Evaluation of the going to Canada Immigration Portal Initiative

Executive summary

The Going to Canada Immigration Portal initiative

The Government of Canada is committed to making the country a destination of choice for skilled immigrant workers and foreign students. As part of this mandate, the Government seeks to provide accurate, free, and accessible information that helps people make informed decisions about the immigration, employment, and settlement process.  The 2005 Budget allocated funding for the development of an integrated and comprehensive Going to Canada Immigration Portal (GTC-IP), aimed at creating an authoritative access point for seamless online content and tools.

The Going to Canada Immigration Portal (GTC-IP) or simply, “the Portal,” consists of two interlinked websites: the Going to Canada (GTC) site (www.goingtocanada.gc.ca), operated by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) and the Working in Canada (WiC) site (www.workingincanada.gc.ca), run by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC).  As a separate entity from the CIC departmental website (www.cic.gc.ca), the GTC-IP was envisioned as an organized gateway, helping to structure a dispersed and diverse collection of information specific to the needs of the target audience.

As part of a wider GTC-IP Initiative, CIC also provides annual contribution funding to provinces and territories (P/Ts), who work collaboratively with CIC and HRSDC to develop similar web portals of their own, which are linked to the GTC-IP. The GTC-IP Initiative also brings together many other stakeholders, such as municipalities, other government departments (OGDs) and service provider organizations (SPOs), who share information and review different approaches to the development of online content for potential immigrants and newcomers to Canada.

With the GTC-IP acting as a navigational hub, the Portal Initiative integrates information using links and commonly shared tools. In this way, the Initiative seeks to facilitate the distribution of reliable information, which helps people make more informed decisions about coming to Canada and to better prepare them, before and after they arrive, for integration into the Canadian labour market and society.

Purpose and scope of the evaluation

This evaluation used multiple approaches and lines of evidence to assess the Initiative’s performance against expected outcomes, and in terms of its relevance.  Over the course of the evaluation, data were collected and analyzed from a variety of primary and secondary sources, which included interviews with key informants, an online survey of GTC-IP users, web-analytics, focus groups with users and non-users of the Portal, a document review, and subject matter expert review of the quality and consistency of GTC-IP and P/T sites.

Key findings

The following section provides key findings regarding the relevance and performance of the GTC-IP Initiative.

Relevance

The evaluation showed that the GTC-IP Initiative is a relevant program that addresses a continuing and demonstrated need by providing complete, up-to-date, and accurate information to its target audience in a more unified manner than most alternative sources. Users of the GTC-IP reported that the Portal contained the information they needed and that it increased their knowledge of living and working in Canada. As well, they reported that the information on the GTC-IP helped them make decisions about coming to Canada, prepare for the immigration process, and integrate into Canadian society upon arrival.

Furthermore, the GTC-IP Initiative demonstrates a high degree of alignment with Federal priorities related to attracting a skilled workforce, and the successful integration of newcomers. The Federal government is well placed to provide national-level, authoritative information and to coordinate the provision of more local-level information provided by provinces, territories and municipalities.

Nevertheless, a significant amount of GTC-IP content, which was originally developed for the purposes of the Portal, has been copied and incorporated into the CIC main site.  It was felt that the much larger user population of the CIC main site would help to drive users to access Portal content. However, the lack of distinction in mandate for content provision between GTC-IP and the CIC main site challenges the relevance of the GTC-IP site moving forward. The evaluation showed uncertainty regarding future directions of the GTC-IP Initiative resulting from the pending decision by CIC to fully integrate the GTC-IP into the CIC main site. The implications of such a move have not been formally discussed with the partners of the Initiative, who highlighted potential issues with integration as part of this evaluation.

Performance

The GTC-IP Initiative is a relatively new endeavour and has experienced some challenges associated with its stage of development. The Initiative has operated under a governance model that has not been clearly defined and implemented and does not have well-articulated decision-making processes among partners. Key informants also reported a lack of clarity in roles and responsibilities across partners. Governance of the Initiative within CIC has been particularly challenging as a result of a decentralized system with four branches working independently on overlapping program components, and an historical lack of clear leadership. The internal governance of the WiC by HRSDC, however, consists of one team working together, allowing for responsiveness, flexibility, creativity and innovation in WiC’s design and delivery.

The fragmented nature of CIC’s governance structure may have contributed to inconsistent tracking of allocations and expenditures, including to P/Ts and across Branches. A review of documentation also revealed that provincial and territorial reporting on expenditures was not always completed in a timely fashion and differed in level of detail across P/Ts.

Despite these early challenges, recent improvements in the delivery of the GTC-IP were noted in the evaluation, including the identification of e-Communications Branch as the CIC Portal lead, the creation of a series of draft documents that clarify the governance of the GTC-IP, a revised funding model within CIC that is more responsive to the needs of the Initiative, and improvements in timeliness of reporting by provinces and territories. As well, almost all of the P/T websites are now fully functional. It is anticipated that these improvements will continue to add to the performance of the GTC-IP Initiative moving forward.

The primary strength of the GTC-IP Initiative has been the development of federal/provincial/ territorial/municipal partnerships in the creation and provision of a full spectrum of online information, from the local to the national level. Focus group participants identified this range of information as necessary to assist their decision-making and facilitate their integration once in Canada. The multilateral partnerships that have been created as a result of the GTC-IP Initiative were identified as a key positive unexpected outcome. These multilateral partnerships have resulted in the sharing of content and tools, which has created cost savings for all partners and improved the overall quality and comprehensiveness of information available on partner sites. The GTC-IP communications structures supporting these partnerships are effective and the bi-annual workshops, which facilitate information sharing and relationship-building, were highlighted as a best practice in the evaluation.

Multiple lines of evidence showed that the GTC-IP, WiC, and P/T sites are functional, user-friendly, relevant, easy-to-navigate, and provide high quality information. As well, these sites are providing consistent information on immigrating to and working in Canada, likely resulting from the extensive collaboration of Portal partners. A number of provincial/territorial portals have been the recipient of awards and received recognition for the quality of their websites. As well, the WiC tool has shown such success that it has been made Canada’s authoritative source for labour market information.

By comparison, the GTC-IP site provides information for potential immigrants and newcomers covering a wide range of topics. The evaluation showed that users of GTC-IP are most frequently accessing the site’s information on immigrating to Canada and are less likely to be accessing information on the site related to settling, studying, or visiting Canada’s provinces and territories. Provincial and territorial portals provide high quality information on settling and studying and may be in the best position to provide this more local level information to the target audience.

The evaluation showed that more could be done to increase the awareness of the information contained on the Portal. Promotional activities by Portal partners varied, with the promotion of the GTC-IP found to be limited, likely as a result of uncertainty over the permanent location of the GTC-IP web assets. This resulted in a lack of growth, but steady usage over time. HRSDC’s promotion of the WiC has been effective, facilitating growth in the profile and usage of the WiC site over the last three years.  The WiC site has also benefited from the development of partnerships within the Initiative and the placement of the WiC tool on a number of partner sites.

A number of provinces and territories have also engaged in promotion of their sites; however, there is little data available (e.g., usage trends around the time of promotional campaigns) to demonstrate the effectiveness of those campaigns, or the usage of these sites overall. A wide range of practices in web data collection are currently employed among all partners of the GTC-IP (including provinces and territories), which limits the assessment of ongoing performance of the Initiative.

Conclusions and recommendations

The GTC-IP serves as an authoritative and comprehensive resource for potential immigrants and newcomers to Canada, their friends and family members and immigrant-serving organizations. However, in order for the target population to benefit most from the information housed on the Portal, the information must be easy to find, relevant, understandable, consistent, and easy to navigate. As well, the information should fall within a clear mandate of the site that is providing it. Therefore, if the GTC-IP content remains on the Portal URL, it should become the authoritative source for this information and it should be promoted in order to increase the target population’s awareness of it. If full integration of the GTC-IP into the CIC main site moves forward, navigation issues and profile of the GTC-IP content must be addressed. As well, some information currently housed on the GTC-IP was less likely to be accessed and may be more appropriately delivered by the provincial/territorial or municipal sites. The WiC tool is currently the authoritative source for labour market information in Canada and HRSDC should continue its promotion and related partnership development. 

Recommendations

• (CIC) Develop a strategy to address the issues associated with the location of the GTC-IP and its related content and tools, including:
  • The implications if full integration of the GTC-IP into the CIC main site takes place. This could include issues concerning navigation, organization of GTC-IP components, and content updates, for example;
  • The elimination of information overlap that exists between the CIC main site and the GTC-IP site;
  • The determination of which GTC-IP content areas are appropriate to remain on this federally operated website.
• (CIC and HRSDC) Consider ways to improve the promotion and usability of GTC-IP related content and tools.

The multilateral partnerships established through the GTC-IP Initiative were integral in allowing for the creation and provision of consistent, high-quality information in a cost-efficient manner. The partnerships were identified as the key strength of this Initiative and should be maintained. The partners of the GTC-IP should continue to develop and provide users with high quality content and tools as they continue to have a high degree of relevance. The communication structures used by Portal partners are also effective and should be continued, particularly the bi-annual workshops, which were identified as a best practice. Additional multilateral communications may improve issues with governance and reporting that were identified in the evaluation. 

Recommendations

• (CIC and HRSDC) Establish a plan to clarify the horizontal governance structure of the GTC-IP, including decision-making protocols and oversight structure.
• (CIC) Develop a strategy to address issues concerning CIC internal governance. 
• (CIC and HRSDC) Consider ways for Portal partners to further facilitate multilateral communications.

Improvements to Portal governance and communications structures would also assist in the development of common performance measures across the Initiative, improving partners’ ability to assess ongoing performance.  Clarity in decision-making processes and roles and responsibilities of partners related to CIC’s internal financial tracking system and reporting by CIC and P/Ts would lead to benefits for the department. 

Recommendations

• (CIC and HRSDC) Address issues related to reporting and financial tracking: 
  • (CIC) Develop a strategy to address reporting issues, both internally within CIC and with provincial and territorial partners. This includes issues dealing with financial tracking, the timeliness of reporting and the clarity of reporting requirements, as well as clarity concerning the roles and responsibilities of these partners. 
  • (CIC and HRSDC) Work together to establish common performance measures and consistent web data collection across all partners of the Portal Initiative.

Management Response

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