Taking Back Control of Our Public IT Projects

There is a systemic problem in the management of public IT projects in Canada and Quebec. This is not a secret. It is not an opinion. It is a finding documented by auditors general, public inquiries, and decades of data.

The numbers are hard to ignore. And yet, the same mistakes repeat themselves, project after project, government after government. At V.I.A. Solutions, we believe it is time to stop documenting the damage and start building concrete solutions.

ArriveCAN: $80,000 That Became $59.5 Million

In February 2024, Canada's Auditor General Karen Hogan released a devastating report on the ArriveCAN application. The initial estimate for the app was $80,000. The final cost: approximately $59.5 million, 744 times the original budget.

But the most troubling aspect is not the amount itself. It is that the government was unable to determine the true cost of the project due to poor record-keeping. The Auditor General was categorical:

“This is probably some of the worst financial record keeping that I've seen.”

She also emphasized in a CBC Radio interview that “an emergency is not an excuse to ignore the most basic requirements of maintaining complete and accurate records.”

According to CBC News, the Auditor General's report revealed that GC Strategies, a two-person firm, was awarded contracts totalling $19.1 million. According to that same report, this firm had helped write the requirements that it subsequently bid on.

SAAQclic: Half a Billion in Overruns

The SAAQclic project by Quebec's automobile insurance agency (SAAQ) was intended to modernize the agency's IT systems. Initial budget: $638 million over 10 years. According to the February 2025 report by Quebec's Auditor General (VGQ), the total cost will reach “at minimum” $1.1 billion, an overrun of approximately $462 million, or 72% above the 2017 projections.

The VGQ concluded that the project was “certainly not a success.” The Gallant Commission subsequently concluded that SAAQ management had “lied to parliamentarians, ministers, and their ministerial staff” for years about the real state of the project.

The February 2023 launch was catastrophic: the system could not process transactions, erroneous information was sent to courts, vehicles were wrongly listed as stolen, and police were unable to access the system. Quebec's anti-corruption unit (UPAC) raided SAAQ headquarters.

According to the February 2025 report by Quebec's Auditor General, the primary vendor had privileged access before the bidding process even began, an unfair advantage that compromised the integrity of the entire procurement.

Phoenix: $4.8 Billion and Unpaid Public Servants

According to CBC News, the federal government's Phoenix pay system was estimated at $309 million. As of 2025, cumulative costs have reached approximately $4.8 billion. As an example, 483,130 employees received overpayments alone, not counting those who were underpaid or not paid at all for months.

This Is Not Anecdotal: It Is Structural

The Large Government of Canada IT Projects tracker catalogues 495 federal IT projects (2022 data). Among them: the Canada Revenue Agency's Quantum 2.0 project experienced a 407% cost increase (from $14.2M to $71.9M), and the Offender Management System was 8.62 years behind schedule.

The Root Causes

Analyzing these failures, four recurring structural flaws emerge — and every one of them was preventable:

• Inadequate initial requirements scoping: requirements are vaguely or ambiguously defined, with no independent validation before the RFP. Acceptance criteria are unclear, contractual risks go unidentified, and the project's foundations are fragile from the start. ArriveCAN and SAAQclic illustrate what happens when no one rigorously challenges a project's foundations before signing.
• No real-time visibility on actual progress: progress reports are produced by the same teams delivering the project. Without an independent, real-time source of information on deliverable status, deviations accumulate silently until they become crises. By the time decision-makers discover reality, it is already too late.
• Undetected scope creep: amendments are added without rigorous assessment of their cumulative impact on budget and schedule. No one systematically verifies that each deliverable remains compliant with the original contractual commitments. The initial scope becomes unrecognizable.
• Non-existent decision traceability: when the Auditor General investigates, records are incomplete, decisions are undocumented, and accountability is diluted. It is impossible to link a decision to its actual financial impact. Accountability becomes a theoretical exercise.

V.I.A.'s Response: Technology and Independence

At V.I.A. Solutions, we do not settle for diagnosing the problem. We build the tools and processes to solve it — by combining an intelligent governance platform with independent advisory at every stage of the project.

An Intelligent Governance Platform

Each structural flaw identified above calls for a targeted technological response. Our platform is designed to address them:

• Intelligent Scoping Assistant: an AI-powered tool that supports requirements definition upstream of the project — clear, measurable, and verifiable requirements, unambiguous acceptance criteria, and proactive identification of contractual risks. The project's foundations are solid before the RFP is even drafted.
• Real-Time Deliverable Visibility: a dashboard that provides an independent source of information on the true state of the project, complementing reports produced by delivery teams. Deviations are detected as they emerge — not months later.
• Automated Compliance: every deliverable, every amendment, every scope change is automatically verified against contractual commitments. Drifts are flagged and quantified before they accumulate.
• Immutable Operational Ledger: every operational action — deliverable approval, payment trigger, prototype validation, amendment acceptance — is preserved in a tamper-proof ledger, whether performed by a human or by the platform. The result: a complete project timeline and full visibility over the contract as a whole.

Independent Advisory Upstream and Throughout the Project

Technology alone is not enough. V.I.A. Solutions provides independent third-party advisory with no stake in project delivery — our sole objective is that the project succeeds, on time, on budget, with the expected results:

• Upstream: strategic scoping and technical contract diagnosis before signing, to ensure the project's foundations are solid and requirements are verifiable.
• During the project: technical realignment when a project drifts, with an independent diagnosis of gaps and an actionable corrective plan.
• Continuously: contractual alignment monitoring and AI governance strategy to support the adoption of emerging technologies with rigor and responsible governance.

It Is Time to Act

The billions wasted on public IT projects are not inevitable. These are public funds — taxpayer money — that could be invested in healthcare, education, or infrastructure.

Society deserves better. Citizens deserve to know that every dollar invested in digital transformation corresponds to a concrete and verifiable result.

At V.I.A. Solutions, that is exactly what we make possible. A platform that automates rigor. Independent advisory that guarantees objectivity. No gray areas.

It is time to take back control.