Essentially, it's the same people in respective organizations. We're talking about the 135 CFOs and deputy chief financial officers in each appropriated department. They're responsible both for the departmental input to the main estimates and also largely for the development of their departmental reports on plans and priorities, as appropriate.
There's no disconnect in what they do. What happens, though, is the response or the driver for main estimates is your vote structure, which is along the lines of types of expenditure. Their initial focus is on the preparation for main estimates, which has to be auditable. It has to be hard, cold, absolutely accurate. At that point, they look at their departmental expenditures and present them for approval by types of expenditure: operating, capital, grants and contributions, those types. Then they have to turn around in very quick order and tell that story in a report on plans and priorities, which is structured more along the lines of the program activities and the architecture to which you'd like to move. We've got the same story being told in two completely differently ways.
The initial thrust and focus is always on the main estimates, because that is where we are auditable. If we make a mistake there, we have to come back to Parliament. We don't want to be blowing votes. We've got direction through the Financial Administration Act.
The greater the alignment between what is in the main estimates.... If we move the main estimates to a vote structure that is along a program activity model, then we'd be telling the story the same way at different levels of granularity.
What would come forward in your later main estimates is that your vote would be structured along the strategic outcome, which would be a roll-up from your program activities. There would be a greater alignment and less need for the story to be told in two completely discrete ways. That should shorten the time significantly.