Government telecommunications network: “Taxpayers pay double”

While delays cause the bill for its new telecommunications network to skyrocket, the Quebec government is forced to continue paying the supplier of the old network to the tune of several tens of millions of dollars each year.

• Also read: Government telecommunications network: Bell delays cost taxpayers $5.7M

“Taxpayers are paying twice, it doesn’t make sense!” says a government source who requested anonymity because she is not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

The Journal reported last week that the bill for the new government telecommunications network exploded by $5.7M due to delays by Bell in carrying out certain work.

Originally, this IT project was only supposed to cost $8.2M, but after multiple budget increases, the bill now stands at $46.9M. This represents an increase of 472%.

Pay twice

But while the work is delayed and the bill balloons, the government must continue to pay TELUS, the current network provider having to be replaced because it is “outdated”.

And the bill is steep. The current contract, signed on September 30, 2023, is worth $189.9M, for a period of three years, with one option year.

“It’s not complicated, we pay two big internet bills,” complains our source.

“No contract extension is planned,” assured the public affairs coordinator of the Ministry of Cybersecurity and Digital Affairs, Caroline Lemieux, in an email to Journal.

Since 2008, the contracts and amendments that the Quebec government has signed with TELUS are close to $1.5 billion.

Work is progressing

The ministry nevertheless maintains that the work to “implement” the new network will be completed shortly, and it assesses the progress of the project at 95%.

On the other hand, this does not mean that 95% of ministries and other government agencies have started using the new network. “To date, 12 customers have been migrated to the RGT,” underlined M^me Lemieux.

For information purposes, note that there are 23 ministries and 121 organizations in Quebec.

Common phenomenon

Budget overruns in government IT projects are an increasingly frequent phenomenon.

The Journal reported a few weeks ago that Santé Québec’s administrative systems would cost $228M more than expected.

Likewise, Revenu Québec saw the bill for overhauling its withholding tax processing system increase from $14M to $20M, a little earlier this year.