Public Accounts committee  Well, I—

Public Accounts committee  Well, I think what we've seen—

Public Accounts committee  Well, that's very difficult.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, we do that. I think the deputy heads do this every day. This is something that I think, more than ever, as long as I've been a public servant... I think the attention given by senior leaders in the public service to management has changed dramatically over the last five to s

Public Accounts committee  I think it's very participatory. Every organization is different, right? Every department has its own chief executive officer who works with his own management team. You could ask my management team if I'm participatory. I think I am very participatory.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, we do. We could do more. I think often when it comes to the administrative burden and rules and procedures, it's the folks at the coal face, those on the ground, who have the best understanding and knowledge of where the problems are.

Public Accounts committee  I appreciate your comments.

Public Accounts committee  I wouldn't necessarily totally go to size, because I don't think size is necessarily the determining factor. It is a factor, but not the determining factor.

Public Accounts committee  I think one of the key factors in terms of looking at reporting is to remember that reporting is part of oversight, so it really comes down to risk management at the end of the day. If we're not necessarily totally comfortable that an organization's overall management regime is p

Public Accounts committee  On the corporate administrative shared services initiative, we launched that a couple of years ago now, to basically look at this and to get almost like a pilot project moving forward on back office shared services. We started that work, and my assessment is that we probably ov

Public Accounts committee  We are. I think one thing you want to look at is our action plan on the web. There are some very clear deliverables laid out in that action plan in terms of the policies we want to change. In reporting, as I indicated, one of the major reporting burdens we had at the Treasury B

Public Accounts committee  Yes, 17,000 reports were coming in. We've reduced that by over 50% in one year. I mean, why a thousand reports? We don't need a thousand reports. I mentioned HR reporting. That's down by 85%. As I said, I can't emphasize enough how out of control, I would say, the reporting was.

Public Accounts committee  I think the Accountability Act has clarified the accountability of ministers and deputy ministers, as was already noted, through the accounting officer provision. On transparency, if you look at OECD countries and what the government has done through the Federal Accountability A

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question. In this particular area there are about 15 to 20 public servants actually working on the service strategy. We also have our service policies, like all other policies that they are responsible for. Part of their responsibility in bringing this strategy

Public Accounts committee  If I could comment, I do think the accounting officer model does reinforce their management responsibilities. The other thing, as I said, that we've been doing is having these one-on-one briefings with the new deputy heads who are coming into these small agencies to make it ver