At a glance – Departmental Evaluation Plan, from fiscal year 2021 to 2022 to fiscal year 2025 to 2026, Environment and Climate Change Canada

About the Departmental Evaluation Plan

Environment and Climate Change Canada’s (ECCC) Audit and Evaluation Branch (AEB) produces a five-year rolling departmental evaluation plan that is informed by an annual planning exercise and approved by the Deputy Ministers. Updated annually, the five-year DEP aims to ensure that ECCC's evaluation activities:

The plan also supports the allocation of departmental resources to conduct evaluations over a five-year period.

The plan was developed in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This unprecedented public health event has forced ECCC to adapt its operations in an unexpected way. The activation of the business continuity plan and prolonged teleworking of a majority of employees have created new operational realities for the Department. Adaptive approaches are required to meet both ongoing and emerging priorities and maintain the continuity of the government business. The proposed evaluation schedule factors in this new operational reality in order to ensure that ECCC continues to access relevant and timely evaluative information to support decision making and the management of programs and policies.

Fiscal year 2020 to 2021 by the numbers

In fiscal year 2020 to 2021, the Evaluation Division of the AEB:

Planned evaluations, fiscal year 2021 to 2022 to fiscal year 2025 to 2026

This new five-year cycle of evaluations builds on accomplishments made in the previous fiscal year.

Thirty-five evaluation projects are planned to be completed from FY 2021 to 2022 to FY 2025 to 2026. Of these, ECCC will lead 26 projects, eight of which will be horizontal evaluations involving other government departments (OGD). As well, ECCC will participate in nine horizontal evaluations led by OGDs. The AEB will support the OGDs with the planning, conduct, reporting and approval of these horizontal evaluations.

Overall, the proposed five-year evaluation plan will cover 93% of total departmental program spending (excluding internal services).

Overview of planned ECCC evaluation projects, by fiscal year of approval by the Deputy Ministers

Fiscal year 2021 to 2022

Fiscal year 2022 to 2023

Fiscal year 2023 to 2024

Fiscal year 2024 to 2025

Fiscal year 2025 to 2026

Resource requirements

The implementation of the present DEP is included in the AEB's FY 2021 to 2022 planned budget of $4.2 million and estimated 31.92 FTE. The Evaluation Division shares resources with the Internal Audit Division for the provision of support to committees, document editing and web publication and follow-up on recommendations.

Evaluation resources will be used to support the planning and implementation of planned evaluation projects, the coordination with other departments on horizontal evaluations and the provision of advisory services on performance information. It will also support the purchase of tools and skills training for staff.

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