Thank you, Mr. Chair, for inviting us to discuss chapter 6 of our February status report on the management of the social insurance number.
I am accompanied by Nancy Cheng, assistant auditor general, and Nick Swales, the director responsible for this audit.
As you know, the social insurance number is a unique nine-digit number issued to Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and temporary residents working in Canada. It is used to record income, taxes paid, and contribution to government benefit plans, and it is also used in providing access to many government services. Service Canada issues social insurance numbers and maintains the social insurance register, which is the database that contains the basic personal information of people who apply for a social insurance number.
When we met with this committee last June to discuss our previous work on the management of the social insurance number, we indicated we were planning an audit to assess what progress had been made on recommendations from our 2002 audit of the social insurance number. That audit was itself a follow-up on earlier recommendations, so this year's report is our fourth audit on the management of the social insurance number since 1998. I am pleased to be able to discuss the results of our most recent audit with you today.
We found that Service Canada had taken action in many areas to address deficiencies we identified in 2002. It has improved the assignment procedure of SINs by strengthening the standards for establishing identity, citizenship and proof of need before issuing a SIN, by adding an expiry date to 900-series SINs, and by redesigning its process for assigning SINs. Service Canada has also improved its approach to SIN investigations. Investigations are now identified more from indicators of risk, and SIN investigators have access to better training and tools.
There is still work to be done in these areas, notably by completing the links necessary for Service Canada to validate birth, death and citizenship information with the provinces and with Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Nonetheless, our assessment has shown progress in these areas since our 2002 audit to be satisfactory.
However, our conclusion overall was that the government has not made satisfactory progress in addressing our 2002 recommendations because two significant concerns that we noted as long ago as 1998 have still not been solved.
Our first concern is that Service Canada still does not have adequate assurance about the quality of information in the social insurance register. It has not determined how accurate, complete, and reliable the data should be and it does not have a systematic means for measuring data quality. We consider this to be an important weakness, particularly since Service Canada is increasingly using the register to identify people accessing its services.
The second problem is that the Treasury Board policy on the use of the social insurance number is not sufficiently clear. The policy has not been updated since it was issued in 1989, even though Treasury Board Secretariat completed a study in 2003 that confirmed the existence of various gaps in its policies and procedures on use of the social insurance number. Our concern is that the lack of clarity leads to inconsistent application of policy requirements, thereby increasing the risk of inappropriate use of the social insurance number.
We did find that Service Canada and Treasury Board Secretariat have made progress in better understanding these problems since 2002, but it is our opinion that the government should have implemented solutions by this time.
We are pleased that the Treasury Board Secretariat, Human Resources and Social Development Canada and Service Canada agree with our recommendations and committed to action, in several cases by as early as this past March. The committee members may wish to ask Service Canada whether it has met these goals and whether it and the Treasury Board Secretariat are on target to complete the rest of their actions as planned.
Mr. Chairman that concludes my opening statement. We will be pleased to answer your committee's questions.
Thank you.