCMS deployment would be as solid and reliable as possible.
• The transfer of certain CIC functions to the newly created Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) beginning in December 2003, as well as lessons learned from the first GCMS deployment in September 2004, necessitated further adjustments to the GCMS project plan. These changes formed the basis of the second amendment to the effective project approval, granted by Treasury Board in September 2005, and resulted in a net increase of $40.2 million to the project budget over two additional fiscal years, for a total budget of $242.8 million between fiscal years 2000–01 and 2007–08.
• As part of this amendment, the current implementation schedule has been extended to reflect the time required to finalize business requirements, to complete the functional design, to configure and test the application, to incorporate the approved functional scope enhancements, and to complete the overseas roll-out in a series of staged deployments to minimize operational disruption.

Industrial Benefits

GCMS is an administrative system for delivering on the CIC and CBSA mandates and ensuring operational service effectiveness.

Summary of Non-recurring Expenditures (in millions)

The Treasury Board Secretariat holds funding in frozen allotments released to CIC on the basis of progress reports.