I think I used the term “organizational health”, so what kind of shape is the organization in? There are certain departments where there's a lot of uncertainty because of rapid changeover in leadership. There could be situations where there have been chronic weaknesses in certain aspects of management, whether that be the financial management or the technology, and so on. So there are determinants of health. When you look at an organization, you could come up with half a dozen main areas.
I think central agencies--in this case, we're talking about the Secretary of the Treasury Board--should have a feel for which departments are doing well and which ones are in trouble, on a number of fronts. In my view, certain departments, when I was looking at them, showed that they were really struggling with a number of basic issues while others seemed to be doing rather well, with good leadership, good stability, strong personnel, and so on.
I know that centrally, probably somebody somewhere worries about that. I think that the PCO would have a prime responsibility for having that kind of feel. But I also feel that the Treasury Board Secretariat, if it's doing its monitoring properly, should be a source of information for other central agencies in terms of monitoring which organizations are doing well, which ones need help, and so on.
Why are those deficiencies not detected, or are they detected and no one really knows they've been detected? It's hard to answer that question. Certainly I had no real indication as Auditor General that the Treasury Board Secretariat itself had that kind of handle on organizational health.