As you know, six departments were audited by the Auditor General, and those six departments have an action plan that they must be implementing in a period of one year. The three central agencies are also part of that implementation plan.
A positive surprise was that five departments contacted Status of Women Canada and said that they would like to do this too. Even though they were not forced to through the audit, they wanted to embark on it as part of the first year, so quite a large number of departments are now part of the implementation of the action plan.
The immediate deliverables are that by June 2010, this coming June, all departments will have established their frameworks for gender-based analysis, meaning that they will have identified and staffed institutional mechanisms within their departments that will ensure GBA is fully integrated into the decision-making process at the various levels of the organization. By June 2010 these departments will also have to identify one initiative within their organization that will be used as a measure to see how well this new framework functions and to identify whether there are areas that need improvement.
A self-assessment process goes on throughout this implementation. Within the next two months we at Status of Women Canada will develop an evaluation framework for them to use to evaluate themselves as they progress on the implementation of GBA. They will also have identified a champion at a very senior level within their department. That champion will form part of a committee across government, which I will chair, and we will meet on a regular basis to make sure that the implementation of GBA remains a top priority at a senior level within departments.
I will have continuing and regular discussions with my colleagues at central agencies. Last Friday I was in a meeting with the GBA champion at Treasury Board Secretariat, and we're reviewing the progress both in departments and at the central agency. I was very pleased to see that there is a challenge role that certainly has been played on a few occasions by the central agencies. I know for a fact that there were submissions that were asked to go back to the drawing board before they got on the agenda, and it was the central agency playing that challenge role.