In terms of advice to put forward, I think I'll come back, Mr. Chairman, to my chapter on matters of special interest and importance.
As I indicated in my opening statement, I truly do believe that a great majority of the negative audit observations about which this office comes in front of this committee have to deal with one of those four key elements, where the objective of the program isn't clearly defined: what we're trying to achieve and over what time period, realistic objectives, and clear roles and responsibilities. I think a lot of our observations have to do with that area.
Committed and sustained leadership: in the report we tabled yesterday, you'll note a couple of areas where we've reported on these observations in the past. Government has indicated that it was going to address them but in fact has not. I think that's fundamentally a question of committed and sustained leadership.
Predictable and stable funding: the government's funding cycle is short-term in its nature. It basically looks out five years and a lot of programs receive what's called sunsetted funding. I think it puts senior managers in the public service in a very, very difficult position for planning strategically for the long term if they don't have security of their funding, in some cases for the short term and in almost all cases beyond the five-year timeframe.
The fourth comment, Mr. Chairman, has to do with sufficiency and appropriateness of management information. I truly believe this is a chronic problem in government; it's fairly widespread. Government managers do not have the information I think they should have to manage well: information on their objectives, on the results they're trying to achieve, on service levels, and on costs to deliver services. I think you'll see quite a number of audit reports pointing to deficiencies in these areas.