The process of reducing the rules for human resource management has been under way since the overall secretariat began a process of reviewing and evaluating all of its policies across the full range of management instruments.
In the case of people management and human resource management policies, that was part of this process. Piece by piece, it has started to look at the policies, directives, and standards that are promulgated by the board itself to try to streamline that suite of instruments. It has done that to the extent that Mr. Wouters pointed out.
What I would add is that we are now taking that work to another level. We're examining each and every instrument, those three levels, in great detail to truly understand their purpose and objective, and to establish what other tools we might have at our disposal in order to better understand the human resource management operations of those organizations.
We anticipate that this process will result in a further significant reduction in the number of instruments that we currently use, not necessarily in the sense of not wanting to be able to ensure the proper operations of government, but by looking at a broader array of tools and instruments that we could use in order to work with departments.
I would also underscore that in going through that process, we have added a very specific element related to small agencies. This is part of our ongoing work with small agencies in the area of human resource management. There is a specific requirement in that to examine every instrument against the lens of the impact on a smaller agency--and for all aspects, not just monitoring and reporting--in regard to the full impact on their operations.