Government Operations Committee on Feb. 25th, 2019

[Matthew Shea]

My team puts it together on behalf of the department, working with each one of them, but looking right now on page 19—and I apologize as I'm flipping through this as we speak—2015-16 shows results there.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

The 2016-17 numbers are not available when you look at your departmental plan. When you look at your departmental results, every one shows “target not applicable”.

Again, we've changed the whole estimates process for departmental plans to show what's been achieved, what our targets are. Your department shows “target not applicable” for every single one. That's my question.

[Matthew Shea]

I apologize. As I flip through, I'm seeing their being applicable, except for a couple.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'll leave that with you, because I imagine you're working on your departmental plans for next year.

Mr. Borbey, what are your thoughts on the results from the public service survey that just came back?

[Patrick Borbey]

My first focus was to look at my own organization as a deputy head, and so I have spent some time going through it, and I'm quite pleased with the progress we've made.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

What about overall? The reason I ask this is that when I look at certain questions—and it's come up before—about whistle-blowing, for example, things are getting worse in the public service. For harassment and discrimination now, it's marginally worse, but it's still worse. We've gone from 44% up to 47% for those who say they have experienced discrimination or harassment and are afraid to come forward for fear of retribution from the government.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about the almost 50% of public servants who have experienced harassment or discrimination being afraid to come forward. That leads into another study we're doing at this committee on hiring veterans. We cannot find a single veteran interested in coming forward to appear because every single one of them has told us they're afraid to come forward for fear of retribution or being blackballed by the government. What are we doing about this?

[Patrick Borbey]

I apologize, as harassment and discrimination are the employers' responsibilities, so that is a Treasury Board Secretariat role. That's where it applies. I was more focused on my own results.

However, I just want to remind the committee that we do have recourse mechanisms in the staffing process. We do investigate cases of allegations of fraud, improper conduct in staffing or even political interference. We take that very seriously.

People who want to complain about those issues can do this anonymously, so we fully protect the identity of the people and there's no risk of retribution. If a person comes forward and says something went wrong in a staffing process in their department, and think there is fraud—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Do you believe our whistle-blower protection is strong enough?

[Patrick Borbey]

I'm not responsible for that. I have my own responsibilities under legislation.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

But you are in a role of—

[Patrick Borbey]

I do believe that we have a pretty healthy system to be able to catch fraud.

I will remind you that we also have audit tools, surveys and audits that we do, to identify where some issues may be. Last fall I reported on the staffing survey. There were some pretty negative results there in some cases, which indicated that employees were concerned about the staffing process—the fairness, whether merit was being met—and we take that very seriously.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Madam Mendès, you have five minutes, please.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you very much for being here.

Mr. Borbey, I would first like to thank you for reassuring us that we are not in a banana republic. It's good to hear that.

I would like to follow up on Mr. McLeod's comments about data throughout government and departments: how it's collected and how it's used. As you may or may not know, I also sit on the public accounts committee, and this was one issue that the late Auditor General repeatedly brought to our attention: how government departments are awful at collecting, using and following up data.

What Mr. McLeod just brought up—about, in this instance, the north, and how data in the north is not collected—Mr. Ghali, maybe you'll be able to answer me. How are we able to provide the services and the staff and the programs or policies that would be appropriate for the realities of the north if we are not gathering, using and propagating this data the way it should be? I'd be very glad to hear your answer.

[Rodney Ghali]

Both of you have raised fundamental questions on how government designs policies and implements programs. I think, once again, it's getting back to the recognition that we can always do better. As government departments and agencies, we obviously have decades' worth of experience in collecting, managing and analyzing the data we have, but there are gaps in how we do that. We recognize that we are in a certain context right now, where we have new technologies that can help us gather and analyze data in better and different ways. We can also work with other jurisdictions to link data together more effectively and help develop policies in a more user-centred way.

That's what led, in part, to this idea that we wanted to have a road map for a federal data strategy. We wanted to ensure that every department and agency had a data strategy in place, so that it would provide the frameworks necessary for us to be better stewards of data, and ultimately inform the policies and programs that are in place.

As I mentioned, these data strategies—

I'm sorry, go ahead.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

All of these departments are developing their data strategies, but are they going to be coordinated or integrated? Are they going to be talking to each other?

[Rodney Ghali]

Yes, that's exactly it. I think that is one of the fundamental tenets. What you're highlighting is the recognition that we have not been as effective as we could have been in sharing the data that every department has, and taking that classic sense of being citizen-centred first and foremost as we're developing policies and programs.

In order to do that, we need to share data in a better and more effective way. That is one of the guiding principles of the data strategies being developed by departments and agencies that will have a governance structure attached to them, so we can ensure that we make better use of the assets we have.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Okay. When do we think this data strategy will start being implemented?

[Rodney Ghali]

A number of departments have already started to implement some of these strategies. We have a fall timeline for all departments and agencies to publicly report on the data strategy. Come fall, you will see all government departments and agencies posting their data strategies online.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Once the data strategy is implemented, what do we expect to see, six months or a year after, as results for policy and budget decisions? How do we expect to use this?

[Rodney Ghali]

From each government department and agency, you're going to see a couple of different levels of information being demonstrated. Right now, you're probably familiar with the open data strategy, where you're seeing data sets from departments and agencies posted online that are gathering more interest from, say, academics. Other institutions at other levels of government are coming to the federal government to say, “We have better and new insights that we think can help inform our policies and programs in different ways.”

What we expect to see coming out of that is an increase in engagement and consultations, and departments and agencies working better together in gathering and analyzing data and providing better services for Canadians.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

If we go back to Mr. McLeod's example of the north and how that information would help provide better services for citizens and better staffing of departments in the north—I think that was one of his points too—I'm still not necessarily seeing how that is going to help.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Perhaps you could both provide answers in writing to the clerk, following the meeting, since we're completely out of time.

[Rodney Ghali]

Yes, I'd be happy to do that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Our final intervention, for three minutes, will go to Mr. Blaikie.