Government Operations committee  It's a good question. We do establish these inventories, but unfortunately we don't have enough touch points of communication with candidates. We should be having regular feedback. In fact, in some cases, we can set that up without necessarily having individuals make a call. An example would be sending an email to all students to ask them to please update their profile on our student website and to please indicate if they're still interested in student employment.

Government Operations committee  That's an excellent question. If that were the case, we would need to make sure that our systems were modern, efficient, and able to deal with the volume. That includes things such as using the most modern assessment tools possible to be able to get the number of candidates down to a number that's manageable for a manager.

Government Operations committee  That's the process we're in right now. We have defined the user requirements. I described them in my opening remarks. We know what user needs are out there. We are now going to look at scoping and defining this project. Our next step would be to go to an RFI to see what exists, wherever it may be, that may be able to meet some but probably not all of our requirements—we know that.

Government Operations committee  There are a couple of points there. First, I think we're too internally focused as a public service, and I talked about this before. I'd like to see a little bit more balance, balance between providing opportunities for existing employees to continue to grow in their careers and bringing in new talent, and I don't think we're there.

Government Operations committee  I think it's a cultural shift. It's a matter of making sure that when we are developing our inventories and programs, we're providing some value added so that people will make the choice to go into a post-secondary recruitment inventory rather than start an internal process. It's going to take some time.

Government Operations committee  Again, I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that there's discrimination. I think we are used to our jargon, and we have to be aware, when we set posters like this, that we're being exclusive and that we're not being accessible to all Canadians.

Government Operations committee  Yes, basically, plain language, having job posters that align with jobs that exist elsewhere in the private sector outside of government.... I talked about the system that we're working on. That will eliminate a lot of this, because we will align the way we describe positions that are made available in ways that people can understand.

Government Operations committee  I think we also have to distinguish the fact that in some cases, through succession planning and through talent management, managers can identify that when a position becomes vacant, the best person on their team, the person most qualified, is Joe or Sally. Why launch a complex process that is seen as a bit of a sham, if at the end of the day that's the person who, with all of the right justifications, is qualified.

Government Operations committee  No, we haven't.

Government Operations committee  Some jurisdictions have done so. I've talked about this openly before. Australia and New Zealand have a policy that 100% of the jobs have to be posted outside for their governments. The U.K. is moving, and by 2020 they'll be at 100% as well. They're currently at—

Government Operations committee  No, I don't, but I can certainly implement it. I would be glad to do so. Again, when I talk about this, people say, “Well, what do you have against existing internal candidates?” When we say it's open to the outside, we don't say it's closed to people inside. It means it's open to everyone.

Government Operations committee  Yes. Obviously we have a lot of people who are at the tail ends of their careers, people like me, at that age spectrum—I'll pick on myself—so it takes a little bit of time to turn that ship around.

Government Operations committee  I don't have an answer on the retention rate. I have to say that the mobility issue is very interesting. We will, in fact, be addressing it in our next annual report. There is indeed a great deal of mobility potential within the Government of Canada.

Government Operations committee  No, but certainly our post-secondary recruitment campaign does very much target millennials, although there are also university graduates who are not millennials, so we don't discriminate. Our student programs are targeting millennials, essentially, and those programs are growing.

Government Operations committee  This is 55% of the people we've hired externally into indeterminate positions. Just to give you a sense, when it comes to students, 97% fall into the definition of millennials, but as I've said before, I think we're still significantly under-represented in terms of the millennial population, with those being 21% or 22% of our labour force compared about 34% in the broader labour force, so we have a lot of work to do.