It's quite an extensive process, and it is constantly turning. It's not like it stops and it starts, but it sort of has an end. We develop a work plan, and then we just start up again and keep going. It really does need to be a flexible work plan, because the world around us is constantly changing.
It starts with a great in-depth analysis on the departments, on portfolios. We speak with senior officials, deputy ministers and so on across the federal public service. We have conversations with this committee and other parliamentary committees and with senators on areas that might be of interest to you so that we can put them into the mix. We then look for external feedback. We have a panel of senior advisers. We have a place on our website where Canadians can suggest topics to us. We bring together a suggested group of audits. Then we bring our cross-functional team across the entire organization to review them and go through them and challenge them. We're hoping that we represent an average group of Canadians and what Canadians might want to hear and care about, so we challenge audits there. Sometimes that results in new audits being suggested or a scope of audits being adjusted, and then we have our work plan for a couple of years.
We also can look at mandate letters that come out and see what's in those and whether we should realign some of our priorities. We consider environmental factors before we embark on a new round of audits in a given year, as everything continues to change. However, we always have audits being started, audits in mid-course and audits at the reporting stage at any given point in time.