Government Operations committee  Once the decision to staff a position has been made, and once it has been posted publicly, it takes an average of 197 days to hire a new employee. Prior planning of human resources remains necessary to ensure that the available resources are taken into consideration and that the manager choses the right staffing tool.

Government Operations committee  We are responsible to Parliament for the quality of the Canadian public service staffing system. Even though it is a delegated system, and there are a lot of players, we chose to assume the role of lead agency. We must exercise a direct influence, and, in certain cases, an indirect influence.

Government Operations committee  Yes. You are correct, but we must not forget the figure I gave earlier: 325,000 people applied for jobs in the public service. There are some 50,000 external appointments to the public service. There will always be a lack of balance in that way, but it means that we have a lot of choice, and quality candidates, which is good.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for your invitation to provide a briefing on the current state of public service hiring. You have rightfully honed in on a key issue, at least the way I was briefed: the length of time it takes to appoint someone to a job. I'm pleased to be joined here today by Michael Morin, who is responsible for the staffing policy at the Public Service Commission, and Véronique Gaudreau, who is responsible for our central recruitment programs.

Government Operations committee  With the new system we would like to see implemented in the years to come, candidates would have a much more intuitive and natural experience. It could be comparable to what is being done in major companies elsewhere. Currently, application forms are very long, and applicants need to answer a number of questions.

Government Operations committee  We hope that, a year from now, we will have the necessary authorities to move to the project development step and examine the systems that are already on the market.

Government Operations committee  Clearly, the expectations are quite high. One of our challenges is to find to a way to meet them. We don't only have one system that needs to be replaced. We currently have many systems that don't communicate well with each other. For example, the system that programs second-language tests is separate from the recruitment system.

Government Operations committee  I will just say that I have already distributed them in advance. You have them before you. If you want to save some time, I'll forgo my opening remarks.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for your question. We have almost finished our consultations on the design of prototypes. We started by consulting with candidates, then we consulted with hiring managers. We very recently consulted with human resources professionals. We are in the process of consolidating all the information we've received with the prototypes we designed.

Government Operations committee  From the Public Service Commission's perspective, we recognize that not only do we have to focus on external hires for entry-level positions—which is great—but also, in some cases, we need to find people at mid-career. The issue is that they're not usually on our website looking for job opportunities, so we're thinking about ways we could be more proactive.

Government Operations committee  The pilot project is complete. We will continue to share and discuss the results. There are colleagues in other countries who are interested in doing some comparisons. We actually are also interested in the U.K. and their model, which they haven't studied yet. They would like to use our study to be able to determine whether the work they've done on name-blinding is having the desired effect.

Government Operations committee  Yes. We're taking what we learned, including the fact that it's more labour-intensive than we had anticipated not just to anonymize the information but also to ensure that it's done consistently across—imagine—2,200 applications. It's pretty significant. It also added a certain amount of time to the process.

Government Operations committee  Do we have an issue? The study was not meant to determine whether there is an issue related to discrimination in the public service. The study was to determine whether the use of a technology or a tool, an approach called name-blind or anonymizing, has an impact on the screening rates.

Government Operations committee  Well, we concluded that it doesn't, at the end of the day. It doesn't have a beneficial or a detrimental impact, particularly if you're worried about barriers, or conscious or unconscious bias, related to visible minorities.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. That's a good question. When it comes to the upper echelons of the public service—deputy ministers, deputy heads, and associate deputy ministers—that is under the responsibility of the Privy Council Office. Those are Governor in Council appointees. They fall outside the jurisdiction of the Public Service Employment Act.