MAF 2020-21 Government Wide Report - Adapting in Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic

Overall, departments and agencies demonstrated stewardship over financial resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. This was evidenced by their continued progress towards reaching the ongoing monitoring stage for their internal controls over financial management processes. In addition, organizations demonstrated that they took corrective and/or preventative actions, by updating their risk assessment or reassessing their internal controls over financial reporting, to ensure that any control weaknesses are properly addressed to respond to the evolving control environment and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Assessing the level of maturity for internal controls over financial management ensures that a risk-based departmental system of internal control over financial management is established, monitored and maintained, and demonstrates adherence to the Policy on Financial Management. Results from this MAF cycle show that 86% of assessed LDAs have at least one of their key ICFM processes at the ongoing monitoring stage. However, only six LDAs have reached the ongoing monitoring stage for all their identified key ICFM processes. Departments and agencies are encouraged to continue to work towards ensuring that all key ICFM processes have reached the ongoing monitoring stage by the target date of March 31, 2024. Achieving this target will ensure that the control design is being assessed regularly and that the ICFMs are operating effectively. It will provide assurance to senior management that a reliable system of ICFM exists and that actions are taken to improve controls.
• With the potential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on departmental operations, it is important to highlight any modifications in ICFRs in order to adapt and adjust to the evolving situation. In this context, a system of internal controls must be maintained to mitigate the risks to programs, operations, and resource management. Departments and agencies are required to ensure that prompt corrective actions are taken when control weaknesses and material unmitigated risks are identified. Results from this MAF cycle indicate that 97% of assessed LDAs updated their risk assessment or re-assessed their ICFR. This demonstrates that the COVID-19 pandemic led organizations to take corrective and/or preventive actions to ensure that control weaknesses are properly addressed to respond to the evolving control environment. It should be noted that since the conclusion of the MAF assessment period, the remaining 3% of responding LDAs have updated their risk assessment and/or re-assessed their ICFR. Departments and agencies are encouraged to continue this best practice as the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the control environment continue to become known.
• In their response, many departments used transfer payments to address the social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Canadians. All surveyed departments and agencies responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, in the context of transfer payments, by taking actions that included: implementing new programming, amending terms and conditions to existing programs, and using flexibilities available within the Policy on Transfer Payments (e.g., amending funding agreement to extend project end-dates, adding pandemic related activities to the agreements, and modifying recipient reporting and/or timelines).

Figure 1 - Text version

Changes	Percentage
	SDA	LDA	Total
Amendment to Terms & Conditions	42%	64%	56%
Addition of new programming	50%	36%	41%
Provision of additional/supplementary funding to existing recipients	58%	73%	68%
Implementation of flexibilities under the policy using advance payments	33%	77%	62%
Implementation of flexibilities enabling recipients to retain reasonable unexpended balances	42%	59%	53%
Amendments to funding agreements by extending project dates	75%	95%	88%
Amendments to funding agreements by amending eligible expenditures	58%	68%	65%
Amendments to funding agreements by amending recipient reporting requirements and/or timelines	75%	86%	82%

Although most departments and agencies are meeting the workforce availability (WFA) targets for one or more EE groups, there are gaps. In addition, partially because of changes to the scope of disabilities considered, many organizations and the public service as a whole, are not meeting the WFA for persons with disabilities. Organizations, however, are making progress in reducing the gaps. Moreover, organizations have demonstrated progress over the years in supporting diversity and inclusion, but there remain further opportunities to collaborate with their employees on developing approaches to responding to the new priorities. Organizations have also demonstrated efforts to address harassment and violence in the workplace, which corroborates with employee perceptions on harassment in the workplace in the 2020 Public Service Employee Survey (PSES). Although not formally assessed, organizations demonstrate actions taken to support employee mental health and wellbeing and to provide services to Canadians in both official languages during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Results from this MAF cycle indicate that organizations made strong efforts to foster diversity and inclusion in the workplace. All LDAs and 77% of SDAs assessed, used EE and/or diversity projections to address human resource planning needs. As well, 100% of LDAs and 95% of SDAs provided dedicated training on diversity and inclusion to their employees. Further efforts to engage departmental EE networks and employee representatives will continue to strengthen efforts in this area. In addition, support for the development of EE group members through career management plans (i.e., mentorship or sponsorship) has been identified as an area requiring improvement for organizations.
• Although more effort is required to increase the representation of employees who self-identify as belonging to one or more EE groups, the 2020-21 MAF results show that approximately half of LDAs and SDAs increased the percentage of EE group members in their organization in this MAF cycle, compared to the 2019-20 MAF results. Notably, 85% of departments and agencies saw an increase in the percentage of employees that identified as members of visible minority groups. Additionally, among the organizations assessed, 50% of them showed an increase in the percentage of persons with disabilities and 52% showed an increase in the percentage of Indigenous Peoples since the previous MAF cycle.

• Effective staffing contributes to hiring the right people, in the right jobs at the right time. This MAF cycle, the median internal time to staff advertised positions was 175 days compared to 176 days the previous cycle. Although the target of a 10% improvement in the median time to staff was not realized at the enterprise-wide level, the efficiency, responsiveness, and agility of the staffing system remained constant. Organizations should continue to pursue efforts to improve the efficiency of staffing and explore new opportunities as they adapt their staffing practices to the post-pandemic context. These efforts will help ensure the public service is better positioned to onboard and retain the talent it needs to deliver important programs and services to Canadians.
• Departments and agencies continued to address harassment and violence in the workplace during the reporting period. According to the 2020-21 MAF results, examples of the types of actions taken by LDAs and SDAs to address harassment and violence in the workplace included: putting in place an ombuds-type function to provide all employees with a trusted, safe space to discuss harassment and/or violence without fear of reprisal and to help navigate existing systems; making available easy-to-access guides to support employees and managers when they experience or witness workplace harassment and violence; identifying, assessing and controlling relevant risk factors for specific occupational jobs; and, informing employees of relevant policies. These results seem to corroborate with the 2020 PSES findings. The 2020 PSES results show a decrease in the percentage of employees who indicated having experienced harassment from 14% in 2019 to 11% in 2020. Additionally, according to the 2020 PSES, 68% of employees considered their workplace psychologically healthy which is an improvement from the 2019 PSES result of 61%. With the coming into force of amendments to the Canada Labour Code and new Work Place Harassment and Violence Prevention Regulations in January 2021, organizations will need to ensure that their activities are aligned and continue to support the reduction of harassment and violence.
• Most organizations have taken actions to foster a positive culture of values and ethics in their organization in accordance with the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act and the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Sector. Specifically, 87% of LDAs and 74% of SDAs had designated one or more Senior Official for Conflict of Interest and Conflict of Duties and 73% of LDAs and 68% of SDAs had designated a Values and Ethics or Integrity Champion. These actions are an important step toward taking efforts to support a workplace that fosters an ethical culture and promotes a positive environment for disclosure of wrongdoing.
• Improving the recruitment, retention and promotion of persons with disabilities is an enterprise-wide priority. The MAF results indicate that organizations are making moderate progress in implementing best practices to support employees with disabilities, such as the centralization of accommodation requests (52% of LDAs and 64% of SDAs), and ensuring the availability of information and support to managers on the accommodation process (70% of LDAs and 68% of SDAs). Some progress has been noted in streamlining various aspects of the accommodation process, including various models and degrees of centralization such as establishing a call centre or central email account for queries. These efforts contribute to the improved effectiveness of the accommodation process to prevent and eliminate barriers for all employees and align with broader adjustments needed over the medium to longer terms. The progress report on the implementation of the Accessibility Strategy for the Public Service of Canada, from its launch in 2019 to November 2020, further documented efforts made by departments and agencies to remove barriers to accessibility by involving persons with disabilities in the design, development, and testing of new programs, services and workplace initiatives. Going forward, it will be important for all organizations to maintain open feedback channels for persons with disabilities as departmental accessibility plans are developed.
• The COVID-19 pandemic cast a spotlight on employee health and wellbeing. All organizations assessed, directed their employees to TBS resources on mental health to ensure that they received consistent and up-to-date guidance. Additionally, organizations demonstrated efforts to support employee mental health, including providing guidance and training to managers and executives (100% of LDAs and 95% of SDAs). Overall, the results of the PSES show that the actions taken by organizations were well received as 84% of respondents said that their organizations clearly communicated mental health services available to them, and 70% said that their senior managers took adequate steps to support their mental health during the pandemic. As supporting employee mental health and wellbeing continue to be an enterprise priority, there are opportunities for further improvement in terms of measuring and tracking the 13 psychosocial factors identified in the National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace and using the results to inform and improve risk mitigation strategies and planning.
• Canadians rely on communications from the Government of Canada in both official languages to provide them with guidance on how to ensure their wellbeing. This is particularly important during a pandemic. As part of the MAF process, organizations indicated many areas where efforts were undertaken to ensure that information was available to Canadians in both official languages, such as ensuring adequate translation capacity (88% of LDAs and 73% of SDAs) and making additional efforts to ensure that communications materials were released simultaneously in both official languages and that they were of equal quality (88% of LDAs and 77% of SDAs). While organizations demonstrated clear efforts so that communications were available in the public's preferred official language, among the lessons learned is that, in order to be prepared for future emergencies, departments should review their Business Continuity Plans and/or Crisis and Emergency Communications Plans through an official languages lens and more clearly identify responsibilities and actions to be taken under exceptional circumstances. This will help to ensure compliance with the Official Languages Act and the Policy on Official Languages at all times.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, departments and agencies took immediate actions to prioritize online services and significantly expand portions of their IT architecture to enable government employees to work effectively from home. Organizations quickly transformed to offer client-centric services through modern technology. This accelerated transformation demonstrates the enterprise is capable of making rapid advancements to ensure the delivery of essential programs and services to Canadians. That said, in the 2020-21 MAF assessment, departments and agencies generally achieved moderate performance in providing client-centric services that are available online via healthy IT applications. Continuous effort will be required to ensure all applicable services are available online end-to-end. The IM/IT and Service AoM will fully align its questions for the next MAF cycle with the new Policy on Service and Digital and looks forward to continued growth in this area, pandemic-driven or not.

• Service standards reinforce government accountability by making performance transparent. They also increase the confidence of Canadians in government by demonstrating the government’s commitment to service excellence. They are integral to good client service, effectively managing performance and driving service improvement. This year’s MAF assessed whether priority services had service standards and whether those service standards were met. According to the 2020-21 MAF results, 41% of LDAs have a high level of maturity with respect to creating and meeting service standards. In addition, 29% of LDAs have a medium level of maturity and 29% have a low level of maturity. To provide good services to their clients, organizations must identify service standards for all their services and strive to meet these targets. Consideration should also be given to ensuring that identified service standards and their corresponding targets are meaningful to clients so that they can make time-sensitive, important decisions about when to access a service and what to expect.
• According to the Policy on Service^{Footnote 7}, the proportion of external and internal enterprise services available online should be increased annually as per a department's service management strategy. The level of maturity towards making priority services available online is based on the extent to which priority services can be completed online end-to-end and the extent to which applicable interaction points for priority services are online. The MAF assessment demonstrated that only 26% of LDAs have a high level of maturity for making priority services available online, compared to 21% of LDAs who have a medium level of maturity and 53% who have a low level of maturity. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how important external online services are to Canadians and businesses, along with internal enterprise-wide services to federal public servants. Simply meeting policy requirements should be the lowest bar for high-performing organizations. Departments and agencies must make all their applicable services available online end-to-end and should continuously advance their online service offerings.
• Overall IT maturity provides a broad view of an organization’s IT systems and processes that enable it to deliver on its mandate. In the 2020-21 MAF exercise, IT maturity was assessed as a composite indicator that includes: Software Application Portfolio health; sound departmental architecture practices and governance; IT Planning maturity; and, cloud adoption. This year’s MAF results show that 44% of LDAs have an overall high level of IT maturity. Whereas, 53% of LDAs have an overall medium level of IT maturity and 3% of LDAs have an overall low level of IT maturity. These scores were negatively impacted by departmental results on the Application Portfolio Health Indicator (APHI), with 71% of responding departments and agencies achieving a low score. Although the percentage of departments with a low APHI score is high, the MAF data shows an overall positive trend in the APHI with an improvement of 14% since 2016. Departments and agencies must focus on improving their IT applications, architecture review processes, IT investment planning and cloud maturity to improve their overall levels of IT maturity. Moving forward, organizations must meet the requirements in the Policy on Service and Digital to reach higher levels of IT maturity and transform their operations and planning.

The 2020-21 MAF assessment highlights the progress organizations have made in maturing their performance measurement and evaluation functions. The quality of Performance Information Profiles (PIP) is improving, as is the ability of organizations to identify data requirements for performance measures in Treasury Board submissions.

• Under the Policy on Results , each Program in an organization’s Program Inventory is required to have a PIP that provides a consolidated view of the Program’s results-related information. Assessing the quality of the information contained in a PIP allows TBS to provide organizations with feedback on areas requiring further improvement and to understand the capacity of organizations to produce quality results information. In the 2020-21 MAF cycle, TBS rated departmental PIPs on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being unacceptable and 5 being excellent) based on an assessment of three elements: the clear articulation of program logic; the quality of outcomes and indicators; and, the completeness of information for each indicator.s^{Footnote 10} The median quality rating of the PIP measurement information in this MAF cycle was 3.16.s^{Footnote 11} While the median increased over the previous cycle (2.96), 36% of assessed organizations received a score of less than 3.0, indicating a need for those organizations to continue to focus on the further improvement of these important management tools.
• For certain Treasury Board submissions, organizations are required to complete a Results Appendix which provides further details on the outcomes the initiative is seeking to achieve and how the outcomes will be measured through performance indicators. The ability of organizations to identify data sources and data collection frequencies for each performance indicator is a forward-looking measure of their ability to produce actual results information. This MAF cycle, based on all indicators included in the Results Appendices of assessed LDAs Treasury Board submissions approved between November 1, 2018, and June 30, 2019, the median of performance indicators that had both data source and data collection frequency information was 89%. This is an increase from 79% in the 2019-20 MAF results and from 67% in 2018-19 MAF results and is a positive signal of potential increased capacity of organizations to produce actual results data in the future.
• The availability of actual results data is a prerequisite to using results information to inform decision-making. In this MAF cycle, Results Appendices from Treasury Board submissions for LDAs approved between September 1, 2016, and June 30, 2019, were assessed. Half of the organizations had actual results data available in the time period originally proposed in the Submission, for at least 82% of sampled indicators. This reflects a relatively consistent level of performance since the 2018-19 MAF results and indicates organizations have largely been able to implement their performance measurement plans.

Since experimentation became included in the MAF as part of the 2018-19 MAF cycle, results have demonstrated that organizations are increasingly using experimentation to find new ways to address problems and improve outcomes for Canadians, as well as using the results of experiments to inform decision-making.

• Despite the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020-21 MAF results show that LDAs increased their level of investment in experimentation in all areas, except for building experimental capacity. The most common investment among organizations was committing resources to increase experimentation activity (91% of LDAs), followed closely by running experiments (88% of LDAs).
• This MAF cycle, the most significant increase in experimental activities was with organizations developing frameworks in support of experimentation. Although there has been a steady increase in the number of LDAs who are integrating experimentation into governance bodies, there remains an opportunity for departments and agencies to increase integration into governance bodies. Integrating experimentation into governance bodies helps to ensure its consideration in formal decision-making processes and positions experimentation to support work across the organization.

• In addition, most organizations self-assessed as having used the results of an experiment to scale-up (62%) and course correct (68%) an initiative, as well as having disseminated^{Footnote 13} the results of an experiment for decision-making or used results to improve the design of another initiative (76%).
• Several organizations reported using experimentation to inform their adaptation to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the transition to remote work. Experimentation was also reported as having supported broader governmental response efforts to the pandemic such as federal government COVID-19 communication strategies.

Overall, departments and agencies demonstrated resiliency and proved to be strong and effective security management stewards during the COVID-19 pandemic. For the first time since the Y2K Initiative, the Government of Canada successfully compiled a Critical Services list. This exercise identified the need for a nuanced approach during extended events such as a pandemic and highlighted that services supporting horizontal legislated and/or regulatory obligations such as access to information requests and translation services in support of official languages, need to be considered in the context of departmental Business Impact Analysis activities and related critical service identification. In the future, the enterprise should continue to focus on achieving the strategic outcomes outlined in the Policy on Government Security, to continue to underpin the delivery of trusted programs and services that contribute to the health, safety, economic wellbeing and security of Canadians and to the effective functioning of government.

• Business Continuity Management (BCM) and related Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) allow for the continued availability of services and associated assets critical to the health, safety, security, and economic wellbeing of Canadians, as well as the effective functioning of government. The COVID-19 pandemic reinforced the importance of maintaining up-to-date and comprehensive BCPs, to support departments and agencies in the uninterrupted delivery of programs and services to Canadians. In this context, the MAF results indicate that, 93% of LDAs’ critical services^{Footnote 15} have a BCP in place. This is a slight decrease of approximately 5% since 2019-20. These results demonstrate that most organizations are equipped to mitigate potential risks to service disruption, and therefore, reduces the likelihood that a high degree of injury to the health, safety, security, or economic wellbeing of Canadians would occur if a critical service was disrupted.
• A BIA identifies critical services, providing departments and agencies the capability to understand their risk environment and develop associated continuity strategies. MAF results indicate that 88% of LDAs had a BIA that identified critical services accordingly. Regular review and updating of BIAs facilitate and informs decision making and resource allocation for managing events which may impact the delivery of critical services to Canadians.
• IT security is a foundational area of the Security Management AoM. According to the MAF assessment, 92% of LDAs demonstrated that they had well-documented and implemented IT security processes, that these processes had been implemented, and that they were continuously monitoring threats. This is an increase of approximately 3% since 2019-20. These practices ensure that departments and agencies are actively guarding against threats, vulnerabilities, and unauthorized access to internal systems.

Overall, organizations improved their governance for overseeing the performance and implementation of their investments and increased their capacity to develop effective long-term strategies for the management of their real property assets. In the future, real property custodians should continue to align with the strategic objectives to optimize the performance of their assets as presented in the Policy on the Management of Real Property and the Policy on the Planning and Management of Investments, through data-driven approaches that reinforce real property management as a key element of the delivery of programs and services for all Canadians.

• The availability of foundational data related to asset condition, performance, and utilization is critical to the development of robust, integrated portfolio strategies. Of the custodial LDAs with real property assets, 44% developed and/or updated the acquisition, maintenance, and disposal strategies for their entire real property portfolio. This is an increase over last year’s result of 33%. While this is a modest increase, progress in the development of comprehensive, integrated portfolio strategies was demonstrated through short-term plans and progress reports summarizing ongoing data collection activities. These activities should enable organizations to make proactive and holistic decisions with respect to the entire real property portfolio, which is a more effective and efficient means of management than an asset-by-asset approach.
• The annual rate of reinvestment indicates whether adequate resources are dedicated to maintaining the real property portfolio in acceptable condition. The industry best practice is to reinvest a minimum of 4% of the portfolio’s replacement value to prevent real property assets from deteriorating faster than lifecycle projections predict. Overall, the average for the custodial LDAs with real property assets fell short of the industry best practice with a targeted reinvestment rate of 3.2% and actual rate of reinvestment of 3.5%. While the 4% target was not met, this data helps assess departmental real property planning activities while also providing insight into funding challenges that departments may be facing regarding the maintenance and recapitalization of their custodial real property assets.
• Departments and agencies are required to produce complete performance information related to the implementation of their investment decisions. This year’s MAF results indicate that 73% of the assessed LDAs provided the governance committee or individual responsible for investment oversight with consolidated performance information, including itemised active investments as detailed in their respective investment plans. This result indicates that departments are improving the governance regimes used to oversee investment planning and project management compared to previous years.