You want to know how they each do their work differently?
This is something we do with departments when we work with them on GBA. It's very much based on the organizational culture of the department. Some departments won't move on anything unless they have a guideline or a memo from DMs. Other departments are much more flexible, and different directorates can go and do their own thing, if you will. Other departments are quite stringent in the sense that they're regulatory: they have either legislation or they have regulations they're mandated to enact on behalf of the people of Canada. Depending on what that department's specific culture is, the GBA work that's done has to fit into that culture; otherwise they're going against the current of the department.
In that context, INAC, for example, has a network. They're called GEARs, and they're representatives from each branch of INAC. They meet regularly and bring the GBA knowledge to their directorate, whichever directorate it might be. INAC also has a central core that is the gender focal unit, which are actual FTEs allocated to the specific pursuit of GBA.
The gender focal unit holds a double role. It has a challenge function vis-à-vis the rest of the directorates. It is also supposed to be looking at memoranda to cabinet originating from within INAC, not from other departments. It also has a capacity-building role.
Right now they're straddling both capacity building and transactional, so they tend to work on the different files based on which directorate the issue falls under, if you will. For example, right now we're working with them on their constructions of the program activity architecture. We were speaking last time about the whole reporting and accountability of Treasury Board.
Some departments are at the stage of writing their new PAAs, program activity architecture. What we're doing with something like INAC is actually working with it on articulating that PAA so that anything gender-related comes across in a very cogent and concrete way in all of the activities they're creating. That assists in being able to pick up the data we need for accountability, in terms of Treasury Board using its mechanisms and in terms of Status of Women using our role to help see how the process is working.
CIC is different as well. Right now CIC has a dedicated resource person, but it has integrated the responsibility of GBA into its five-year business plan whereby, again, each directorate or branch within CIC has to have GBA inserted into its business lines and work plans. Some of the directorates have tiny little intra working groups, which are just analysts from different files within that branch. So that's how they're working.
I think the other one was Health Canada. It has a similar system. It has a gender focal unit, which is the women's health bureau and gender-based analysis directorate. It's an oddball because it has the physicality of women in the health field, but it also has the GBA, how the differentials of the health sector impact women and men. Its little central focal unit has that dual world and it also has a bit of a network.
Some departments are really finding the network system works quite well and other departments are still sort of exploring what will work. I always bring it back to this question: what is the organizational culture and what is the approach more apt to be well accepted and cohesive within that department?