Government of Canada (GC) Information Management (IM) Strategy Storyline

Information is the cornerstone of a democratic, effective, and accountable government.

Information management is fundamental to all aspects of government services, as it supports informed decision-making, efficient and effective service delivery, and is critical to achieving the goals of the government.

The critical role that information management plays in the GC is clearly reflected in the Government of Canada's Management Excellence Agenda.

The GC IM Strategy is a coordinated approach to ensuring the appropriate enterprise-level governance, direction, information structures, processes, tools, and skill sets are in place across the Government of Canada (GC) to support the effective management of information assets, in pursuit of the GC Management Excellence Agenda.

The origins of the GC IM Strategy date back to 2005 when the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) began a comprehensive transformation initiative to define and achieve an enterprise vision for information management in the GC.  As a result of this work, which involved extensive community consultation and in-depth analysis of current issues, TBS published two documents in April 2006:

• Information Management in the Government of Canada – The Business Problem Assessment which examines the problems and related roots causes that are motivating the transformation of IM in the GC; and
• Information Management in the Government of Canada – The Vision, which describes the requirements for post-transformation Information Management that will meet the needs of GC stakeholders. This document defines the vision for post-transformation information management in the GC.

The GC IM Strategy establishes key enterprise IM objectives, defines specific priorities, and engages resources from across the GC IM Community to work collaboratively on strategic initiatives that address the identified IM problems and root causes, and contribute to the achievement of the GC IM Vision.

The sheer volume of information produced, and the increasing number of available channels for its creation and communication, challenge our capabilities to fully understand, leverage and effectively manage information assets.

At the same time, complex contemporary issues such as national security, environmental protection, and health care require that government establish programs that often cut across the mandates of several federal departments and agencies, and sometimes across jurisdictions.  Concurrent with this growing need for horizontality, there are increasing demands by Canadian citizen's for an integrated, responsive government that can leverage information to make effective decisions that support the delivery of high value programs efficiently, transparently and accountably.

In summary, as the challenges to effectively manage government information are growing, so too are the requirements to better align information flow across and between departments, and respond to public demands that require enhanced stewardship of government information.

However, many of the current structures, processes and systems used to manage government information were originally established on a department-by-department basis, and are therefore neither aligned nor compatible. This significantly impacts the ability of government to generate accurate horizontal or government-wide views of government activities, and therefore harder for government to plan horizontally, report on performance, and make effective decisions with agility.

Without a coherent, explicit, enterprise-wide strategy to address these horizontal and government-wide issues, individual departments, agencies and the GC as a whole will face increasing difficulty meeting their commitments to Canadians.

In fact the GC IM Strategy has four strategic goals: Policy and Governance, People and Capacity, Enterprise Information Architecture and IM Tools and Applications.  The intention is to facilitate significant improvement across government in all four areas thereby supporting achievement of the GC IM Vision.

The GC IM Strategy is being implemented via a number of strategic initiatives that align to the GC IM Strategy's six principles:

• Alignment of IM activities by developing and providing common definitions, models, processes and tools for use in and across departments;
• Increased compliance with IM Policy instruments by providing common, clear, comprehensive policy instruments that are easily adaptable by departments, and understood by GC managers, employees and IM functional specialists at all levels;
• Reduction in redundancies and duplication in investments by supporting increased interoperability and integration of information systems and processes across government;
• Adoption of common or shared IM services where it makes economic sense;
• Leveraging of innovation and expertise through effective governance and the use of effective collaboration tools that allow anyone with a good idea to share it; and,
• Addressed IM skills and capacity issues through the development of common, clear and comprehensive guidance, training and awareness materials.

These strategic initiatives are horizontally planned, resourced and implemented via working groups that have been established to oversee their completion. For example;

• Standard on Geospatial Data (Policy and Governance)
• IM and IT Management Development Program (People & Capacity)
• Integrated Learning Management System Architecture (Enterprise Information Architecture)
• Launch of GCPEDIA (IM Tools and Applications)

There are many benefits to departments and agencies;

• Knowing that there is a coordinated GC IM Strategy or "plan" that will allow departments over time to more effectively manage their information.
• Reducing requirements for departments and agencies to produce their own policy instruments, instruction sets, standards, tools, etc., by facilitating and promoting reuse.
• Knowing that the outputs are compliant with Policy requirements, and trusting the outputs due to the high level of departmental involvement in their development.
• Seeing and being able to tap into the growing body of IM knowledge
• Increasing collaboration through networked governance and the provision of tools such as the IM Initiatives Inventory and GCPEDIA that allow GC IM communities to share their ideas and work together on innovative solutions to the IM-related issues

The GC IM Strategy is being implemented by the GC IM Community for the GC IM Community and the GC as a whole. The strategic initiatives that drive implementation of the GC IM Strategy are developed and recommended through the governance model described on the IMD governance webpage, as part of an annual planning exercise.

Using this enterprise governance, initiatives are identified, developed, proposed, approved and implemented by departmental participants. Departmental participation in these initiatives ensures the outputs are appropriately targeted and suitable for re-use.

All the key elements of the GC IM Strategy are aligned within the GC IM Strategy Outcomes Framework. This Framework provides a foundation for monitoring the Strategy and assessing how the outputs from individual strategic initiatives are contributing to the achievement of Strategy Outcomes and Goals, and making adjustments as required.

Ongoing performance assessment also identifies:

• areas where results could be improved;
• areas where results are already being achieved so that performance can be maintained and best practices leveraged elsewhere.

If you have any questions or comments please contact us at im-gi@tbs-sct.gc.ca