Results: what we achieved - 2016–17 Departmental Results Report - Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

Description

Through the Decision-Making Support and Oversight program, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat supports the Treasury Board in its roles as management board of the Government of Canada and as expenditure manager in the government-wide expenditure cycle. The objective is to support the government in promoting value for money and results for Canadians in programs and operations.

The Secretariat achieves program results by providing independent strategic advice, analysis, guidance and oversight of programs, operations, and expenditures. It reviews departmental submissions, provides recommendations to the Treasury Board, and coordinates and reports on the allocation of expenditures across government organizations and programs.

Results

In 2016–17, the Secretariat reviewed approximately:

• 330 Treasury Board submissions
• 500 memoranda to Cabinet and other Cabinet presentations
• 520 Governor in Council submissions

The Secretariat improved the quality of costing estimates in government decision-making by reviewing nearly 100 high-value or high-risk Cabinet documents that covered projects valued at a total of about $47 billion.

The Secretariat performed enhanced due diligence reviews on 86 Treasury Board submissions and 11 memoranda to Cabinet. These reviews resulted in more transparent cost estimates, the rationalization of contingencies and, in some instances, changes in the amounts submitted.

The Secretariat improved the quality of Governor in Council regulatory submissions by:

• reviewing 173 final regulatory submissions that included regulations that would result in $16.6 billion in benefits to Canadians
• ensuring that these submissions complied with the requirements of the Cabinet Directive on Regulatory Management (for example, included input from stakeholder consultations, included a cost-benefit analysis, and were coordinated and aligned with existing regulations)

The Secretariat provided an effective challenge function and even exceeded its target for this indicator, with 91% of deputy heads agreeing that the Secretariat fulfills this role effectively (up from 88% in 2015–16). According to feedback from deputy heads, Secretariat analysts are supportive and accessible, and provide useful advice. Deputy heads suggested, however, that the challenge function could be streamlined.

In 2016–17, the Government of Canada released the Policy on Results, which replaced the Policy on Management, Resources and Results Structures and the Policy on Evaluation. The new policy promotes simpler and more flexible planning and reporting structures; better alignment of resources, priorities, and results; and clearer, more transparent reporting. It also introduces a requirement to provide more information on the expected results of spending proposals. This requirement is aimed at improving the quality of Treasury Board submissions.

The Secretariat provided guidance to the 6 departments that were the first to use the reporting framework set out in the new Policy on Results. The Secretariat also helped organizations build their capacity for evidence-based decision making by, for example, helping them identify effective performance measures.

Steps have been made to improve spending oversight and reporting to Parliament. In 2016–17, 95% of Budget 2016 funding was included in Estimates documents, with 66% of funding included in the first available Estimates document. Parliamentarians will continue to be consulted on options to make the planning, spending and tracking of tax dollars more timely and transparent.

The Secretariat updated the TBS InfoBase to reflect the new departmental planning and reporting structures required under the Policy on Results. Canadians and Parliamentarians can now view graphics that show how resources relate to results. In 2016–17, TBS InfoBase was visited over 35,000 times.

In December 2016, after consulting with experts and practitioners in experimental design both within and outside the federal government, the Secretariat and the Privy Council Office released the Experimentation Direction for Deputy Heads. The direction provides context and guidance for all deputy heads to begin reporting publicly on their current or planned efforts to experiment with new approaches. It also includes a requirement to earmark a percentage of program funds for experimentation.

Since it released the direction, the Secretariat has created tools for experimenting with new approaches, provided guidance to departments and partnered with them on workshops and community-building to strengthen experimentation capacity in the federal government.

The Secretariat also expanded, as a 5-year pilot project, the transfer payment toolkit to enable innovative program delivery, giving government departments new instruments for distributing grants and contributions.

Information on the Secretariat's lower-level programs is available in the TBS InfoBase.

Description

Through the Management Policies Development and Monitoring Program, the Secretariat supports the Treasury Board in its role of establishing principles for sound governance and management by setting government-wide policy direction in targeted areas. The objective is to have a sound management policy framework for the Government of Canada.

The Secretariat achieves program results by communicating clear management expectations to deputy heads and by adopting principles-based and risk-informed approaches to monitoring policy compliance. The Secretariat provides reviews, leads implementation, and supports and monitors policies and departmental performance under several of areas of management. The Secretariat also engages with functional communities and undertakes outreach and monitoring to promote policy compliance and build the capacity of functional communities.

This program is underpinned by legislation such as the Financial Administration Act and the Public Service Employment Act.

Results

The Secretariat supports departments and agencies on implementing more than 200 policy instruments.

In 2016–17, the Secretariat continued to review these policy instruments through the Policy Suite Reset initiative, which aims at developing clearer, more coherent requirements and accountabilities. More time is needed to complete this initiative, but it is having the intended impact. 82% of deputy heads say that policy instruments reviewed so far under the initiative are easier to understand and apply. Deputy heads also say, however, that they would like to receive guidance and communications before they have to implement reset policy instruments.

As part of making government more open and transparent, the Secretariat supported the Treasury Board in implementing the new Policy on Communications and Federal Identity. The policy aims to bring Government of Canada communication practices into line with the digital environment. The Secretariat also implemented a new interim process under which Advertising Standards Canada must review all federal government advertising campaigns that have budgets over $500,000.

The Secretariat also released the Interim Directive on the Administration of the Access to Information Act. This directive eliminated all access to information fees except for the initial $5 application fee. It also confirmed that all Government of Canada information should be available to the public, except in specific situations when it must be protected because of privacy, confidentiality and security.

To improve oversight of public resources and to modernize comptrollership, the Secretariat supported the Treasury Board in implementing:

• the new Policy on Financial Management
  • This policy, through which the Government of Canada seeks to have financial resources that are well managed in the delivery of programs to Canadians and that are safeguarded through balanced controls that enable flexibility and manage risk, consolidates requirements set out in a number of different policy instruments.
• the updated Policy on Internal Audit
  • The objective of this policy is to ensure that the oversight of public resources in the federal public administration is informed by a professional and objective internal audit function that is independent of departmental management.

In 2016–17, the Secretariat and Public Services and Procurement Canada developed a joint procurement modernization work plan. Under the work plan, the 2 organizations aligned their procurement-related activities and created a dashboard to track and report on progress on initiatives. The Secretariat and Public Services and Procurement Canada's Procurement Modernization Integration team began developing a government-wide framework for social procurement. Social procurement involves using federal procurement processes and purchasing power to generate positive social outcomes in addition to delivering goods and services.

As part of improving services for Canadians, the Secretariat launched the Government of Canada Service Strategy in collaboration with several service-oriented departments and agencies. The Strategy has 3 broad goals:

• Client-driven design and delivery, to make sure that services are designed and delivered in ways that meet client needs and preferences across all channels
• Easy online services, to make the digital channel the medium of choice
• Seamless delivery, to connect services through a single window

To support government organizations in their efforts to provide quality, consistent services to Canadians, the Secretariat published a Guideline on Service Management. The guideline supports the requirements of the Policy on Service by outlining key components of good service management.

The Secretariat continued to lead efforts to build the public service workforce of the future, by promoting a healthy, respectful and supportive work environment. These efforts included:

• introducing an online pledge on GCintranet to support mental health in the workplace
• encouraging all federal public service employees to take the online pledge
• posting the list of the deputy ministers who signed the pledge
• creating a Centre of Expertise on Mental Health in the Workplace

The Secretariat also launched the Proudly Serving Canadians web page to celebrate the strength and diversity of Canada's public service. The page promotes public service culture, innovation and employment and is a key recruitment and retention tool for the Government of Canada. In 2016–17, the website received over 26,000 visits.

The Secretariat also committed to working with Employment and Social Development Canada to introduce, by late 2018, legislative reforms for proactive (in other words, employer-initiated) pay equity in the federal public service and in the federally regulated private sector.

In 2016–17, the Secretariat formed the Joint Union/Management Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion in the Public Service. The task force brings together representatives from across the public service and from the public sector bargaining agents. Their aim is to find ways to strengthen diversity and inclusion in the federal government. They are focusing on 4 key areas:

• accountability
• people management
• education and awareness
• diversity lens, an integrated approach

Through a partnership with the Assembly of First Nations, 30 Indigenous post-secondary students were brought to the National Capital Region from across the country in 2016 to work in a variety of departments and agencies under the Indigenous Youth Summer Employment Opportunity pilot. The Secretariat:

• developed the initiative
• provided support to departments and students
• organized learning events and activities
• matched students with mentors
• evaluated the performance of the initiative

The pilot has since expanded to a program that supported 100 students in 27 departments in 2017.

In addition, the Government of Canada announced consultations to review its Official Languages Regulations to better reflect the realities of minority language communities and allow the government to serve Canadians better in the language of their choice.

Information on the Secretariat's lower-level programs is available in the TBS InfoBase.

Description

Through the Government-Wide Program Design and Delivery program, the Secretariat designs and delivers activities, systems, services and operations with, for, or on behalf of other organizations in the Government of Canada. It also establishes a platform for transformational initiatives. The objective is to provide consistent and cost-controlled operations across the Government of Canada.

The Secretariat achieves program results by developing and delivering solutions where whole-of-government leadership is required, or where transformation and standardization can be achieved to improve quality and value for money.

Results

The Secretariat continued to lead the Government-Wide Enabling Functions Transformation Initiative.^{Results Footnote 1} This initiative involves modernizing human resources management and information management and focuses on standardizing and consolidating IT platforms and increasing system functionality. As a result of this initiative, 41 departments have modernized their human resources systems, and 23 departments have modernized their IT systems.

According to deputy heads, the Secretariat needs to:

• strengthen the governance of enterprise-wide systems and operations to better meet clients' needs
• align and coordinate initiatives

The Secretariat will take steps to improve the governance of enterprise-wide systems and operations. It will also build on consultations it has had with user communities to improve how initiatives are designed and implemented.

In 2016–17, the Secretariat led advancements in the area of open government. It released its first set of inventories that were completed under the Directive on Open Government and published on Open.Canada.ca. Canadians can now see both unreleased and released datasets. Over 1,500 new datasets have been identified as eligible for release. In addition to being able to search the inventories on Open.Canada.ca, Canadians can now vote for datasets they would like to access. The Secretariat improved Open.Canada.ca's search features by adding an integrated search that has more filters and more metadata. Canadians now have better access to data and information that is proactively disclosed by departments and agencies. As a result of the Government of Canada's efforts, Canada was ranked second globally in the Web Foundation's Open Data Barometer and was elected to the Open Government Partnership Steering Committee.

The Secretariat established the Centre for Greening Government. The Centre leads the Government of Canada's emissions reduction program and other initiatives to green government. It drives results to make sure the government meets its objectives by:

• tracking and reporting the federal government's emissions centrally
• coordinating efforts across government

In 2016–17, the Centre organized 2 round tables with environmental leaders and published the Government of Canada's Greenhouse Gas Inventory on open data for the first time.

The Secretariat also supported the workforce of the future by negotiating in good faith to reach collective agreements that are fair and reasonable for employees and for Canadians. As of March 31, 2017, 16 tentative settlements were reached in this round of bargaining, covering 85% of the represented employees in the core public administration.

The Secretariat continued the initiative it launched in 2013 to renew the government's classification system to better reflect the current working environment and business requirements. The goal was to update 12 job evaluation standards and 6 qualification standards over the course of the 6-year project.

As of the end of 2016–17, those target were surpassed. The Secretariat has:

• updated 14 job evaluation standards
• reviewed and amended 3 qualification standards
• developed 6 new qualification standards

The Secretariat also modernized the classification and organizational design training curriculum. It updated 3 classroom courses, expanded 1 online learning module and introduced 1 online learning module for managers and human resources advisors in the core public administration.

The Secretariat launched an oversight framework in 2016–17 to monitor the health of the classification program and to ensure the effective management of compensation costs.

The Secretariat also worked on legislation to establish a new labour relations regime for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Throughout 2016–17, the public service continued to be affected by challenges resulting from the implementation of the new Phoenix pay system. In February 2017, the Secretariat created the Human Resources Management Transformation Sector to help address, in collaboration with Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) and other departments and agencies, the difficulties associated with human resources and pay transactions. The Secretariat further supported PSPC by establishing an executive-level union-management consultation committee structure to address pay issues collaboratively. It also established a new claims process. Under this process, a dedicated claims office at the Secretariat is working with departments and agencies to process employees' claims for out-of-pocket expenses resulting from Phoenix pay system issues.

Information on the Secretariat's lower-level programs is available in the TBS InfoBase.

Description

The Government-Wide Funds and Public Service Employer Payments program accounts for funds that are held centrally to supplement other appropriations, from which allocations are made to, or payments and receipts are made on behalf of, other federal organizations. These funds supplement the standard appropriations process and meet certain responsibilities of the Treasury Board as the employer of the core public administration, including employer obligations under the public service pension and benefits plans.

The administration of these funds falls under the Expenditure Analysis and Allocation Management sub-program and the People Management Policy sub-program, but their financial resources are shown separately in the Secretariat's Program Alignment Architecture for visibility and reporting purposes.

Results

In 2016–17, planned spending included about $3.6 billion for government-wide funds. Information on how these funds are allocated over the course of the fiscal year is reported in the annex tables of the Supplementary Estimates and in Section 11, Volume III, of the 2016–17 Public Accounts.

In 2016–17, the Secretariat planned to spend $2.8 billion to meet the Treasury Board's responsibilities as employer. Details on actual spending in this area are provided in the Analysis of trends in spending and human resources section of this report.

The variance between planned and actual spending in this program is mainly attributable to the way that government-wide funds are transferred between the Secretariat and other government organizations. Every year, the Secretariat includes funding in its reference level to be transferred to other government organizations once specific criteria as approved by Treasury Board are met. If these funds are needed, they are transferred to the appropriate department. If they are not needed, the unused balance is returned to the fiscal framework at the end of the fiscal year and is reported as a Secretariat lapse. No actual spending is incurred by the Secretariat under government-wide funds.

Information on the breakdown of spending on government-wide funds and public service employer payments is available on the Secretariat's website.

Description

Internal Services are those groups of related activities and resources that the federal government considers to be services in support of programs and/or required to meet corporate obligations of an organization. Internal Services refers to the activities and resources of the 10 distinct service categories that support Program delivery in the organization, regardless of the Internal Services delivery model in a department. The 10 service categories are: Management and Oversight Services; Communications Services; Legal Services; Human Resources Management Services; Financial Management Services; Information Management Services; Information Technology Services; Real Property Services; Materiel Services; and Acquisition Services.

Results

In 2016–17, the Secretariat undertook a number of initiatives relating to Internal Services to support the implementation of the Government of Canada's agenda.

The Secretariat continued to implement a results and delivery approach to ensure consistent reporting on the achievement of the President of the Treasury Board's priorities. The Secretariat's Chief Results and Delivery Officer led the implementation efforts, supported by the Results and Delivery Unit. The Secretariat also led by example by being one of the departments to use the new Departmental Results Framework. Also in line with this approach, the Secretariat developed a data strategy to better manage information, to improve internal processes, to support evidence-based policy decision making, and to report internally and externally on performance.

To support an agile workplace and a high-performing workforce, the Secretariat invested in 2 learning and development strategies for its employees:

• the Analyst Learning and Development Strategy Learning Calendar for analysts
• the Administrative Professionals Learning and Development Strategy for administrative and clerical employees

The Secretariat also implemented the New Direction in Staffing.

The Secretariat's EX community continued to strive to keep its "Every Day" commitment to employees in order to support a respectful, fulfilling and productive work environment.

The Secretariat also drafted a Departmental Wellness Action Plan to define what wellness means at the Secretariat and to raise awareness about mental health. The plan includes actions that grew out of a gap analysis, as well as indicators of progress on the action plan. Mechanisms for measuring progress include employee surveys.

The Secretariat continued to empower employees to work more collaboratively by strengthening and promoting digital tools and the Secretariat's open office environment at its primary location. Employees have access to the latest videoconferencing and collaboration technologies, Wi-Fi, a dedicated meeting and training area, and open collaboration areas. The meeting and training facilities opened in October 2015, and usage of them increased from 44.7% in 2015–16 to 46.3% in 2016–17.

Work is continuing on the design and renovation of the Secretariat's second location, 219 Laurier. The goal is to make all Secretariat workplaces open, agile and collaborative.

Actual spending was higher than planned, mainly due to increased charges relating to Shared Services Canada and the rollout of several new IT projects for the Secretariat's analysts. These increased charges were offset by the "reprofiling," or shifting, of $3.3 million from 2016–17 to 2017–18 for phase II of the Workspace Renewal project due to construction delays in fitting up 219 Laurier for the Secretariat's use.

Actual FTEs aligned with planned FTEs.