Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me to take part today in your discussion on the role of the secretary to the Treasury Board. It is a subject I am personally interested in and which I looked at rather closely when I was Canada's Auditor General.
In fact, in my very last report to Parliament, in March 2001, I had devoted one part of the report to the role of the secretary to the Treasury Board. There, I had compared the Treasury Board Secretariat to the headquarters of government. I stated that Treasury Board Secretariat was part of the head office of the government exactly like the Privy Council and the Department of Finance.
I found it useful to use that characterization and to talk about the strengthening of the head office of government. In my view, the head office function of government, and in particular the role of the Treasury Board, needs to be stronger and more effective--this was the case at the time, and I believe it has not changed much since then, from the information I've been able to gather over the last five years--without becoming too centralizing.
The relationship between the Treasury Board Secretariat and the departments and agencies should also be based, in my view, on what I call a “differentiated” approach. Basically, the Treasury Board Secretariat should treat departments and agencies like big boys and girls--i.e., entities that have the capability to manage their affairs on their own, including human resources, information technology, finance, and so on, within the overall policies of the Government of Canada. But the Treasury Board Secretariat should also be ready to adjust its approach when it feels an entity has major deficiencies or difficulties, or a department is asked to take on a project, such as a large IT project or a divestiture, for which it is not adequately equipped.
The Treasury Board Secretariat has called its current approach to management an “active monitoring” approach. While this is true to a large extent, in my view, active monitoring probably implies more than the current level of effort, at least from what I was able to observe when I last looked at it.
The Treasury Board Secretariat should also have at its disposal, and have in place throughout the government, proper information systems that would help not only the departments themselves but also the Treasury Board Secretariat in its monitoring of what's going on in the departments so that it does not have to rely only on the Auditor General to find out what's going on in departments and agencies.
Treasury Board does have to continue to exercise a rigorous review and challenge of funding requests. In the past, as Auditor General, I found that this was not always properly done. I think in the process of playing that role, the Treasury Board Secretariat should continue to keep the spirit of program review alive.
I could make a long list of what I feel should be included in this active monitoring description. I would also add one that is not often mentioned--namely, that the Treasury Board Secretariat should play a role in assessing the organizational health of departments and agencies. I found that there is a large difference between departments in terms of their capabilities and the state of health of their respective organizations. I think Treasury Board should have a feel for the relative level of health of the departments and agencies of the government so that it can adjust its active monitoring approach accordingly.
Let me just close by mentioning what I would include in the characteristics of an efficient secretariat. I think an efficient secretariat should combine a range of roles and duties that are fairly typical of a head office, such as policy development, monitoring, and management functions, mostly in information technology, HR management, and expenditure management. It should also recognize the relative autonomy of departments and agencies, and at the same time ensure that they're truly accountable and transparent. It should ensure that it is well informed on departmental performance in key areas--monitoring the budgetary management, the results, the compliance with policies, and so on.
The secretariat should also have a strong analytical and policy capability. It should use fully the information that is being generated throughout the system. It should be respected by departments and should be recognized as being decisive and meaning business.
Finally, the secretariat should assume the risks of management across government, for the whole of government, for those risks that are normally associated with management of an organization--i.e., I would leave out of this risk management, in the case of the federal government, political risk and politics per se.
Mr. Chairman, these are by way of some opening comments; they are a few points on my views of what should characterize the Treasury Board Secretariat.
Thank you.