Thank you for the question.
I couldn't agree with you more that this is also an area where I think some of our small agencies are struggling. I have to say my personal view is that we have not moved along on this as quickly or as far as we can.
I would argue that it's perhaps not only for small agencies, but also for shared services more broadly across the public service. I think there are some real opportunities to provide better service at a lower cost if we start to combine some of our back office HR, finance, and the like. I think there's clearly room for improvement.
In fact, I felt that this whole area was an area where we have not progressed far enough, so a year ago I created a new sector, called the service sector, within the Treasury Board Secretariat to give this more emphasis and more profile. That sector basically has been mandated to develop an overall internal service delivery strategy to look not only at the major departments across the public service but at small agencies.
There, we've essentially created a number of councils to look at materiel management, financial management, and HR management. We have small agencies on those organizations. That is to determine where we need to go. I think there are a couple of different models. One is where we can actually share the services among these agencies by having a number of the agencies come together and share their back office services. Some of those agencies are doing that now. It's their own initiative to do that. Some progress is being made, but not as much as we need.
I think the second area is where we can perhaps find a larger provider for the smaller organizations. There, for example, Public Works right now is actually delivering HR shared services for about 26 smaller agencies. This is in the area of compensation, staffing, and the like. Some of that work is being done for the small agencies now, and other agencies are looking at moving in that direction.
A third possible area is outsourcing.
So for the work on developing the overall strategy, we hope to have it completed by the fall and go to ministers at that time to see, in fact, if we can move forward in this area. We are part of the small agency administrative network. We're working with them to see which of these models works for these organizations. The fact is that they're so unique and so different that, again, one size doesn't fit all.
But I do agree with the Auditor General again on this one. I agree fully. Collectively, we haven't made the progress that we need to in this area.