The remote working environment brings out a whole different set of complexities. There's the whole aspect of managing a remote workforce, which is very different from managing a workforce that you get to see every day. I think the tendency historically might have been to reward presenteeism versus delivery. It's a whole different aspect of how you manage people. I think that's a global issue across federal public service and across any organization as you move from a workforce in a building to a remote workforce. I think we also have to think about security and safeguarding information. That's another concern.
How do we maintain our effectiveness? Through the first round of our financial audits, we saw a huge change in how we gathered evidence and how entities could provide us with evidence. Now we're seeing even through our performance audits the quality of evidence and how we're getting it. There's a whole set of new challenges that we have to overcome together with the departments. How did they digitize? Can we then rely on it being an accurate digitization of a document that they might want to provide to us? I think it goes back to some training of individuals about new technologies, how to use them and how to work differently.
Do I think it will reduce costs? I think like any big change, there isn't a reduction of costs at the beginning. It's almost an investment is needed in order to get to a place where you can see the outcomes and see the benefits of being more effective and more efficient. I can assure you that all of our audits, even though it might take us a little longer, are following the same exacting standards we followed before, when we saw entities face to face. Even though we're seeing them through MS Teams or Zoom, you can definitely still rely on the quality of the audits we're providing to you.