Information & Ethics committee  The directive governs not only the creation of records and their eventual disposition but also their good management. Departments have to ensure that records are appropriately safeguarded. There was reference earlier to looking at it from a risk profile, which would include exa

Information & Ethics committee  Again, the accountability is with the department. As I think we've explained, there are a lot of tools for us to get reporting from departments and to have an opportunity to assess what departments have done.

Information & Ethics committee  Perhaps I could add to that. Certainly it is not at all meant to be an arbitrary concept that gets applied on the fly. It's meant to be applied in a structured way to the activities of the department and to the information they collect to identify which of those pieces, in an u

Information & Ethics committee  I'm just scanning my memory of the Library and Archives of Canada Act.

Information & Ethics committee  I do not believe that phrase is found within our act. Certainly our act speaks to government records. It assumes government records exist, but it does not specifically reference the requirement to create them, that I can recall.

Information & Ethics committee  Not in the Library and Archives of Canada Act. Both the policy on information management and the directive we're speaking of here today assert the requirement for government departments to document their business and decision-making processes.

Information & Ethics committee  There are officials within the government who are responsible for the legislative framework and for advising ministers on legislation, and ministers are ultimately responsible for deciding what the legislative framework is. What I can tell you is that within the two instruments w

Information & Ethics committee  They're not acts, that's right.

Information & Ethics committee  As I said, there are other officials in the Government of Canada who are responsible for formulating legislative options and advising ministers in that regard. That's not my specific responsibility. We're really here today to focus on these instruments for which we are responsibl

Information & Ethics committee  In this regard, the Government of Canada is no different from our society as a whole. Throughout the world, the sheer amount of information generated each year is growing exponentially. Part of it is due to the ease with which we can create information. When it's easy to get and

Information & Ethics committee  Certainly. With respect to the cultural changes that I was referring to before, most public servants have the ability right at their desktop to create files, to store documents, and those documents are government records. They might be very well-organized on one individual's comp

Information & Ethics committee  The change in culture we're referring to is one that encourages all public servants to understand that information management and good recordkeeping is part of the core functions of government and encourages them to pay attention to that as early in the process of creating record

Information & Ethics committee  The point you mentioned was not the point that I was trying to make. The culture at the moment we don't believe pays sufficient attention to good records management as early in the process as is helpful to supporting transparency and accountability. We would like to strengthen th

Information & Ethics committee  The concern we're trying to address is that public servants are so focused on delivering the business to Canadians, serving Canadians in whatever way they're supposed to, that they're not thinking as much as they need to about how they are creating and documenting their activitie

Information & Ethics committee  No. I have nothing to add to what my colleague says. I think he's captured it very well.