Government Operations committee  We need people who can replace me as well.

Government Operations committee  Yes. For instance, we talked about female versus male representation. If we had a technological tool, it would be no problem. In other words, the software would not identify the applicant's gender, since it would not detect French occurrences of “ée” indicating that the applicant was a woman.

Government Operations committee  No, it looked only at external staffing processes, in other words, to gain entry to the public service. We, too, receive that kind of feedback, so I understand what you're saying. Members of certain employment equity groups feel that it's harder for them to advance their careers than it is for other people.

Government Operations committee  We will be doing three things. First of all, as I mentioned, we are ready to share our methodology with departments looking to address areas where certain groups are thought to be under-represented. We are ready and willing, then, to share that methodology with them. Second, we are going to examine the technological results.

Government Operations committee  No.

Government Operations committee  Again, the point was to ensure our methodology was as fair as possible. However, the information was not removed in cases where knowledge of a foreign language was clearly listed as an asset for the job.

Government Operations committee  I just want to clarify that we're dealing with both today's public service and the public service of the future. We are going through a pretty important renewal. There will be a lot of departures over the next few years. This is an opportunity for us to make sure that we will be attracting the best talents from across the country—again, in terms of the experience and skills and also the representation across the country, including geographical representation.

Government Operations committee  That was not the purpose of this work.

Government Operations committee  We have a very delegated, decentralized staffing regime that we've put in place over a number of years. The commission has an oversight role, but the commission does not dictate to departments.

Government Operations committee  We do use, for example, audit methodology to be able to determine whether departments should be doing a better job or maybe whether we should be a little bit more engaged on certain issues.

Government Operations committee  I think we are always examining the data on representation, having discussions with deputy heads where there are clearly some gaps, and encouraging them to take proactive measures to be able to bridge some of those gaps.

Government Operations committee  In the selection process, the very first step after a candidate's application is received is for managers, supported by HR professionals, to determine, out of, say, 500 applicants, which ones meet the essential qualifications for experience. After that, they can go to the next phase.

Government Operations committee  I'm not sure, Madam Chair, what the question is. I mean, I'm referring to the fact that—

Government Operations committee  In some of the previous research projects or experiments that were done elsewhere, only a certain number of fields of information were removed. We felt that it still allowed the assessor, the hiring manager, to guess or find out the origin of the individual. That's why we went a bit further.

Government Operations committee  That's a very good question, and we struggled a little with this. For example, if somebody went to Harvard University, one might say, well, that's probably a feature that we would like to encourage in terms of staffing. However, because you went to Harvard University does not mean that you are a white person.