Thank you.
One of the common themes that has come up in the various meetings has been that of increasing parliamentarians' understanding, but also better connecting the dots. I'd like to talk about some smaller things that could be done that might help you in that area.
First of all, in terms of increasing understanding, we have had in camera sessions with parliamentarians before your consideration of estimates, just to walk you through documents and understanding.... We are happy to continue. That might be something you'd like to take up on a regular basis.
I'd really like to stress that if you really want to follow the dollar, give questions in advance to departments. It helps a great deal to know what the question is and to have the opportunity to respond before sitting here.
Connecting the dots, though, is a frequent issue, and there is a lot that is out there. Mr. Matthews talked about a number of the pieces of information out there. It is possible, with direction, to have it brought together, whether it's us or another organization. There are some very specific ones, though, that I'd like to talk to you about, and some very modest changes, which could be either in material or online—we can take advantage of some of the open data capabilities as well.
First of all, within the document, within a main estimate or within a supplementary estimate, it's quite straightforward to do a high-level analysis of changes. It wouldn't tell you what the issues are, but it could focus your attention very quickly on those areas where you might wish to delve further. Specifically, you'll notice that in the past we have recently introduced major changes. You'll see that in our supplementary estimates. We have a section that highlights the big changes in each supplementary estimate.
We also have a section on horizontal items, where we talk about items that have implications for more than one organization. Also, as of last year, we've actually started tracking those horizontal items throughout a full year, so you see them in supplementary estimates (A), (B), and (C).
Another area that we could do, and that in fact you'll see in supplementary estimates (A), is our top 10 changes to votes—so basically just the 10 biggest vote changes in supplementary estimates (A). They don't answer the question as to why the change, but they quickly focus your attention as to “there is a change here and it's somewhat significant”, and then delve or not....
Among other things we can do, though, is improving the searchability of the document. One of the issues is about who the witness is that you call when you want to talk about something in particular. Also a common issue is this one: where on earth do I find this organization? Something as simple as going to alphabetical order for organizations would help that. I appreciate that we would have to provide a portfolio map so that you could also understand the ministerial accountabilities, but that's fairly straightforward, it's easily adapted by systems, and it's something that we would probably like to promote anyway.
Then there are things we can do between documents. So far I've been talking about what we can do within a supplementary estimate or a main estimate or between the estimates in one cycle. But there are also crosswalks between documents. You've talked a lot about actuals in public accounts; that could be presented. If you're in year X, we don't have X-minus-one actuals yet, but we have X-minus-two actuals, and to the extent that sort of thing is useful, that can be presented. We could also go forward a few years and do X-plus-one and X-plus-two, so you could actually see a five-year profile of actuals...and forward looking.
Mr. Matthews talked about the possibility of a crosswalk of some sort between the budget and the estimates. Obviously the documents are different, and you don't have a full reconciliation, but there could be a better understanding of the linkage.
The third area that we could work on is perhaps an area where we tighten up the linkages between main estimates and the RPPs and departmental performance reports.
Those are some very simple things that could be done to help connect the dots and improve the information within the current structure.