Evidence of meeting #41 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was communications.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services Branch, Privy Council Office
Yes.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
Okay, that makes some sense, and as a business person it has been my experience that we're allowed to go under budget. So I appreciate the candour there.
A colleague opposite made a good observation with respect to Canada summer jobs and why that initiative is important. I would agree that it's certainly important in every riding across this country to get these young people back, but help me understand. It didn't seem like a big number in the estimates amounts, but again, this is for summer job students to work for the PCO. Is that what this is?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services Branch, Privy Council Office
Correct.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
So this has nothing to do with potential for young people outside of PCO, save and except coordination.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services Branch, Privy Council Office
No. Other departments would have the same type of entry in either their main estimates or their supplementary estimates.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
Thank you for that.
I have a question about the website. I know there has been a lot of dialogue, Mr. Kennedy, about the website. It seems to me that what you're trying to do is put a bibliography together of all the various websites to make it more understandable and, if I might even suggest the term, client-friendly, and if we imagine the Canadian people as our clients, that makes some sense to me. Can you give some feeling for the history of it and what improvements you imagine will have a positive impact in terms of this effort? To the extent that you pull it all together, it makes sense to me, but could you clarify more what that entails?
Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, Plans and Consultation, Privy Council Office
Thank you very much for the question.
Mr. Chair, I believe the website was launched earlier this year—I don't have the exact timeline in front of me—with fairly basic information. When the decision was made to try to have a more coordinated approach to communicating with the public about the economic action plan, the feeling was that the website would be an important means of doing that.
The decision was made to have the website serve a couple of purposes. One of them was certainly to try to provide as much useful information as possible to citizens about the programs and services under the economic action plan, and to try to do that in a way that was client-focused. Rather than an individual Canadian having to wade through the budget or look through a directory of government departments, he'd be able to go to the site and very quickly find things that were relevant to him.
The nice thing about Internet technology is that you can then link him directly to the department that's offering the program. The guides to programs and services are one of the most popular features on the site. That's one of the big blocks, and that was one of the first the Privy Council Office worked to build.
The other major component of the communications effort is about being accountable to the public and accountable to citizens and so on, and so the second major thrust was to develop the geomap technology. The idea was that for any stimulus measure that could be pinpointed to a fixed location—an infrastructure project, that sort of thing—the effort would be made to map those and take advantage of this new technology, like Google Maps, so that Canadians could go to the site, ask what was happening in their community, and click to see it.
Again, with Internet technology, the idea was that as projects got under way, you could put that information on the site, you could certainly update as time went on, and that sort of thing.
So those are really the two major thrusts of the website.
As I mentioned to the committee earlier, the content for all this comes from departments, but there has to be a central body amalgamating that content and presenting it in a useful fashion to citizens, and the Privy Council Office is playing that role.
In terms of the costs, I touched on that earlier. In terms of the people managing the content, quite apart from the technical people who manage the hardware, we have authority for eight additional staff on a temporary basis for two years, whom I have borrowed from other government departments in a sense, who are helping to manage the website. And so the majority of the costs for the content management is going into salary.
We have a relatively modest amount of money in operating, and that's largely to help manage e-mail traffic. When people write in and ask questions, we have an agreement with Service Canada to make sure they're directed to the right department. And we have a small amount of money we've used for audiovisual equipment when there's an event and you need to take a picture, that sort of thing.
So most of the money has gone into borrowing people from other government departments to manage this on a short-term basis.
The technology, such as Google Maps, is technology we've essentially received for free. We're using open-source technology to run those aspects of the website.
Conservative
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
On the sheet you just handed out, I added up 38 staff, new staff specifically, for the website and implementing direct funding.
Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, Plans and Consultation, Privy Council Office
The total is 19.
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
Oh, 19 is the total of 6 and 13. All right. So it's a total of 19.
Out of the total of 19, aside from the secondment, the new hires are done through a competitive process—sorry, I'm coming back to this whole notion—it's not an outside firm. It looks as if most of these are employees; and therefore, in terms of the hiring practice, is it the standard public servant hiring process, where there's an existing pool and you pull people from that pool? Aside from the secondment, how are these 19 hired?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services Branch, Privy Council Office
For the most part, they are secondments. Secondments between departments are a very easy process. The person maintains her substantive position.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services Branch, Privy Council Office
I don't believe there were any new hires.
Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, Plans and Consultation, Privy Council Office
Mr. Chair, I believe I have a couple of students working for us, and they would be hired through the casual or the FSWEP program or an existing standard government process, like a summer-student type thing.
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
Okay, that's fine. That explains it in terms of the funding. So really aside from the polling firm, this entire communication plan is done in-house and coordinated through your office. Am I correct in that? It's not a separate company doing all the communications? I just want to be clear about that.
Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, Plans and Consultation, Privy Council Office
Mr. Chair, I think that's true. And as I mentioned earlier, the amount of money actually in the total budget we have for survey work and so on is actually relatively modest. It's about $200,000.
For example, of what you'd call the operating money I would have related to the website, as I mentioned, the majority is actually to try to manage the workload around e-mail. And again, Ms. MacPherson could speak about her area in corporate services. For the other aspects of the economic action plan communications—this is the middle of the chart here—of the $423,000 you see in other operating costs, more than $300,000 was actually for the production of the guide I was describing earlier. So three-quarters of the money was to produce the guide, and I'd be happy to share that with the committee.
There is a very small amount of other money for hiring editors on contract to edit documents and that sort of thing. And we would go through the standard.... Again, we're talking about very modest amounts of money, and you would hire through a standing offer.
NDP
Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, Plans and Consultation, Privy Council Office
That would be through the standard process we go through to engage companies like that.
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
Would you be interested in bringing some of the results of the polling, given it is a government poll that tells us whether they are...or is that something that is up to the cabinet?
Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, Plans and Consultation, Privy Council Office
Mr. Chair, there is an existing requirement, which government ministries follow, that after six months, information... I'll have to get back to the committee specifically if there's an interest in this, but we have already provided to the committee a number of the research studies that have been undertaken. That was done earlier today. And there is a standing requirement that this information that's undertaken by government is actually publicly posted after six months. So this information is all publicly available to members and to the public at large.
