The head of the agency, the minister, is responsible for access to information, and that's delegated through the institution. With this process of report cards this year, we found that the delegation authority documents within each institution vary significantly.
In some institutions, there is full delegation of authority to the access to information coordinator. In some institutions, there are very widespread delegations of authority, so a lot of people in an institution can sign off. In other institutions, there is a very strong vertical line of approval processes all the way up, sometimes to the minister's office. That's the way they are structured. There is nothing in the legislation that says it has to be done one way or another.
The Treasury Board Secretariat has just finalized best practices for delegations of authority, so we'll see whether these get implemented.
In some institutions, such as Natural Resources Canada, we could see that it adds to the delays. In other institutions, like Public Safety, they are telling us that it's not adding to the delays, but we don't know yet.