OGGO Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, December 5, 2002

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1155

The Chair (Mr. Reg Alcock (Winnipeg South, Lib.))

Â

1200

Ms. Roberta Santi (Associate Deputy Comptroller General, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat)

Â

1205

Â

1210

Â

1215

The Chair

Ms. Maria Barrados (Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General )

Â

1220

The Chair

Mr. Paul Forseth (New Westminster—Coquitlam—Burnaby, Canadian Alliance)

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1225

Ms. Roberta Santi

The Chair

Â

1230

Ms. Maria Barrados

The Chair

Mr. Alex Shepherd (Durham, Lib.)

Ms. Maria Barrados

Mr. Alex Shepherd

Ms. Maria Barrados

Mr. Alex Shepherd

Ms. Maria Barrados

Â

1235

Mr. Alex Shepherd

Ms. Maria Barrados

Mr. John Mayne (Principal, Office of the Auditor General)

The Chair

Mr. Robert Lanctôt (Châteauguay, BQ)

Â

1240

Ms. Roberta Santi

Mr. Lee McCormack (Executive Director, Results-based Management, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat)

The Chair

Mr. Roy Cullen (Etobicoke North, Lib.)

Â

1245

Ms. Maria Barrados

Mr. Roy Cullen

Ms. Maria Barrados

Mr. Roy Cullen

Ms. Maria Barrados

Â

1250

The Chair

Ms. Maria Barrados

Mr. Roy Cullen

Ms. Maria Barrados

Mr. Roy Cullen

Ms. Roberta Santi

The Chair

Ms. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's, Lib.)

The Chair

Ms. Carolyn Bennett

Â

1255

Ms. Maria Barrados

The Chair

Ms. Carolyn Bennett

Ms. Maria Barrados

The Chair

Ms. Roberta Santi

The Chair

Ms. Roberta Santi

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1300

The Chair

Ms. Roberta Santi

The Chair

Ms. Roberta Santi

The Chair

Ms. Roberta Santi

The Chair

Ms. Roberta Santi

Mr. Lee McCormack

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates

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NUMBER 005

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Thursday, December 5, 2002

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Á  (1155)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Reg Alcock (Winnipeg South, Lib.)) : [The Committee proceeds to sit in public]

    Can we come to order.

    Let me begin by noting that our 15-minute business meeting went an entire hour, which will squeeze the time we have available here, unfortunately.

    But you were given a topic. Perhaps what I could do is ask first the Treasury Board Secretariat and then the Auditor General's office to make their opening statements, and then we'll move into this.

  (1200)  

    Ms. Roberta Santi (Associate Deputy Comptroller General, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Today we are going to be circulating a deck, so that I can actually brief members using the deck. We are also passing out a copy of “Canada's Performance 2002” because we'll be making reference to it and it may help the members get access to that particular document.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm pleased to appear before the committee today to provide a briefing on performance reporting and horizontal initiatives.

[Translation]

    With me today are Mr. Lee McCormack, Executive Director, Results Management and Reporting and Ms. Louise Bellefeuille-Prégent, Senior Director, Horizontal Results Management.

    We have been invited to talk to you about our report Canada's Performance 2002 and horizontal issues reporting. On November 19, we made a presentation on the supply authorization and allocation process as well as the reporting process and this is a good opportunity to provide a follow-up.

    At a previous meeting in November, we discussed the preparation of the estimates and other related documents, including the government's expenditure plan, as well as the Main Estimates and the departmental expenditure plans.

    We also mentioned our annual report on Canada's performance, which is a report on performance across the federal government. Today, I would like to focus on Canada's Performance 2002, linking it to the departmental performance reports.

    On November 21, the President of Treasury Board tabled before Parliament Canada's Performance 2002. You have a copy in front of you. This is the second such report. The previous one mainly focussed on the implementation of results-based management. Canada's Performance 2002 represents a major change of direction. It contains information on crucial issues of interest to Canadians.

    The report also brings to bear the views and information needs of parliamentarians and citizens. This report is more focussed on transparency and accountability and follows up on the Speech from the Throne of 2002 in which the government of Canada made it a priority to establish a new partnership between government and citizens.

    The report provides an overview of the quality of life of Canadians as measured by 19 societal indicators that have been grouped according to four themes: economic opportunities and innovation; health; the environment; the strength and safety of Canadian communities. The report recognizes the need for government to engage individuals, the private sector and the voluntary sector in order to improve the quality of life in each of these areas.

    The report highlights not only achievements but also areas that need to be improved. For example, it underlines our economic success, especially in terms of jobs, but also emphasizes the disproportional representation of certain groups in the low-income population.

    We are determined to continuously improve the report every year based on the feedback we receive.

  (1205)  

[English]

    Turning to slide 3, I would say this undertaking has three very important objectives. The first is to make sure there is a government-wide context for the review of departmental results. Canada's performance provides an opportunity in which to review the plans and results of individual federal departments and agencies. This whole-of-government perspective provides parliamentarians and citizens with an improved means to engage on budget and program matters.

    Secondly, one of the objectives is to encourage citizen engagement. The report informs Canadians about the country's social and economic situation as well as about some of the public policy issues raised by it. Informing Canadians in this way will pave the way for increased engagement in public policy debates whether through government-led consultations or through active participation in policy formulation initiatives.

    Thirdly, we believe it encourages a modern management regime focused on results. The report encourages departments and agencies to clearly link their objectives and their achievements to the improvements in the quality of life of Canadians.

    Turning to slide 4, you can see here that what we have are the four main themes for the report in the 19 indicators covered in the report. These indicators have been chosen because they're the ones that are most meaningful to Canadians and because they will be enduring. That means we will be able to report on these indicators annually over the coming years, so we'll have a stable base, if you will.

    The four themes highlighted in the report are themes that public opinion research has found consistently matter to Canadians and build on parliamentary input to date. As part of its quality-of-life indicator project the Canadian Policy Research Networks held focus groups to determine what Canadians thought best measured their quality of life. The 19 indicators in the report are consistent with the areas identified by these focus groups, and the report shows how our national performance is changing over time in these areas.

    The report also compares Canada's performance in these areas to that of other developed nations where information is available. The report provides information on how we're doing in these areas by providing national averages, but it also includes more detailed information, for example, on aboriginals--regional, provincial, and gender comparisons. This approach helps make the report more balanced by demonstrating variations among groups and regions across the country.

    Turning to slide 5, Canada's performance report was first tabled in December 2001 and again in November of this year. An important thing to note is there are both paper and electronic versions of Canada's performance report. The electronic version is where the major improvements have been made to this report this year. After tabling, we consulted parliamentarians and parliamentary staff, focus groups, experts, and senior officials in order to find out how we could improve the report.

    One of the improvements was the inclusions and the need to have more disaggregation of data, so that we'd get more texture around performance and results. Another improvement is the inclusion of a highlights section. It provides a brief summary of Canada's performance for each of the 19 indicators over the last 5 to 10 years. The idea there is to show whether trends are moving upward or downward.

    Also new this year is a link in the electronic version between Canada's performance and the 256 strategic outcomes that had been identified by the 86 departments and agencies that tabled departmental performance reports. Treasury Board Secretariat guidelines on planning and performance reporting highlight the importance of focusing on strategic outcomes, and by that we mean the enduring benefits to Canadians that departments and agencies attempt to achieve.

    During our consultations, parliamentarians told us they wanted the ability to drill down and to customize their own reports and they wanted the information to be provided across departments. I think you will find that Canada's performance report, especially as you move to the electronic version, along with the strategic outcomes database, which I'll talk about in a few moments, which supports this report, while still a work in progress, represents an important step in responding to these needs.

    At the end of each chapter of the paper version of Canada's performance report, we have listed groups of departments and agencies that work toward common objectives. We have called these groups horizontal areas. There are 26 of them in Canada's performance report.

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    For example, under the health theme you will see groupings of departments and agencies working on a horizontal area described as “Protection from Preventable Risks”. You will also see that a number of organizations work on “Adequate Information on Healthy Lifestyles”.

    In the electronic database, which will be regularly updated, we have sorted information on strategic outcomes in four important ways: by the four themes of Canada's performance report, by the 26 horizontal areas, and by the 86 departments and agencies, and we have also linked these strategic outcomes to interests parliamentary committees may have.

    If I could, I'll take a moment with the report just to guide you through some of this. If you turn to page 7, this is where we've made some significant changes. This is where we've looked at our 19 indicators and have shown trends over time, and this is very new this year.

    We have four main chapters. If you just turn to page 10, you'll move into the theme of economic opportunities and innovation in Canada. Each of the chapters is developed in essentially the same way. In the first part of the chapter we talk about the policy issues at hand, and then we move into a section that actually talks about what we know about this area, and this is where we show our indicators and we drill down and do some disaggregations. Then we end up in terms of the third chunk of the chapter, where we talk about what is the federal contribution to this, recognizing that there are many partners in society that contribute to quality of life. The chapter ends with departments that are working together to deliver on objectives within that chapter. That's essentially the structure for the four separate chunks.

    Moving to slide 6, I'd like to talk to the committee about what is available in the strategic outcomes database because this will provide a great deal of information on horizontal initiatives. You can see at the top of the slide the four themes of Canada's performance. If, for example, we focus on the health theme, the database allows you to drill down to horizontal areas where the federal government has responsibilities. Four of these horizontal areas related to health are represented on the second line. From any of these horizontal areas you can drill down further to the strategic outcomes from the various departments that make a contribution.

    In this case, line 3 shows the strategic outcomes related, for example, to “Protection from Preventable Risks”. From this link you can access the most recent reports of the involved departments on their plans, their priorities, and their performance. These are their RPPs and their DPRs, for example. When available, the database also provides access to audits and evaluations relating to each of these strategic outcomes. They include audits conducted by the department, that is, an internal audit, as well as relevant audits from the Office of the Auditor General. They're all linked together in this way.

    Let's move to slide 7, “Performance Reporting Principles”. This report links to the performance report departments, and we think both RPPs and the DPRs are an important basis upon which departments and ministers account to Parliament for the performance of their programs and their plans for improvement. As results-based management improves in departments, so too will the reports to Parliament.

    In 2001 Treasury Board Secretariat issued new guidance to departments, encouraging them to report on their plans and on their performance in accordance with certain principles. The reason new guidance was issued was to improve the quality and the relevance of these reports to the public and to parliamentarians. We drew on the work of the CCAF, the Canadian Comprehensive Audit Foundation, as well as on what we heard from parliamentarians to develop these principles.

    There is clear evidence that the reports are getting better. Still, there is a need for more balance in these reports. They must discuss successes but must also highlight areas for improvement.

    We assess reports on plans and priorities and departmental performance reports against the principles to identify both weaknesses and areas of good practice to encourage a strengthening across government. We share our findings with departments and encourage work to incorporate best practices wherever possible. The Office of the Auditor General also reviews a sample of departmental reports on an annual basis.

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    The secretariat is also supportive of this work in assessing departmental performance reports, and we've worked closely with them and encouraged the work in this area. We would encourage parliamentary committees to show a direct interest in these reports and to call on departments to discuss these reports further.

    Slide 8 is “Other Initiatives Supporting Improved Results Reporting”. In 2001 Treasury Board approved new evaluation and internal audit policies, and through these policies we're working to rebuild the evaluation and internal audit capacities in government to encourage a more effective focus on assessing results and management practices. Results-based management and accountability frameworks are required now for all grants and contribution programs under the transfer payment policy that was issued in 2000. Departments and agencies are finding these frameworks useful for clarifying what they want to achieve, for measuring progress, and for reporting achievements. Over 360 results-based management and accountability frameworks have been done to date. This is unprecedented.

    We have also developed an integrated risk management framework and are working with departments to implement it. It essentially sets out an approach for identifying and managing corporate risks.

    We're currently testing a results-based management self-assessment tool with which departments and agencies can determine what they need to do to improve their capacity to manage for results. We've been working on this assessment tool with the Office of the Auditor General. Capacity checks are essentially diagnoses of the state of comptrollership in departments, soon to be completed for almost all departments and agencies. Departments are now working to develop and implement concrete action plans.

    As well, the Clerk of the Privy Council has underlined the importance of modern management by making modern comptrollership a corporate priority in deputy minister performance agreements for this fiscal year, placing renewed focus on management practices. But departments cannot work in isolation, so the Treasury Board Secretariat also works with them to help them manage for results beyond their boundaries.

    If we move to the ninth slide, I would like to mention a recent Treasury Board Secretariat and Privy Council Office task force on federal activities that is under way to improve horizontal coordination. I'd also like to draw your attention to the “Horizontal Management Toolkit”, which I have here if someone would like to look at it. This provides tools and supports and has been used at many of our information seminars across government to improve capacity building with respect to horizontal initiatives.

    The board also has databases that provide information on horizontal initiatives, databases that are accessible to the public. The information on the database can be sorted by lead department or by any other criteria the user chooses. It covers over 65 initiatives such as the Canadian rural partnership and Infrastructure Canada, and managers can consult the database for users to learn about various horizontal management practices. In an effort to keep parliamentarians abreast of the various tools and electronic databases we have available, we've also made two presentations on performance reporting over the last year to staff of members of Parliament and the staff of senators.

    With the final slide, on areas of improvement, we want to say that the databases we make available to you are only as good as the information that supports them. We're working with departments to improve measurement and reporting. We have to build on the foundation of strategic outcomes that underpins all the current RPPs and DPRs in our databases. This means, first, working with departments and agencies to sharpen the strategic outcomes at the high level to make them measurable, and second, ensuring that all our programs and resources are aligned to these outcomes. Information on program results should also be more accessible, and we're working on this.

    Increasingly, there are both paper and electronic versions of these reports, and electronic reporting presents some real advantages in terms of timeliness and accessibility. It also means that there is a better capacity to understand the horizontal linkages. These are some of the things we're doing, and the parliamentary committees can help us by reviewing the RPPs and DPRs and discussing them with departments as well as giving us views on possible improvements to Canada's performance report, including how we can make better use of the reporting, as we're now beginning to plan for the 2003 report.

    That brings my presentation to a close.

    The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Santi.

    You might give those copies of the tool kit to the clerk, and we'll circulate them.

    Madam Barrados.

    Ms. Maria Barrados (Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General ): Mr. Chairman, we'd like to thank you for inviting us to participate in the discussion today on horizontal issues.

    I have with me today John Mayne, who is a principal in our office and who heads our accountability team.

    The commitments the federal government makes to Canadians are often targeted at horizontal issues. For example, issues such as climate change and helping children and families out of poverty cut across departmental lines and reflect the government's broad vision for Canada.

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[Translation]

    Parliamentarians are focussing on these issues. The June 2001 report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources and the Status of Persons with Disabilities examined horizontal issues relating to persons with disabilities, children, and youth. That committee pointed to the urgent need of better accountability and reporting.

[English]

    The Office of the Auditor General has an ongoing interest in horizontal issues. Recent reports of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development have highlighted the need for federal departments to work together, and with others outside government, on environmental issues. Our December 2000 report also included a study on managing horizontal issues for results.

    There are significant challenges in both managing horizontal issues and reporting effectively on them. Strong will and sustained effort are required. Departments need effective coordinating structures and, where necessary, the will to realign programs. They also need to overcome conflicting priorities and agree on effective reporting frameworks that can provide timely, reliable information to Parliament.

[Translation]

    We recommended in 2000 that the Treasury Board Secretariat should play a stronger leadership role to ensure that horizontal issues are managed for results and that external reporting takes place. Initiatives since then include the President of the Treasury Board's report, Canada's Performance 2002, which provides a context for departmental reporting; and the Secretariat's database aimed at making information on horizontal issues available to parliamentary committees and other interested parties.

[English]

    While we see progress on these issues, we also suggest there is a need to devote more attention to the question of how government should manage horizontal issues; make a greater effort to report separately on important horizontal issues; and demonstrate more clearly, in such reporting, the federal government's contribution to horizontal issues involving outside parties.

    Mr. Chairman, that concludes my opening statement. We will be pleased to answer the committee's questions.

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    Mr. Forseth.

    Mr. Paul Forseth (New Westminster—Coquitlam—Burnaby, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I'm looking at this “Canada Performance 2002”, and it certainly seems to be a very good document. I guess the first question is about a document like this being tendered every year.

    Maybe you can explain how much thought and process have gone into making sure that each document that comes out each year is not a stand-alone document but a work in progress, so continuity can be seen from the previous year, to this year, to next year, rather than each document being seen in isolation. We're looking at trends in how we're moving along, so that means the document must be designed in the same way.

    I assume that is the case because of the four broad themes that have been kept. I take it there's going to be some commitment to keep that similar structure so it will be easy to relate one year's document to the next document, to see how we're moving along. That's the first issue.

    The second issue is general comprehensiveness, to reflect the whole context. I turn to page 39 and see the little box on climate change. I read that and don't see anything wrong with what is there. The problem is what isn't there. What are greenhouse gases? What is Canada's overall global situation compared to the total world production of greenhouse gases? What is man-made? What are the percentages we're being asked to reduce? It needs to provide the broader picture of the context. Because of what is left out, it could be criticized as being a bit of a puff piece, good news story. We don't want the whole document to become just a good news story. If it gets that reputation, it will eventually be ignored as just another puff piece.

    But I don't think that's the intent. I think the intent is sincere for us as parliamentarians and the public at large to analyze where we're going as a society and how we try to make sense of a very labyrinthine system of policy and implementation of governance.

    To boil it down, one issue is the design of the document, so it rolls from one year to the next and we can understand it. The second issue is context, that it can't be seen by some cynics as just a puff piece because it has a tendency to leave out the overall context.

    The truth is the truth, but as we know, as politicians with experience with the news media, often they don't necessarily lie to you, but you get a different conclusion from reality because of what is left on the cutting-room floor. That's often the big issue, so I hope this kind of document doesn't fall into the same kind of trap.

    Perhaps you could respond to those two issues.

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    Ms. Roberta Santi: I think, Mr. Chair, some excellent questions have been raised here. These are some critical issues that we have taken into consideration with the report itself. It very much is a longer-term effort.

    On the issue of how can we track this year over year and are you going to keep changing the parameters of this so we can't tell where we're going, I think what we are trying to do, for example, in the performance highlights section, which starts in the English version on page 7, is every year we want to provide a summary, a high-level perspective, on where we stand with these 19 indicators.

    We're also very committed to the 19 indicators. We've had a lot of discussions with parliamentary committees. We've had discussions with outside experts who work on this in the field, and we've all been cautioned to be very careful about adding too many more new indicators and keeping it stable. We're open to adding new indicators, but we think we have to have a very important reason for doing it, so we can really track this over time and look at trends. We're very concerned about the stability of this in terms of it being a very useful document.

    With respect to your question on comprehensiveness and content, I would say first of all that there is the paper document and then the electronic report. So, for example, on climate change, as you work with the various electronic linkages the report offers, you will be brought into various databases around climate change. You'll be brought into the DPR of Environment Canada and you'll be provided with more detailed information, if you will.

    One of the things we really had to struggle with is this tension between.... I guess our earlier reports had been so detailed we had been getting feedback saying that people couldn't tell heads or tails from the level of detail, so could we bring it up to a higher level. But at the same time, you want enough detail on the bottom so that you can link the two. That's why the architecture around the report is to really focus in on strategic outcomes and high-level data information, but to connect that down to very specific program information in the databases.

    Your issue around the balance, about making sure this provides balanced reporting and does not just talk about the good stuff, if you will, is feedback that we received very clearly as we were developing this report, and also feedback that we had from the 2001 report, that they wanted more balance.

    I think you'll see in the highlights that there is a mixture of trends, and in the discussion around the document there is a clear attempt to have this document before parliamentarians and the public that is in fact balanced. That's one of the key principles underlying the development and the ongoing production of the report.

    The Chair: Ms. Barrados, do you wish to add anything?

  (1230)  

    Ms. Maria Barrados: I have just a couple of comments.

    We are very supportive of the initiatives of the Treasury Board to pull this report together and the linkages they're building in their database.

    There is more than one way to do assessments. You can look at trends, but you can also set targets. You'll notice on one of the charts that was provided that it's mentioned as target-setting. That's a big challenge we found in reporting--this setting targets--because that's really what you're going to be doing your assessment of the management on.

    On the example of climate change, this is an area where the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development has done quite a bit of work. It's actually an example of one of these horizontal programs where there is a secretariat that was given responsibility for coordinating the file but really had difficulties doing the overall management of it and coming up with the report the last time we looked at that.

    The Chair: Thank you. I'm going to press the time a little bit because of the delay we had.

    Mr. Shepherd, then Mr. Lanctôt, and then Mr. Cullen.

    Mr. Alex Shepherd (Durham, Lib.): Thank you.

    I can't resist coming back to the Auditor General's report, because I think really I speak for all the members of Parliament who feel very upset and hurt about the results of this report. A lot of people feel that Parliament itself has been lied to, and we're not very happy. I think it throws a big credibility issue on this whole aspect of reporting.

    My question would go to Ms. Barrados. A lot of us feel there's something structurally wrong with our system. Indeed the Auditor General talked at length about the ability to gather information across departments and so forth, not only to gather that information but also to ensure that it's reported to parliamentarians. We need to do more than just the bean counting; that is, we need to know the money was spent, that we can account for it being spent, or that it's supposed to be within a budget, and that somebody within the morass has some kind of control to ensure that spending is kept within certain parameters and has some ability to enforce that. A lot of us now feel that's not the case.

    So how do we fix what's broken? How do we fix the structure so that we can get this kind of reporting, so that there's some kind of enforcement of horizontal issues across departments and that somebody has the power to do that?

    Ms. Maria Barrados: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I first have to say I am not the auditor responsible for chapter 10, so I really can't go into the details. But I can talk at a general level about some of the issues Mr. Shepherd raised.

    In our previous work we had always talked about some very key elements that are important in the management of horizontal issues. They were coordination, putting in a management structure, strong leadership, accountability frameworks, and reporting frameworks.

    So you have that organizational infrastructure and the authorities managing and reporting against them. What we found or are reporting in chapter 10 is there was a single point of accountability set up. So there was a clarification on the accountability and the organizational responsibility.

    But the observations in the chapter point to difficulties in terms of managing this and being accountable for the whole thing—because all the pieces are part of it—and appropriate reporting.

    Mr. Alex Shepherd: You talked about the management structure. Presumably the conclusion is that the management structure is defective. How do we fix it? What would be a suggestion on how to fix it?

    Ms. Maria Barrados: I think the issue in general and some of the specific questions about firearms have to go to the people who manage—

    Mr. Alex Shepherd: I'm not interested in firearms; I'm interested in talking about the structure.

    Ms. Maria Barrados: On the structure, once there is the authority, and a secretariat or a coordinating mechanism is set in place, this group of folks have to have the appropriate authorities. They have to have some money. They have to have the facility or ability to get the dollars and the people to do what's required. They have to be given a bit of profile and support from their ministries.

    So we have looked at these different cases. Of the different ones we reported in 2000, some are not given any profile or attention by the senior people. So if you don't have this, it's very difficult for one or two bureaucrats who have no money and profile to actually then get their colleagues together and try to get data, try to define results, and try to make it work.

    One of the things we've been impressed with is when parliamentarians get into this and ask the questions. It actually helps. By asking questions about disability, Dr. Bennett's committee has put a focus on that. Bureaucrats then respond.

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    Mr. Alex Shepherd: I hear what you're saying about resources, but what would we do or what do we need on the policy side? Do we need a policy statement, or do we need a legislative solution strengthening the role of that managing group?

    Ms. Maria Barrados: I'll give a first response. Then I'll ask Dr. Mayne to add to that, because he's done a lot of this detailed work.

    A lot of it can be done now if the resources and the authorities are provided and there are incentives put in place so that managers actually do it. If your incentive structure is to work only within your department—meaning that is how you get rewarded, how you get your performance pay, how you get your promotions, and how you get your recognition—you're not going to make any progress. So the incentive structure has to be taking into account the managing of horizontal issues. In one department you should be setting priorities with another department. Your department may not be number one.

    It is a lot of cultural change, I'm talking about, and change in how management operates. I think the Treasury Board and the work they're doing are beginning to give these messages. I think they can push on some of this.

    Maybe John would like to add to this.

    Mr. John Mayne (Principal, Office of the Auditor General): Thank you. I'll give just a quick addition.

    I think a problem in this horizontal issue area is that one size, unfortunately, won't fit all. If you go back and look at our chapter 20 in 2000, we looked at a range of kinds of management horizontal issues. Some of them had an actual secretariat, such as the climate change or the rural partnership one, where there were some resources dedicated to looking at and managing and trying to report on these issues—presumably implying they had some priority.

    Others had an interdepartmental committee that was active, working, and trying to do a similar thing, but with a little less authority and push. There were others where it was more of a struggle, more a case of a handful of dedicated public officials in an area wanting to do something and trying to get some coordination going on among the departments.

    These may have been the appropriate responses. But there's a variety of responses in terms of management structures and coordination one could do, depending on the priority the government is giving to the issue. Once the decision on how to do it is taken, I think what's needed is some of the things Maria's talking about, and making sure there is accountability in the end for whatever the structure is and delivering on what is required.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Mayne.

    Mr. Lanctôt.

[Translation]

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt (Châteauguay, BQ): Thank you for coming. I have many things to say about this report.

    I read through it and I wonder if it should not come in two parts. It seems your main focus is on citizens and it seems to present very complex results to try to show what is happening. Let me give you an example.

    We know fully well that, according to experts, the more physically active we are the better our health will be. It might seem strange, but this is the kind of thing I would like to see in a performance report. I do not want only a good news story or reporting on positive results. This brings me back to what my colleague, Mr. Forseth, said. In a private company, a performance report will not only comment on positive results. The goal is to achieve positive results but in a performance report... Why are we not provided with some studies on the health sector, for example. Reports have been coming out over the last 10 or 15 years. We need not only to know that X money has been spent with such and such a result. This is useful but in a performance report, you should be commenting on how things could be improved with a given change in government practices. How come we do not have this? This is what I would like to see in the future.

    It is a good thing to have performance reports but I believe they need to be improved. When we talk about performance, it is not simply a matter of providing numbers on what has been done. Citizens, and parliamentarians who speak for them need to know more about policy issues. I have mentioned health care, because it is a subject of interest to me, but there are many other examples.

    As a parliamentarian, I tried to put myself into the shoes of the ordinary citizen as I read your presentation. I am sorry, but it does not tell me anything. I would have liked your presentation to explain things. You told us what was in the report. I only need to read it to find out. I would have liked you to explain from where you started and to talk about the work you did since. You have all the experience since you have been doing this report for two years now. Where are you at? Are there things in which we, as parliamentarians, could help you out? You only provide figures and information we can find in various other places. That is good, because we now have it in one place and it is easier to find.

    I would like to have your views on this.

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    Ms. Roberta Santi: Thank you. You have raised very important issues.

[English]

    I would say one of the issues we had to deal with, in terms of developing the design for the performance report, is how far we were going to go to suggest remedies, etc. I think the position we're taking is that we would want to reflect essentially the facts around specific indicators, in terms of quality of life in Canada, and to pose certain issues, using these as a context for discussion within parliamentary committees and with the public on the future of public policy. This is essentially the orientation of it.

    One of the reasons why I explained the architecture of the report is to demonstrate that the report provides information on these 19 indicators, but is also linked to much more detailed, substantive reports coming from departments.

    What we're trying to do here really is to connect up the information available across government. We're going to try to make this more and more meaningful over time. But the purpose is not really to say “We have found this in health, and these are the remedies”; it is to say “This is what we found in health, and this is the information available across government, and these are the results being reported” and to put this out for discussion and policy debate. This is the primary objective of this type of report.

    Lee, I don' t know if you wanted to add to this.

    Mr. Lee McCormack (Executive Director, Results-based Management, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat): The one simple thing I would add is that the report is kind of a gateway into the 86 departmental performance reports and the 86 reports on plans and priorities. So it has a retrospective look. In the electronic version it will direct the reader to the relevant DPRs and RPPs. It has a retrospective look with respect to the departmental performance reports. It has a future look with respect to the reports on plans and priorities. Particularly in the electronic version there is an awful lot of information available to Canadians and parliamentarians about where the government is planning to make its efforts.

    The Chair: Mr. Cullen.

    Mr. Roy Cullen (Etobicoke North, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the presenters.

    Just picking up on Mr. Lanctôt's point, one of the overriding issues to my mind is the role of Treasury Board Secretariat and Treasury Board in terms of what sort of functional role or more proactive role that agency plays in advising government on the effective and efficient allocation of resources. The secretariat has developed into a very sort of staffy kind of role, and I think it's something this committee should look at.

    Ms. Barrados, at the last meeting you indicated the Auditor General had commented in the past on how the Treasury Board and Treasury Board Secretariat could be more proactive in terms of resourced allocation decision-making. If we have time, I'd like to get to that, but I really want to put on the floor the other question that is quite pertinent to a subcommittee that has been established of this committee, and that is looking at creating a modern and accountable public service. It's not that we don't have one today, but I'm sure we can always do better.

    At the last session I posed a question and I didn't really get a clear answer. Maybe you can help. If we're looking at horizontal management, does that really mean we should be looking at different structures of government, different ways of organizing government?

    If we look at the private sector as an example of where the corporate world went to flatter organizations with more of a matrix management style--it could be a product launch, where you'd bring in sales, marketing, production, etc., and they'd kind of task that--the hierarchical approach to management started to change. If we're going to really deal with horizontal management issues, do we need to think about redesigning the organizational structure of government? Otherwise, we could end up with the same old silos, with a lot of very good work, but in terms of decision-making, action, and delivery, maybe more discussion pieces than action plans.

    It may be outside your area of expertise, you may not have done any work in this area, and you may help us point to the people or the organizations that have done work in this area, but I'm sure you must have touched on it. So any advice you can give the committee, and especially our subcommittee, would be appreciated.

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    Ms. Maria Barrados: In the report we did in December 2000 we specifically made a recommendation to Treasury Board. We felt they could play a stronger leadership role in the management of horizontal issues and ensuring the resources were available, so there could be appropriate coordination of the issues across the departments. It takes time, resources, and putting in place the systems to do the kind of measurement management that is expected, particularly the ones cited as a priority for government. We also felt that Treasury Board had a role to ensure that the reporting take place, and that it be reporting on the horizontal issue.

    There is always this issue of how you fit that into the departmental performance reports because of that departmental structure, but if someone's clearly given the responsibility and lead role, that information could be put together in their report. If there are votes that go through other departments, you could have the electronic images, but you should be able to pull it together.

    We felt Treasury Board could do more to ensure that that kind of thing occurs.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: Could I interject briefly? That was on the first point I made. Did you limit your observations in terms of the horizontal management or in terms of Treasury Board and Treasury Board Secretariat being more proactive in the whole resource reallocation process?

    Ms. Barrados: I was going to come to that.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: Oh, sorry.

    Ms. Maria Barrados: That's all right.

    We also made the point that Treasury Board could do more in communicating good practices and lessons learned, and I think they're making some progress on this.

    On your question about redesign, as you probably know, auditors are pretty reluctant to get into the machinery of government issues, because that's not our forte. But we tend to make comments about where things aren't working and suggest where there should be changes. I can give you two we've talked about explicitly, along the lines of what you're asking about.

    The first is chapter 1 in the report we just tabled. When you look at the delivery of first nations programming and the result, in terms of the number of reports and the accountability structures—

    Mr. Roy Cullen: I don't have it with me.

    Ms. Maria Barrados: Each individual one makes sense, and you put it together and you get, as Sheila described it, the crazy quilt of programming. So here there is really a requirement to do some hard looking and some streamlining. There's duplication all over the place. Streamline and make that so you can get an accountability structure that works for people. That's one area.

    In the other area, the human resource management area, we have commented quite explicitly about the structures. Our concern in the human resource management, which is I assume one of the areas that your committee is particularly concerned about, was the complexity of the structure that had been created. With that complexity in the structures and the resulting legal precedents, the system was just not nimble nor able enough to deal with the challenges the public service was facing. So we were asking for reform. We were very pleased to see the work that is being done by the task force and are encouraged that they're going to come up with some real reform to streamline that management in the government.

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    The Chair: Sorry. Which task force is this?

    Ms. Maria Barrados: It's the one that's headed by Ran Quail. They will be the ones who are drafting legislation that will be presented in the House by Minister Robillard.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: That's the new public service renewal package, right?

    Ms. Maria Barrados: Yes.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: Thank you.

    Are there any comments from the Treasury Board Secretariat?

    Ms. Roberta Santi: I think you raised some really important questions around the whole issue of horizontal management. You can't have effective government unless you have good horizontal management. I think one of the things that we've seen over the past number of years is that there's rarely an issue that doesn't have a fairly significant horizontal element to it.

    There has been a lot of discussion around some of the issues you've raised around machinery and to what degree can structural changes support this, and I think that's one area of discussion. The next area of discussion is really about mindset, and it is about public servants thinking more horizontally in terms of how the broader initiatives connect together and deliver on the street for citizens.

    So the Treasury Board has really been focusing in on providing those kinds of tools that support more horizontal working together and also the tools and the guidance to make that happen. For example, right now all grants and contributions have to have a results-based management accountability framework. You will find that in a number of program areas of major horizontal initiatives we are using essentially those types of frameworks as a way of ascertaining what the roles and responsibilities are of various parties, what are the performance measurements, and how we're going to evaluate these programs.

    So we are putting in place some tools to address this issue, but it is very much on our mind. I think Canada's performance report both in terms of the paper copy and the electronic version is another attempt to connect this together and also to strengthen results-based management that has more of a horizontal focus.

    The Chair: Mr. Cullen, we are getting tight for time and Madam Bennett has a question.

    Ms. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's, Lib.): Thank you.

    The Chair: A brief, succinct, well-placed question.

    Ms. Carolyn Bennett: Our tiny, perfect committee on disabilities had the experience of being a committee really mandated to look at a horizontal issue in personal disabilities in Canada; therefore, Parliament had the opportunity to call 12 ministers who were all doing different things. I guess it's much more again the structural thing.

    Do you see that parliamentary oversight is hampered by having the committee structure downstream from departments? Could there be a structural change so that the committees were structured to look at horizontal issues as opposed to just being downstream from one government department?Would that be a different way of doing business as opposed to...?

    As we often say, if we could actually get right an aboriginal child with a disability, we could maybe get all of government right. The people who cross over all of these departments.... That's just a structural thing. If you have any instincts as to how Parliament could do its job better when there's just so much information....

    The other piece I have is in terms of information technology. Is the right place for the CIO under Treasury Board or should it be higher up if we are actually going to do e-democracy and involve citizens in some of these things?

    My third question, very succinct and well placed, would be this. Should citizens not have some role in what indicators we're picking? I look to the initiative on SUFA or even the issue around the health accord between the provinces and the federal government. Where those 14 indicators came from, I have no idea. I've never been asked about them. How do we know if it's about the confidence Canadians have in their health care system? How can we actually pick indicators without talking to Canadians? That is my view.

    I guess that will do for now, Mr. Chair.

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    Ms. Maria Barrados: I'll try to be equally succinct. In terms of—

    The Chair: Please do try. Try to improve on that.

    Ms. Carolyn Bennett: I hope she improves on it.

    Ms. Maria Barrados: In terms of any thoughts of parliamentary structures, I think parliamentary committees are faced with the challenge of doing both, frankly, doing both the ministries and trying to deal with the horizontal issues at the same time. I think it's a question of setting priorities, in particular on which horizontal ones to go after.

    I don't have any comment on the placement of the CIO. We haven't really done any work; I haven't given that any thought.

    In terms of citizens having a role on indicators, yes, clearly, citizens have a role here. And on the 14 health indicators that Dr. Bennett talks about, this is a start. But I'm hoping that agreement that has an element in it saying there's supposed to be development of a more comprehensive framework will be lived up to.

    The Chair: Ms. Santi.

    Ms. Roberta Santi: I don't have any specific views in terms of parliamentary committees, the issue you've raised. But one of the things we have done with the strategic outcomes databases is to try to organize this in such a way that it could be useful to parliamentary committee review.

    I wouldn't want to comment on the machinery issue that you've raised around the chief information officer, except to say that the chief information officer plays a very important role in terms of government-wide coordination and horizontal focus with respect to bringing improved services to Canadians. So I think there is some logic to the current situation.

    With respect to indicators—and how do we know that this really is meaningful to Canadians?—we did do a lot of work, largely through the Canadian Policy Research Networks. We have tested these with citizens, and they seem to resonate and they seem to connect with reports that have been done by other bodies as well. But we're certainly open to posing that question again and looking at that in the context of the report for 2003.

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    I'm going to break in here. Of course, we're almost out of time and I always try to save at least a moment for the chairman's question. I do get the opportunity to ask at least one minor little question at these things.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: Will you be long, Mr. Chair?

    The Chair: You know something, I think I may.

    I do have a question, though, and it's really with regard to the design of these horizontal indicators. There's been an enormous amount of work done on it, and I understand the precursor to the effort, which is an attempt to try to link the tremendous complexity of government to something that is more comprehensible and repeatable and all of that.

    I remember being a victim of once requesting the part III estimates, back in the days before we changed them, and staggering home with more books than I could comfortably carry that contained an absolutely incomprehensible mass of information. That didn't work. So we've moved to a system where we're trying to root ourselves in that information by bringing it to a level where people can sort of digest it easily and see what's happening.

    I was interested in your comments on the electronics side of this, and what really strikes me is the degree to which the summaries are routed in operating databases as opposed to databases that are designed for the purpose of creating this information. For example, on the issue of modern comptrollership that you have in there, is the information you're pulling out and aggregating in order to produce a report based in operating systems of the government, or information collection systems that have been created in order to provide this information?

    Ms. Roberta Santi: I think there are a couple of answers to that question. First of all, with respect to a horizontal initiative such as modern comptrollership, when we send out the call letters to departments to report on horizontal initiatives, modern comptrollership is one of the areas we ask them to include in their departmental performance report, and to provide, if possible, more of a hot link to more detailed information on modern comptrollership and other documents that might exist.

    Within the Treasury Board Secretariat as well we have a very extensive website, which is fairly new--I would say probably within the last six months--that brings together all of the efforts across government on modern comptrollership. So it really does allow you to go into each department, to show where they are in terms of the process, in terms of the capacity check, to see the kind of action plan, if it's been developed. So we are building this information, but we're also linking it to existing information, databases that exist in departments.

·  (1300)  

    The Chair: But you're not linking it to operating systems; you're linking it to information description systems, if you like. You're providing descriptions of what's going on, rather than being able to drill down into the actual information.

    Ms. Roberta Santi: Most of the information we have right now is about where the modern comptrollership initiative stands. It is linked when you go into the departmental information in terms of operations, but it varies across government.

    The Chair: We were told by one of your colleagues from the Treasury Board that there were seven systems.

    Ms. Roberta Santi: These are financial systems, yes, which is different from the databases here.

    The Chair: Right. So you don't do anything to attempt to bring those together.

    Ms. Roberta Santi: One of the things we had been looking at very closely--and in fact, the secretary of the Treasury Board, the Auditor General, and the Deputy Minister of Finance have had a discussion very recently--is in the context of, more broadly, our reporting to Parliament. They've asked us to really look at how we can connect these pieces in a more effective way--for example, the estimates, the public accounts, the performance reports, and so on. So that is one preoccupation of ours and one thing that we're trying to knit together in a more effective way for parliamentarians.

    The Chair: Given that time is tight, I won't pursue this now. It would be interesting to have this conversation in more detail at another time. It's that linkage of results reporting to real operations, not to have it interpreted before it gets reported. In a sense, it's the capacity that companies have dealt with as they've tried to link their performance outcomes to what they're actually doing, as opposed to putting a step of interpretation into it. I think that is something we need to spend some time on.

    Ms. Roberta Santi: Could we have just one moment? I think Lee McCormack would like to add something to that.

    Mr. Lee McCormack: I hope this addresses your point. One of the things our strategic outcomes database does allow every member of Parliament to do is to double-click on any of the 255 strategic outcomes in the government and find immediately any audits, evaluation, reviews, or other performance information relative to that strategic outcome area.

    The Chair: I've actually played with the new site, and I agree with you, it's competently done, and there is a nice interrelationship there. I don't disagree with that at all. But it's all interrelationships to information that has been created by somebody to describe this process. There isn't a linkage to the actual operating information of the government except through the descriptive process.

    We'll talk about this again. Unfortunately, I note that it is 1:05. I have another committee meeting, and I believe you do also, Ms. Santi.

    Thank you very much for coming, and we'll see you in the new year.

    By the way, everybody, have a good Christmas.

    The meeting is adjourned.