Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance
Issue 17 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Thursday, December 5, 1996
The Standing Senate Committee on National Finance met this day at 11:00 a.m. to examine the Main Estimates laid before Parliament for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1997.
Senator David Tkachuk (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable senators, this is the sixth meeting of the committee under the committee's order of reference on the Main Estimates for 1996-97. The meeting is the second in an occasional series being held on the progress being made by those involved with the Improved Reporting to Parliament Project. Our first meeting was on May 8, 1996 and is published as issue number 8.
Two pilot documents have been distributed to parliamentarians to date: The first are performance reports, 16 in number, and olive in colour. The second, in-year updates, one in number and beige in colour, covering 16 departments or agencies. The object of the project is to have an examining team assess the degree to which these reports help improve the understanding of parliamentarians of federal departments and agencies. Ultimately, the evaluation team wishes to know what impact these documents will have on the ability of our committee to effectively scrutinize the departments and agencies reporting to Parliament, and to hold them accountable.
Today we are honoured to have with us Mr. Ron Duhamel, MP for St. Boniface and Chair of the Improved Reporting to Parliament Project. Welcome, sir. From the Treasury Board Program Branch we have David Miller, Assistant Secretary of the Expenditure Management Sector; and Tom Hopwood, Director, Office in charge of the Improved Reporting to Parliament Project.
Mr. Ron Duhamel, Member of Parliament (St. Boniface): Mr. Chairman, honourable senators, I thank you for this opportunity to appear before the committee today to discuss the Improved Reporting to Parliament Project.
You will recall, as was mentioned by the chair, that we appeared before this committee last May for the purpose of discussing six pilot projects. I believe you will remember me saying how important your input and feedback was to us. Let me say at this time that it was excellent. As a result of the success we have had to date, through contributions such as your own, we are now able to move to the next stage. That is why we are here today.
On October 31, 1996, the President of the Treasury Board tabled 16 pilot performance reports. On November 21, 1996, a pilot year-end update was tabled. We would like to discuss these latest developments with you today, and we look forward to your questions, comments and insights.
Before I turn matters over to the officials with me, I remind you that this project is continuing. Frankly, in a sense, it does not have an end. It is to be hoped that we will continue to improve with time, and no doubt from time to time we will be back to seek your guidance.
The Improved Reporting to Parliament Project is a multi-year project, requiring continuing dialogue with all parliamentarians. I look forward to that continuing dialogue with you.
Mr. David Miller, Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board of Canada: We have a handout available that identifies the background and purpose of this session today, and puts all of these documents together in a way that will describe the overall process. With your indulgence, I want to spend 10 or 15 minutes going through that material and then I will be open for questions or comments.
The Chairman: We see this as a learning experience to find out exactly what you are trying accomplish. Our questions will be from that viewpoint. I will try to make the session as informal as possible so that we can understand what you are trying to do, and make use of it in future committee meetings.
Please begin Mr. Miller.
Mr. Miller: Using the material that you have available to you, perhaps I could begin by providing a background to the changes and show how they fit together in terms of the expenditure information that we are providing to Parliament during the course of a year.
Moving to the next page, here we indicate the different initiatives which have been taken over the last several years to arrive at where we are today. Various committees were formed, and their results and recommendations made public. We also looked at changes to the Expenditure Management System. Phase 1, as indicated here, was the introduction of business planning, the outlook documents which were tabled with the various committees, and the realization that reallocation is the key to how the government is dealing with resource pressures and priorities. Phase 2 was the Improved Reporting to Parliament Project and how that information is then distributed. It has been almost 20 years since we last had a serious look at that information, and it probably no longer suits either the needs of parliamentarians, nor is it particularly useful to the needs of the departments as they now exist, with the messages that they now have as to where the expenditures are being made and the results they are achieving.
The last item on the page has two acronyms, and I should explain what those acronyms mean. This is the method employed by the departments to illustrate the breakdown of their structure as it is displayed in these documents. The PRAS, or planning, reporting and accountability structure, is replacing by the OPF, or operational performance framework. If you look at the details in the Estimates documents, this is the way in which the activities are shown against individual programs, and how the subactivities extrapolate from that. Therefore, again, we are not changing the concept itself; we have merely given it a new name in recognition of the fact that it now extends not just to the planning side but to the reporting on performance, and the linkages to the results side as well. You may notice in the Estimates for the coming year that several departments are changing their structure to recognize the way in which they operate and are managed internally.
Turning now to page 4 of our document, when we look at the core expectations from the reports themselves, in our role of supporting all of the parliamentary committees, we consider it important for these committees to have better input and a better understanding of where government spending and priorities are. We also hope to take advantage of the changes to both coordinate and streamline the reporting requirements for departments. Right now, the Estimates are physically composed of almost 12 million printed pages, in total, with one set weighing something like 60 pounds. Yet, parliamentarians are not using that information, and it has not been very useful to the departments either. It is difficult, therefore, not to improve on that situation.
As Mr. Duhamel mentioned, this is an evolutionary process. We are introducing changes, but we hope that with your input it will improve and become a better product in future years. Again, the emphasis is on fiscal discipline and reallocation, and, it is hoped, to provide some flexibility for departments. The structure that I mentioned, the PRAS, is again to provide a stable environment that will be recognizable throughout all these reports, if you are looking through them for a particular department. It might help in understanding how their plans relate to the performance side.
The next item relates to the improved transparency of in-year shifts. Whenever I have had the privilege of appearing before this committee to talk about Supplementary Estimates, one thing I usually mention is that there is a great deal of information that is left out because we are only dealing with increases or any change in the overall spending level. Departments do not have the opportunity to come forward with plans that show what kinds of priority shifts or other program adjustments that have occurred within their approved level to Parliament. Therefore, we are in the position of having an original plan but, two years later, no one has as yet had the opportunity to look at the changes that have been made to that plan -- and obviously, when we examine the results, many things have changed. In the future, we are hoping to put a greater priority on the provision to Parliament of updates to the plans of departments throughout the year.
We also want to take advantage of burgeoning technology, given the changes that have taken place in that field within the last five years with respect to such areas as access to information electronically and our ability to communicate with Canadians in general. Certainly, we would like to ensure that whatever reporting requirements departments use relate to the way in which they manage themselves and the kinds of systems that they use.
I would refer you now to page 5, and this is probably the most important section in relation to the structure.We hope to divide the cycle up into spring plans -- which is the planning side -- and fall performance -- which is reporting on results and outcomes, and other events that have actually occurred. By splitting the cycle in that fashion, we hope to have a much greater emphasis on the performance side. In the past, we have tended to simply subsume that information in the plans by saying: "Do not worry about what has happened; look to the future and see what kind of changes we are making." By setting up the system in this way, we are able to provide for parliamentarians a much clearer picture on the results that have actually been obtained. Another thing that must be ensured is that the documents put before parliamentary committees and parliamentarians is a useful input to the budgetary and other planning processes of the government.
Moving to the next slide, number 6, which deals with spring planning, and again leading up to a review of priorities which is an established part of the expenditure management system, one of the dilemmas we have had in the past is that, for the last 10 years, the government has decided to table a budget one or two days prior to the introduction of the Main Estimates. That is at the beginning of March or the end of February. This has made it impossible for individual departments to reflect the implications of those budget decisions in their documents. The result of that situation is that, after we have produced all of this material on Main Estimates, the first thing we must say is: "No, none of the budget decisions or implications of the budget are included in this material." That is simply because the time is not available to roll those kinds of things into the planning structure of the departments. Therefore we hope to change the timing of that document -- not the budget itself, but the departmental details on the Main Estimates -- in order to accommodate that situation.
Senator Bolduc: Perhaps you would explain the scheduling again, so that I might understand. When you talk about spring planning, you mean that next spring you will plan for the upcoming budget? Is this what you mean?
Mr. Miller: As we go through the presentation, I hope that will be clear. We do have some details on the timing of all these things, but in general terms, when we are about talking spring, we are talking about March 1997. That would signal the beginning of the first round on this system, rather than working on just a few pilot projects as we have been doing up until now.
Departments are required to produce business plans for their own internal purposes. However, these are reviewed annually by the Treasury Board. Although these are not public documents, the bulk of the material is distributed within departments and, in some cases, it is sent out to clients. In other words, it is used as a matter of discussion on directions as to where departments are going. Somehow, though, we miss out on providing that information to parliamentarians. This is not deliberate; it is just not part of the formal process. Therefore, again we would like to change the documents to ensure that the information provided to Parliament lines up with the internal planning of departments themselves.
Senator Kelly: This reference to business plans comes up quite frequently. Sometime before we are through, perhaps you can offer us a better understanding of what kinds of parameters are used in the design of a business plan, as opposed to what used to be done leading up to a budget. In other words, a budget is a budget, but what are you looking for? Are you looking for new results, or more clearly defined results, interim, final and so on? Perhaps that is another subject, but, I am curious.
Mr. Miller: I hope that some of those questions will be addressed when we finish this part of our presentation, senator. If not, I can certainly supplement that information.
It is really a misnomer for us to call it a "business plan" in the sense of the private sector. It is definitely a "strategic plan". It is not really a corporate type of business plan. We have used that term because there was an accepted understanding of what that would mean.
Senator Kelly: You mean it is both reassuring and misleading.
Mr. Miller: I am the first one to admit it is not a business plan that someone from the private sector would readily understand.
We also have other documents that we have tried to use. There are the outlook documents and the president's report. We would like to roll those into this process as well.
On page 7 we talk about Fall Performance Reporting. We would like to provide this separate window for performance reporting, something parliamentarians have never had before. We would like to ensure that since this information is based on the fiscal year that ended the previous March, the fact that we are then able to produce performance reports in October means that they are six months sooner than those which we do under the current process. Right now, the first opportunity is in Part III of the Main Estimates for the following year. That year has been over for a full 12 months. Again, the relevancy of performance information is lost because of the timing. We are moving it back and producing it as soon as we can, once the public accounts and other financial details of the fiscal year have been finalized.
The next page is another report that the President of the Treasury Board produced in the House last year and the year before. Its focus is on performance. As Mr. Duhamel mentioned, it was tabled in Parliament on October 31. It includes government-wide information and a summary of the review activity that is taking place within all the departments, as well as some commitments from individual departments. There is a one-page summary of their expectations and what kinds of things they are committed to in the future.
We also had the 16 reports that were tabled for the first time at the end of October this year.
The next page is a diagram. I will be building up the elements of this diagram as we go through our discussion and I hope that will answer the questions of timing and the overall process. This first diagram explains the three major components. The outside line represents Parliament. The inner dotted line represents cabinet. The departments are in the centre.
Within the overall budget planning process, there are two significant events; one occurs during the summer, and that is the cabinet's review of the priorities that roll in through the fall through the consultations on the budget. The other is in January, when the review ends up with cabinet's budget decisions and, eventually, the budget. Those are the key planning events from that perspective.
On the next page, we have taken that information and added in what amounts to the spring plans. Here you will see by the circle on the right-hand side that we are planning to provide in Parliament the "plans and priorities", which will be that document that is forward-looking for three years. It has a significant amount of detail on performance targets and other things like that. That fits into the "business plans", which is contained in this inner circle and which is produced by departments and is currently reviewed by the Treasury Board. Over the next number of years we would like to bring those as close together as possible so that the information provided to Parliament mirrors the information in the business plans, something which is really internal. This would avoid having more than one type of presentation developed. Departments could justify these public documents on the basis of their own internal plans.
The diagram on page 11 indicates the performance report, which is the circle to the left. In the fall, going around that circle, we have the budget consultation strategy, which includes both what is public and what is going on within the government. We have the tabling of the public accounts, which occurs normally by the end of October. We have the president's report, which I mentioned is the one on review and which has some detailed information on each department, as well as the performance reports, which, for this year, are for these 16 pilots. Hopefully, parliamentarians will have the opportunity to look at this information and feed the expectations or results of that review into the kind of decision-making process that would occur in January leading up to the next budget.
Page 12 takes all of that information and simply situates it within the budget and the Main Estimates. After the consultations are completed and the decisions have been made, those are then reflected in the budget, which would come out at the end of February. We would, of course, have produced the Main Estimates, Parts I and II.
On page 13, we are attempting to explain how we have gone about the process. We have done a great deal of work with both committees and individual parliamentarians leading up to this point, and getting their suggestions. We have had a series of pilots introduced, which include six in terms of the planning documents for last March and the 16 performance reports that were tabled on October 31. Again, the in-year updates to update the current year plans for departments were tabled in November.
The parliamentary working group had representation from the Senate as well as from the House of Commons. There were numerous committee meetings, probably in the range of 30 to 40, in order to help parliamentarians understand what we are doing and also to receive their input on the directions of these changes.
Page 14 is fairly simple. Right now there is a requirement that all Estimates material be tabled 30 days prior to the beginning of the fiscal year. As I mentioned, that makes it difficult for departments to reflect budget changes, because the budget for the last number of years has been closely linked to that date. It also does not fit into the internal planning processes for departments. The fiscal year starts in April 1. However, to have the documents prepared, they must be ready by the beginning of January. At that point, departments would not have started their own processes to determine in detail where their upcoming priorities are.
We would like to adjust this so that we can table these spring plans. We would have Parts I and II of the Main Estimates, which are the summaries and the information in support of the supply bill or appropriation bill, tabled at the beginning of March. However, the departmental plans would be brought forward on or before March 31 of that year. That would be a one-month delay in order for departments to implement the adjustments necessary and to ensure that their plans reflect budget priorities and other differences.
We would also formally introduce the Fall Performance Report, indicating that these reports have to be tabled on or before October 31. Now, they do not have a particular spot in the process. Whatever performance information we had was buried under the detail of those Part IIIs.
The 16 departments have already started that process. Again, with the concurrence of Parliament, we would like to move forward with that along with the other ones as well.
Page 15 sets out something that we would like to review when parliamentarians are satisfied with the information. The concern here is that the vote structure, which has remained in effect for the last 30 years, is probably not the best way for parliamentarians to understand how departments are both planning and meeting results. I say that, because that vote structure is based on inputs. It sets out how much salary you have and how many capital projects you will do. Those are added up and that is how Parliament approves it. It does not do what we hope will come out of this project, which is to focus on results and outcomes and to relate the targets to the final product.
Again, it is something for parliamentarians to keep in the back of their minds as we go through this that, eventually, we would like to look at that, because we are now in the position that we may be approving money on one basis and justifying and reviewing it on another. Eventually, obviously, we would like to line that up. That will be an interesting discussion.
In the last budgets we also indicated that we wanted to move to accrual accounting, which relates to generally accepted accounting principles, and how things are done in the private sector. However, there are implications that we would need to consider, and we would need to consider votes and approvals as well. Those matters will be will be rolled up, and then there will be further discussion and consideration of them in the upcoming year. In other words, there will be no changes in the 1997-98 fiscal year. This is just to indicate that such changes will be under discussion eventually.
Senator Bolduc: With respect to the proposal on page 15, does TBS refer to the Treasury Board Secretariat?
Mr. Miller: Those are the officials, yes.
On page 16, we have an in-year update to provide better planning information and more appropriate identification of changes to priorities of the departments so that when they get to their actual results and outcomes, they can then describe them in terms of their updated plan rather than their original plan, which at that point may be almost two years old.
These are very brief summaries. All 16 are contained in this one document, but the important thing is really to provide the opportunity. We will be building on that basis as we move into the following fiscal years. With the help of parliamentarians, we will attempt to adjust to what they need.
Senator Forest: Could you explain to me "vote structure"? What do you mean by that?
Mr. Miller: The standard vote structure for a department is that there will be one vote for each program unless the capital expenditures or the grants and contribution expenditures of that program exceed $5 million. If they exceed $5 million, there will be separate votes for those purposes.
Senator Forest: Over $5 million.
Mr. Miller: Over $5 million, there will be a separate vote in each program for either of those other types of inputs. For example, as a departmental official, you may be using capital from a program to build something, or you may be transferring money to an Indian band to build something. Even though you end up with that new school, this is a completely different way to approve the appropriations, but the objective is still to build the school. We think that is the more important element. It is those sorts of changes that we would like to discuss with parliamentarians.
Senator Bolduc: How many programs are there? If there is one vote per program, I suspect we have so many programs and therefore so many votes, except where we have capital expenditures and grants. How many would there be in an ordinary department such as, for example, Natural Resources?
Senator De Bané: Sixty per cent of the spending is statutory; it never comes for a vote, in any event.
Mr. Miller: That is correct. Seventy per cent of the spending is statutory, which is not voted, but we are now at a stage where perhaps only seven or eight departments and agencies have more than one program running within their department. Most departments have one vote in total. That is not the sort of change we would like to see take place here. Rather, it would be to be able to use the vote structure to better reflect the activities within the department. It may be worthwhile to explain that.
Let us assume, for example, that the government announces a new program of $600 million to be spent over three years to help municipalities improve their water quality. What Parliament actually approves is the amount of cash flowing to a particular municipality in, say, the second year of that multi-year program. They do not deal with the overall program, and they force departments to guess at how much that particular municipality would spend in a year, and if that guess happened to be incorrect, the department would need to come back for changes in that requirement. A much better way to approach approving expenditures would be to look at the objectives and the results that will emerge from that process, rather than look at the input side, which is what happens now.
Senator Bolduc: Therefore, we are on automatic pilot for 70 per cent of the budget. On the remaining 30 per cent, we have those programs you are talking about?
Mr. Miller: That is correct. We are talking about the 30 per cent of the budget that constitutes all of the salaries, all of the operating costs, all of the capital and a majority of the individual contributions and grants outside of the major transfer payments. The statutory programs are almost all either transfers to individuals, such as occurs with respect to Old Age Security, or transfers to other levels of government, such as occurs with respect to equalization payments, or interest on the public debt. Of course, the latter is a big one as well. There are really three or four categories of statutory items. The ongoing operations of the government are voted upon each year.
Page 17 indicates the three objectives that we have in relation to information technology. The first one is obviously to improve the access that the public and everyone else has to this information. People are aware that changes have occurred, such as the advent of the Internet and our ability to search documents. Up until recently the government, on its own home page, which can be used to access information on the federal government, had over 3 million "hits," or 3 million inquiries where individuals had come looking for different pieces of information. That has happened within a matter of months. That first column refers to information that we hope to be able to make available on that system in the coming years. At the moment, most of the information we produce for Parliament is not available directly through the Internet. We are hoping to remedy that in the next few years.
The second column relates to search capability. One of the other problems we have is that many people refer to this information, and in many cases are looking for different perspectives on our ability to take the 70 or 80 documents we produce each year and identify common themes. As an example, how much does the government spend specifically to help disabled people? That kind of search does not exist. It requires someone to sit down and go through all the information in order to come up with an answer. Again, we hope the search capability will eventually allow that to be done virtually automatically.
The third column relates to improved economy and efficiency. The cost is associated with printing 12 million pages of material, and our ability to disseminate that material. We try to get that information out to libraries. We obviously have difficulty getting it to schools, which also have an interest in this information. Electronic access would give them instant and virtually free access to all the details.
With respect to information technology, or IT milestones on the next page, we have entered on line our performance report documents, and people can access them through the Internet. This is the first time that we have had detailed documents available. Someone can log in, pick out a particular department or agency and have a look at the actual documents on their computer screen. There are some limits to the search capabilities in that regard. In January we will be looking at ways to retrieve data. In the plans we hope to introduce for March 1997, we hope to have documents on line as well, and on the Internet. There is a fairly short timetable within which we will have things up and running.
The last page simply goes through some of the events that have occurred during the project. We hope to gain approval for a motion to change the timing that would allow those reports to be tabled on March 31 rather than March 1, and to move into the spring where we would then come back to Parliament on any changes to the vote structure and the implications of the new technology. Again, we would have the plans tabled at the end of March and of October 1997.
There are now 86 departments and agencies that produce Part IIIs. Next fall, all of those departments and agencies will produce a performance report. These documents are not perfect. In order to become better, they need the input of parliamentarians, suggesting other parameters or asking for more information. The project can move ahead in that way. It is very important that we receive feedback on these documents in order to make them better for next year. We are hopeful that by March of 1998, all the other plans will be in place in the way that we have described.
Mr. Chairman, that ends my formal presentation. I would be happy to answer any questions.
Senator De Bané: People such as the parliamentary secretary and members of this committee who are former deputy ministers understand all those documents. However, others such as myself and the general public are not familiar with them. Do you think that one day you will have another set of documents which the general public, who are ultimately the masters -- the taxpayers -- can understand? Very few people in this country, including members of Parliament, understand that kind of reporting. I have been a member of Parliament for many years, and it is not my cup of tea. Will there be another format?
Second, you told us in an earlier presentation that you have 12 million pages of printed material. As you said, we are in an era of information technology in which people use computers. How much of that will be accessed through the Internet and other such vehicles?
Third, all of the spending programs are set up and carried out under the authority of a law passed by Parliament. It may have been a law passed in the 19th century, yet we are still spending money under that law. Of course it makes no sense, but it never comes before government for review. Will people be able to study that sort of thing with their computers?
Today, companies have created a new kind of business whereby they take all the data relating to a company and arrange it in such a way that the president and senior officials of that company can see it in a more meaningful way. There are people in this country, whether in the academic world or other areas, who are very much interested in making an assessment of government spending. Under this system, will they be able to understand better how money is spent?
Mr. Duhamel: Your point with respect to the complexity of the documentation is well taken. I have worked at various levels of government and I still must work extremely hard with the help of many able assistants to get to the information quickly, and to understand it. I would like to think that I am not the only one who is having difficulty.
We have been told in our evaluation that we have improved considerably the readability of the documentation. That point has come through frequently. Having said that, I quite agree that we still have some way to go.
Senator, I am not sure that the solution lies necessarily in having a different set of documents for those of us who have serious difficulty in understanding the current system -- although it may well do so. That is one option that we should not discard, but another option may be providing better training to enable people to understand. We were talking about this matter recently, and I wondered whether we might have take-home videos which would lead one through a particular document. There may be other solutions.
Your point is one which must be dealt with, and we have made some progress on it. We will continue to make progress because, if we do not, we will continue to spend a lot of money much less efficiently than we might. Obviously, whatever material we turn out that people do not understand is not useful.
I should like to revisit that question with you. I should like to challenge you to think about what we might do to make this material more understandable to me, to you and to others. Does the solution lie in moving toward more simplification? Or in getting input from you on how we might achieve better results? Is it through a variety of training methods that would respond to our own individual learning styles and our values that would permit us to upgrade?
I want to leave it at that. I thank you for that question. The officials will address the other points.
Mr. Hopwood: I will answer the part of the senator's question dealing with technology. Since we have put our pilot performance reports on the Internet, we have had over 1,400 requests for information. We are very surprised and pleased with the response. We have been looking also at the progress that other countries are making. You can access the Australian parliamentary documents on the Internet and do a key word search of their Hansard, reports to Parliament, and so on, from 12,000 miles away. The technology is amazing, and quite interesting.
The United States adopted technology quite aggressively. They told people who were receiving the documents that they would set up a three-stage price structure: If they wanted a hard copy, it would cost so many hundreds of dollars; if they wanted a CD-ROM containing all of the documents, it would cost $10; or they could access it for free off the Internet. That has dramatically reduced the amount of paper they produce. We think this is a very good opportunity for us.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: What do you put on the Internet in terms of government expenses by department or by program? Can we find all of this on the Internet now?
Mr. Hopwood: On the Internet, you can find every document that we publish. As Mr. Miller indicated, we would also like to be able to provide the capacity to search those documents by certain key words.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: As an example, if I want to know how much money CIDA is spending in Senegal, now I must phone a particular department. Perhaps they will call me back and perhaps they will not. Perhaps they cannot reach the person who would have that information. In the near future, could I search the Internet to find that type of information?
Mr. Hopwood: We are opening the doors one step at a time. Right now, we are experimenting with the strength of that system. We want to get the documents on the Internet, and provide more ready access to it. As time goes on, I can see that there will be more and more pressure to provide more and more information on that kind of publicly accessible format. It will not be this year or next, but I can see it happening.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: This will make people much more careful about expenses, too, because they could be watched fairly closely.
Senator De Bané: Much of the software that is offered to businesses deals with presentation, such as the documents we have today from you. Only computers can produce something like that. You have companies such as SAS or Comshare, which approaches the CEOs of companies and says, "Your Vice-president of Finance brings a lot of data to you which is meaningless, and does not help you manage your company. We will update all of that information on a daily basis and give it to you in a format that will help you manage your company." There are many companies in that field.
However, even if the CEO has all sorts of data on how to manage his company, unless it is presented in a meaningful way he cannot go through it, particularly if he is managing a large company such as Bell Canada or some other huge company. The Government of Canada is the largest entity in that category.
Do you think you will be working on that method of presentation so that someone who is not part of the Treasury Board or a senior official within the department will understand those kinds of things and those documents?
The Chairman: Are you talking about parliamentarians?
Senator De Bané: Yes, and the general public.
Mr. Miller: There are two messages: First, with these documents, for example the performance reports, the departments themselves all wish to have their own home page or access to the Internet. They put these up independently. Therefore, if you want to look at CIDA, for example, you can access the Internet and find their documents. They may have something in much greater detail about specific relationships with a country, or what is going on. If they do not, I am sure they would be very interested in hearing what people are interested in seeing.
It is almost free, now, to put such documents up on the Internet. It is very easy to translate them and to have them converted from a printed version into an electronic version that is easy to access. This practice is growing. Departments are just beginning to understand how much power lies in getting their messages out through this kind of media. In approximately two years' time, there will be the better advantage of looking at something one could call an executive information system, or summary of where it is occurring. You could actually look at all international contributions in CIDA. If that is the area about which you wish further information, you would then focus in on it and be able to access the details listed under that heading down to whatever elements you wanted to understand -- perhaps even the arrangements that they had; something that we cannot communicate. The message system is very powerful and can move from very general information to specific questions and answers. What can be done now is quite fascinating.
The other aspect in dealing with access to information or our ability to manipulate it is that, right now, we are restricted as to how that data can be presented to make it more manipulable and compatible. In other words, if you wanted to know all of the expenditures in Manitoba, for example, that would be a very difficult thing to extract from the federal government because not everyone identifies expenditures in Manitoba. Those are the kinds of questions that we will need to work through. It may be a few years before we understand how to display these relationships, but it is an important part of the project and an important part, in general, of how departments are now getting their messages out.
It is fun to explore the possibilities. We are just starting to do so, although approximately 10 or 15 per cent of homes now have access to the Internet. It is surprising.
Mr. Hopwood: The logo on our handouts is intended to represent what we referred to as a cascade of information. We should like to have the documents that are published to be the windows into the departments. The performance reports and the plans would provide a high-level, strategic overview of what is happening within an organization. The next layer would be access through things such as technology and data bases, which we are working on now to build. The third layer is direct contact with departmental officials. We want to open that up as well. That is the general philosophy we are taking.
The Chairman: Page 19 contains your timing schedule, where the appropriate bills would sort of interweave on the timetable. Where would they be placed?
Mr. Miller: The appropriation bills and the timing would not change as a result of this process. In other words, the standing orders now indicate that, for example, the Estimates shall be tabled 30 days prior to the beginning of the fiscal year, and that there are three windows throughout the year for supply, with some deadlines at the ends. None of that would change. We are simply recognizing the need to have the information in support of the appropriation or supply bills contained in the eventual appropriation acts, and that such bills be introduced containing set deadlines when they would be available, and also providing that one-month window so that we could make the planning portion reflect not only what departments are doing but also any information in the budget. We would not change anything associated with the approval process of the Main Estimates; it would simply be when the information or details are available to Parliament in support of those items.
Senator De Bané: In other words, you will not publish for the general public the performance report about spending done under the authority of a law passed in the 19th century? That is off limits?
Mr. Miller: I should have clarified your points on the statutory program. One of the advantages to having the performance document, and moving to results and outcomes, is that you can describe what you are doing without relating it to a particular statutory program or item that is approved annually by Parliament. I will use an example that is very real for us.
An important element of the Indian program is the completion rate of secondary schools for the aboriginals. That is not something you would measure against how many salary dollars we have paid to public servants to facilitate that goal, or how many dollars we have contributed to new schools. However, there is a statistic that shows that, nowadays, 75 per cent of aboriginals complete secondary school. To understand the program, you need to look at that information over a 10- or 20-year period in order to be able to determine that, approximately 20 years ago, that number was at 15 or 20 per cent completion. Through the program that we have in place, we have now moved that up to 75 per cent. Having a separate performance report allows us to get the results out.
What I also find fascinating is that these documents are produced for parliamentarians. They are our primary audience. If you feel that this is not the correct level of detail, or somehow that is not the right result statement, I am sure that my colleagues, as officials, would be really happy to hear that opinion so that we could make changes and improvements in the following years. It is a document to build on but, on the performance side, it is one that we do not want to stick with for just one fiscal year or one particular statutory authority or voted amount. We want to look at the results and the outcomes as measured in an appropriate time period. Than could be 20 years. Many things in government need to be measured over a long period of time in order to understand the implications and the directions, and why money is being invested in that kind of social activity, and what difference that has made.
Mr. Hopwood: All of the financial tables that we have included in the documents cover all of the statutory and voted dollars. We show the financial trends by business line over a number of fiscal years. The information includes total spending, not just voted spending, so it gives a complete picture of what that business line costs.
Senator Bolduc: To come back to the performance reports, I suppose that that idea is very good. In the past, the Part IIIs were the equivalent of such reports, except that they came too late. However, the idea was there.
The deficiency that I see in this scheme is that you are talking here of a departmental report. You have departmental objectives, departmental management and departmental reports on efficiency. What is the role of the Treasury Board? I have lived through the system and I know a little of what I am talking about, and I suspect that this is a kind of internal constitutionalism. In other words, the departments are there, the Treasury Board is on the other side, and they question and probe and try to determine that what will be produced as targets and results will be meaningful. An example would be, in terms of secondary education for aboriginals, the percentage of people who graduate, who get their degree. Do you fix the targets with the departments, or after discussion with them, or independently of them, or do they fix the targets themselves?
From the point of view of parliamentarians, it is quite interesting what is going on within the government. It is a funny game. A lot of good people are working and they are doing their best. However, for parliamentarians, our role is one of parliamentary oversight. We look at the situations and determine, on behalf of the public, whether we are satisfied with the amount of money that has been put into a particular program, and the result.
My difficulty has always been that it is easy to fix objectives, because that is a broad word, but fixing the target is always tough because most of the programs are concerned with services, and thus it is not easy to define a real target. It is not like having an end product. When you build a razor, it is a razor and that is it, but now we are talking about giving a service to the people.For example, at the immigration office, you try to do your best to treat the immigrants fairly and decide who is allowed in and who is not allowed in, but it is very difficult to fix specific targets. If the ministries fix the targets and results themselves, I think we are merely going around within a kind of built-in system. I have some doubts about such an exercise, because it is rare to see deputy ministers admitting that they were wrong. The questions for private business are different because we have the financial statements at the end of the year, so we see whether or not they made a profit.
Senator Kelly: As to the last point that Senator Bolduc raised, I can tell you what bothered me. There are objectives and destinations in addition to bottom lines in the private sector, Senator Bolduc.
I will try to ask my question a little differently. I understand what the previous questioner was saying, except for one thing: My understanding of this document is that, however vague, the individual ministry presents to Treasury Board, at the beginning of the budget process, what it intends to accomplish in the various activities within the ministry, and I presume they also provide some detail on how they intend to accomplish it, and where they think they will be as the year progresses, so that the Treasury Board has an opportunity at that point to question and disagree. I imagine the ministers responsible would play a role in that process. Then periodically throughout the year, again, to my understanding, the Treasury Board sits with the ministry officials and hears what part of the process they have arrived at at that interval, and has an opportunity to question that in relation to what was originally committed. I think you do that twice within a period instead of quarterly.
I am not sure I can accept the suggestion that Senator Bolduc makes, and yet he is probably much more correct than I am because I do not understand the process, but I do understand what you have been saying. However, I had a reason for asking the question in my own way. If I am right in my understanding of what you said, then the Treasury Board is more than just observing the whole business and accepting whatever the ministry says. If I misunderstood you, then Senator Bolduc is correct and we must do something about it.
Mr. Miller: I should perhaps start by talking about the interesting relationship that is accountability. This is what we are talking about. It is accountability of the individual spending of ministers and their ministry, and the accountability of Treasury Board. The way in which we have attempted to identify the difference is, quite simply, that it is up to the Treasury Board to establish the framework for things like reporting. The reason we are before you today is to set that framework and explain what that will mean. It is very much up to the individual ministers, when they produce a document, to be accountable for the information that is included in that document. We, as officials, will question officials of the department about what it means but we want to ensure that the formal accountability to, for example, Parliament, is through that individual minister who has put the document before you, and therefore must support it.
We have a group of people who work very closely with each ministry and, through this business plan process that I mentioned -- which is reviewed by the Treasury Board -- that group ensures that all of that sort of information is included, that the targets seem appropriate, that they are measuring things that seem valid for their objectives. Within that process, we are asking for a series of things: For example, in the PRAS -- the planning, reporting and accountability structure -- we ask how they identify their business lines and activities. Once they have done that in a formal process, we ask how they are measuring, how they are dealing with longer-term results or with targets that measure such results. The process of doing that probably becomes more important than the product, because by sitting down with the departments and discussing all of the details and how they fit together and what kinds of changes are planned, you have a much better understanding of the operation of that activity than simply from reading about it in a document.
From that point on, we would then work with the department, trying, perhaps, to make it easier for them by removing constraints that do not make any sense. We have many of those constraints that have built up over the last 120 years; procedures that we get departments to carry out that make it more difficult for them to actually do what makes common sense to Canadians. For example, up until recently, you could not have an employee of department A doing any joint work with department B, or doing anything on their behalf, such as answering a phone or dealing with the public. There was no accountability mechanism that allowed, in a small office, one individual to talk about the programs of two or more departments. We are changing all of that. Again, it was done for valid reasons to begin with, but in this day and age of trying to improve our services to Canadians, we are trying to eliminate the impediments and the things that the general public do not understand, so that when they apply for a licence to do something, they do not need to go through three different departments to obtain approval. They can go to one place and get what they want, including all the information that they need to proceed to whatever the next part of that process is.
A great number of projects are currently under way to improve that situation, and the only way we can find out about such things is through that ongoing relationship with the spending ministries, or individual ministries. Certainly on the accountability side, we try to provide the framework, and provide sufficient guidance for departments to know in what areas they are accountable and then allow them to proceed. If these performance reports are not representative of how departments perceive they are progressing, and what kinds of things they are measuring in order to achieve the desired results, then it is up to everyone to point that out to them. It is difficult for us to second-guess, and it requires other people's opinions, especially parliamentarians, since these documents are directed at you.
Senator Forest: Mr. Hopwood, you mentioned the number of hits on the Internet. I think it is great that the Internet is being used, but have you any way of evaluating whether the people who used it understood what they were looking at? Is there any way of getting that kind of feedback to know how effective it is, not just the number of people who make the hits but how satisfied they were with the information?
Mr. Hopwood: The only mechanism we have is a comment box at the bottom of the site which provides an opportunity to fill in a message. If they have comments, they can provide them to us. Those are sent in directly. I do not have a count yet in terms of how many people have used that comment box or the nature of the responses.
Senator Forest: There would be some way of evaluating that later on.
Mr. Hopwood: We wanted to give them the opportunity to evaluate.
When we did the first six pilot Part IIIs, we included a questionnaire in that document and a self-addressed envelope. We received only 40 or 50 responses, which were generally favourable. For the Internet site, I have no data on what the impression was. I find it encouraging that so many people are actually using it. We thought it would sit there unused, but it is, in fact, the most used site within Treasury Board now.
Senator Bolduc: If you have a small document listing government programs, I would appreciate it.
Mr. Miller: Certainly. In fact, the listing of the programs can be found in documents such as Part II of the Estimates.
Senator Bolduc: I am looking for a small booklet or something.
Mr. Miller: We will provide you with that information.
Senator Bolduc: Thank you very much.
The Chairman: I think it is important that the focus should be to continue to provide information for parliamentarians so that when we consider financial documents, one, it is easier for us to understand, and, two, we have access to information and can fulfil our fiscal responsibility.
The providing of information is an industry in itself. When you are considering the electorate, it is good to have an informed electorate, but I do not think it is appropriate to "dumb down" the information. In other words, you must provide it, and it must be accessible. I would not worry about whether everyone can understand it. That is why we have members of Parliament, and field officers, and Senate offices. When people have particular questions, they can obtain an answer. I just do not want to see the start of a whole industry within government of a "Dick and Jane" book for Supplementary Estimates or the budget itself. I do not think that the provision of such a service is within our purview, and it would be a waste of money. The focus is on accountability, and you are doing a very good job. I am very impressed to date, and I think the information you have provided today will be very helpful to us.
Senator Bolduc: I went through some of them. When we did our work on program evaluation, we had a fairly extensive analysis of the program evaluation system in the government from the various ministries, because it is used for their business plan and then for the program review by the Treasury Board. I noticed that the presentations of some of the departments, at least in the samples that we have, are much better than others, perhaps because the thinking was clearer, but I do not know. For example, I remember having had very good documents from Fisheries and Oceans. That does not mean, however, that the policies of the department are the best.
The Chairman: If there are no fish, there is not much to report.
Senator Bolduc: They are spending because of the difficulties they are having with the fisheries. One of our colleagues from Nova Scotia said we have as many scientists as we have fishermen.
Nevertheless, the reports that I have looked into are, in my opinion, a major improvement over what was going on before.
The Chairman: Using this material will provide us with more and more information, and aid us in our deliberations. On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you all very much for attending here today.
The committee adjourned.