Mr. Chair and honourable members, I would like to thank you for this opportunity to meet with your committee to discuss the 2007-2008 annual report of the Public Service Commission of Canada that was tabled on December 2. Two audits and a report on investigations were also tabled at that time and the Public Service Commission also released three studies including a study on mobility of public servants.
As you are aware, the Public Service Commission is an independent agency which reports to Parliament. Our authority comes from the Public Service Employment Act, which mandates us to safeguard the integrity of the public service staffing system and the political neutrality of the public service. We develop policies and guidelines to ensure that appointments are made according to the merit principle and respect the values of fairness, transparency, access and representativeness. We conduct audits and investigations to confirm the effectiveness of this staffing system and its impartiality in order to make improvements. The Commission also recruits talented Canadians to the public service, drawn from across the country. We provide staffing and assessment services to departments and agencies on a discretionary basis.
I'm here today with Donald Lemaire, senior vice-president of policy, and Terry Hunt, director general of government-wide audit and evaluations in the audit, evaluation and studies branch. While my comments will focus on our annual report and the issue of mobility, we are also looking forward to returning to this committee to discuss our estimates, including our plans and priorities, which we table next month, as well as the results of the horizontal strategic review of human resources management, which were included in Budget 2009, and the results of the independent review of our oversight activities that will be released shortly.
Our report covers the second year of operation under the Public Service Employment Act, or PSEA. The legislation covered 82 organizations with more than 195,000 employees. This represents a 4.1% increase in the population of the public service over the previous year. It was a very active year for departments and agencies, with more staffing actions and more permanent hires. We continue to see significant interest in the public service and its jobs. More than a quarter of a million individuals sent in about one million applications to jobs.gc.ca—an average of 90 applications per posting.
The federal public service can now be described as functionally operating under a fully established delegated staffing system, with deputy heads in charge of and accountable for staffing processes. Overall, the performance of the staffing system is assessed as “acceptable” this year, with few examples of management excellence and some areas that require attention. Generally speaking, the core values of merit and non-partisanship are being respected, but ongoing vigilance is required. There is room for improvement in making the system fairer and more accessible, transparent, and representative.
There is still a requirement for improvement in human resource planning, with about 50% of departments and agencies assessed as less than fully acceptable. Stronger human resource planning is generally associated with improved outcomes. More concrete and precise staffing strategies with measurable targets are central to producing a more effective and responsive staffing function across the public service.
In one of our audits, the PSC reviewed the staffing of the executive cadre, the EXs, during 2006. This was the first year in the implementation of delegated EX staffing. Executive appointments should be made with particular care, since their leadership and responsibilities impact employees, the organization, and the reputation of the public service. We found that the executive appointment processes, for the most part, respected merit. With regard to the application of PSC and other policies, here significant improvement is required.
We found instances where merit was not respected, where there was an appearance of preferential treatment, and where key assessment documents were lacking. Out of the 348 appointments reviewed, half were satisfactory; others needed improvement. Forty-seven cases, 13.5%, were found to be unsatisfactory. We will further examine the unsatisfactory files to determine the need for any additional corrective action. We expect to see improvements as we move beyond the initial implementation, and we plan to do a follow-up audit in two years.
The capacity of the human resources community continues to be a concern. The increased workload generated by increased staffing activities and the implementation of a fully delegated system have stretched the capacity of the HR specialists who provide critical guidance and support to managers. In addition to increased workload, the capacity of the HR community has been challenged by a very high level of turnover. In our study on the mobility of public servants between 1997 and 2008, we noted a particularly high rate of movement in the HR community as well as a significant decline in the number of years spent at one level before promotion to the next.
The rate of movement of the personnel administration groups, or PEs, to which HR specialists belong, reached 74% in 2007-08. This was the highest rate of movement observed over the 11-year study period. The executives, the EXs, also had one of the higher rates of mobility in 2007-08, at 55%.
Our study found that mobility in the overall public service increased from 30% in 2004-05 to 42% in 2007-08. Both public service growth and retirements influenced movement patterns. Between March 1999 and March 2008, the indeterminate workforce grew by 36%, and there were many more indeterminate appointments in 2007-08 than at any other time in the study period.
At the same time, retirements almost quadrupled over the study period. More than 34,000 public servants retired over the last 11 years. About 68% of these employees retired in the last five years. While retirements increased for all groups studied, they were more pronounced, and accounted for most separations, in the PE--the HR people--and the EX groups.
The national capital region consistently had a higher rate of employee movement than the regions. We observed little movement between the national capital region and the other regions over the study period. With the exception of central agencies, we noted little movement between organizations. Small and medium-sized organizations demonstrated higher inter-organizational movement than their larger counterparts. Some high-movement occupational groups are increasingly moving between departments and agencies.
Significantly high mobility can have a negative impact on operational efficiency and effectiveness. The findings of this study reinforce the need for HR planning to take into account the nature and scope of employee movement. They also underline the importance of developing recruitment, retention, and succession strategies for certain occupational groups and functional communities.
In last year's annual report, the PSC raised concerns about the declining proportion of new employees to the public service drawn from visible minority groups. However, recent changes to the PSC database of applicant information have provided further information suggesting that appointments of visible minorities to the public service may have been underestimated.
We believe that there were more visible minorities candidates appointed then previously reported. We are now working with other key partners to address this important issue. This committee may be interested in further examining the issue of representativeness and the challenges related to its measurement, particularly the aspect of self-identification.
To increase the representation of visible minorities in the executive ranks, the PSC launched a second external appointment process to establish a pool of qualified candidates at the EX-1 level. We are building on the success of the first collective staffing process, which demonstrated that special, focused efforts are effective. We have created a pool of 30 visible minority candidates and we are now working with departments and agencies to place them into executive positions.
Through these initiatives, the Public Service Commission is helping federal organizations build a public service that better reflects our increasingly diverse society.
Providing access is also an important guiding value in the PSCA. The PSC is moving forward with its national area of selection policy. In April 2007, the PSC expanded the requirement to use national area of selection for officer-level jobs open to the public from the national capital region to include all regions of the country.
This requirement was expanded in December 2008 to externally advertise non-officer-level jobs, including clerical and secretarial jobs. As a result, all Canadians, regardless of where they live or work, are now able to apply for the vast majority of federal public service jobs that are open to the public. We expect this expansion will lead to a higher number of applications.
The PSC also worked with other federal organizations to enact legislation ensuring that Canadian Forces reservists could return to their public service jobs once their leave of absence for training or other volunteer service has expired. During this reporting period, the PSC made 138 appointments of medically released Canadian Forces members from its priority list.
We are now working to extend priority entitlement to the spouses of Canadian Forces members, Royal Canadian Mounted Police members, and public service employees who die in the service of Canada.
I would now like to elaborate on investigations, which play an important part in our oversight activities.
The PSC commenced eight investigations concerning allegations of fraud in appointment processes. In three of the four investigations completed, the allegations were founded. We also completed 17 investigations into improper political activities, and in 16 cases, employees were found to have acted contrary to the PSCA.
The Public Service Commission carefully considered whether to name the individuals involved, bearing in mind the public interest as well as privacy considerations. This was done on a case-by-case basis. Cases where names were disclosed are contained in the report on investigations. We are not able to disclose summaries on two individuals because their cases are currently under judicial review.
In concluding my remarks, I am reminded that we are still in the early years of putting in place the most comprehensive HR reforms in the federal public service in the past three and a half decades. Progress has been made, and it is important that we sustain this momentum, despite the things that take away our focus and attention, to safeguard the values that are the foundation of a professional and non-partisan public service.
Thank you. Merci. We are happy to take your questions.
