Thank you, Chair and members of the committee.
It's a pleasure to be here today and to be part of this discussion of departmental performance reports.
With me today is Amanda Jane Preece, the executive director of the results-based management division of the Treasury Board Secretariat responsible for guidance in this area.
I wish to provide a brief introduction, and then I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
The financial and non-financial performance information in departmental performance reports is intended to support parliamentary consideration of spending plans and the approval of annual appropriations in the main estimates.
With the implementation of the Federal Accountability Act and the designation of deputy ministers as accounting officers, departmental performance reports have become even more important as vehicles to ensure accountability to Parliament in the use of public resources.
The departmental performance reports also support government accountability more generally since they show how departmental activities make a difference to citizens and provide Canadians with key information about the plans and results achieved by the government.
As a central agency, as Mr. Maxwell has said, the secretariat is responsible for providing strategic advice, guidance, and leadership to departments in producing these reports. As documents of ministerial accountability, the secretariat has an interest in ensuring that they are underpinned by solid evidence of program performance and are balanced in their portrayal of results.
As part of the expenditure management system, improving reporting to Parliament has been and continues to be a priority for the secretariat. With the implementation of the policy on management, resources, and results structure, or MRRS, we now have the foundation in place for the consistent tracking and reporting of financial and non-financial information on programs.
Since 2007 the secretariat has developed and implemented a strategy to improve the content and form of reports to Parliament. The strategy was based on comments from parliamentarians in this committee and from the Auditor General of Canada, most recently in the last audit of departmental performance reports in April of 2005, and is centred on ensuring a more concise, results-focused approach to reporting.
This approach is fully consistent with commonly accepted reporting guidelines issued by the Public Sector Accounting Board of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants. Specifically, our objectives were to develop stronger linkages between resources used--both planned and actual--and results; provide more useful context within which to frame performance; and improve outcomes-based measures.
The secretariat augmented its annual outreach efforts with departments to ensure adherence to the concise results-focused approach. The secretariat now meets annually with the majority of departments to provide guidance on reporting requirements.
The secretariat also produces a “Good Practices Handbook” for performance reporting, a key reference guide for departments in developing a balanced and credible picture of performance. The secretariat also assesses departmental performance reports annually against commonly accepted public reporting principles through the management accountability framework, or MAF, process.
Since 2007 the results have demonstrated steady progress in improving the quality of departmental reporting. For example, the proportion of departments that received ratings of acceptable or higher has increased by over 45%. Pertinent to today's meeting, the 2008-09 departmental performance reports of Industry Canada and Transport Canada were both assessed positively.
We also recently commissioned a review of practices for performance reporting in other jurisdictions. The study was conducted by the Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation. The study ranked Canada second of the five reporting jurisdictions examined, which included the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.
The study highlighted “Canada's Performance”, a report produced by the secretariat to provide an overview of the performance information in over 90 individual DPRs, as a strong example of horizontal, whole-of-government performance reporting. We would be happy to share the study with the committee.
There are areas in which all countries, including Canada, can make improvements. We continue to work with departments to improve performance measures and information and ensure measurement supports management decision-making. Advances can also be made in harnessing innovative Internet-based technologies that offer new models for e-government reporting.
In conclusion, moving forward, the secretariat remains committed to ensuring progress and improving reporting to Parliament and is particularly interested in the views of parliamentarians on how we can continue to improve these reports.