2020-2021 Departmental Plan

Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada

Original signed by

The Honourable David Lametti, P.C., Q.C., M.P.
Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada

Caroline Maynard
Information Commissioner of Canada

© Minister of Public Services and Procurement Canada 2020
ISSN 2371-865X

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Table of contents

• From the Commissioner
• Plans at a glance
• Core responsibility
• Planned results and resources, and key risks, for core responsibility
  • Government transparency
• Planned results for Internal Services
• Spending and human resources
  • Planned spending
  • Planned human resources
  • Estimates by vote
  • Condensed future-oriented statement of operations
• Corporate information
  • Organizational profile
  • Raison d’être, mandate and role: who we are and what we do
  • Operating context
  • Reporting framework
• Supporting information on the program inventory
• Supplementary information tables
• Federal tax expenditures
• Organizational contact information
• Appendix: definitions

From the Commissioner

The 2020–21 Departmental Plan for the Office of the Information Commissioner is based on the organization’s new five-year strategic plan, which comes into effect on April 1, 2020.

The plan sets out a renewed mission for the organization—“To conduct efficient and fair investigations, be open and transparent when dealing with institutions and complainants, and provide expert advice to Parliament and other stakeholders on access to information.” It also establishes three priorities to guide the work of my team to carry that mission out.

The first priority is to invest in and support the organization’s resources. The effectiveness of my office depends on a permanent, well-trained and qualified team of investigators, lawyers, internal services experts and other professionals.

Second is to innovate and transform operations. Process improvements are already making a difference in the results my office has achieved. Further innovations, including moving to all-electronic investigations and leveraging technology, will help employees manage files even more efficiently.

Third is to maintain and enhance the organization’s credibility. This will involve providing expert advice on access to information during the anticipated government and Parliamentary reviews of the Access to Information Act. It also includes improving the turnaround times for investigations, while ensuring they remain open and transparent, and of the highest quality.

I am confident in the dedication and ability of my staff to deliver on these priorities and achieve results for Canadians, including closing the most files ever in 2019-20. However, two significant obstacles block the road ahead. First is the largest inventory in the organization’s history, due to a significant increase in new complaints in 2019-20. Second is the uncertainty about whether I will have sufficient resources on an ongoing basis to respond in an efficient manner to this workload without the inventory growing year over year.

I am taking every step possible to tackle this challenge, including requesting a permanent increase in my investigative team. However, I expect the elevated complaint volume to continue into at least 2021–22. In light of this, I am very concerned about the impact on the federal access system if funding to my office were to remain on its current temporary footing or, worse yet, return to pre-temporary funding levels.

Each file closed represents a response to one Canadian. Fewer resources for my office means fewer Canadians receive the information they seek to understand decisions taken by federal institutions, resolve personal matters or hold the government to account.

Canadians’ interest in accessing government information shows no sign of declining, while the government has committed to being open and transparent. It is imperative, therefore, that my office be able to carry out its critical role, and respond to more complaints faster, with rigour and consistent application of the Act.

Reaching that goal will only be possible with a viable and sustainable investigations program—in short, one that is properly and permanently resourced to handle the expected workload. This will allow my office to reach its strategic goals and me to fulfil my mandate under the Act.

Plans at a glance

The Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC) has developed a new strategic plan to come into effect on April 1, 2020. It sets out three overarching priorities that will guide the organization’s work over the next five years.

Invest in and support resources

• Attract and retain a versatile, innovative, qualified and high-performing workforce. This will include expanding the OIC’s investigator development program to offer staff the experience and mentoring they need to work on increasingly complex files.
• Commit to providing a harassment-free, healthy and safe work environment.
• Manage all resources responsibly. The OIC will complete and respond to a program evaluation of the investigation function.

Innovate and transform our operations

• Work collaboratively with all stakeholders. The Commissioner and her officials will continue to meet with their institutional counterparts throughout the year.
• Leverage expertise, innovative tools and streamlined processes to ensure continuous improvement. The OIC will move to all-electronic investigations and leverage technology in 2020–21 and beyond.

Maintain and enhance credibility

• Significantly reduce the inventory of complaints and reduce turnaround times for investigations.
• Achieve coherent and consistent outcomes through impartial and rigorous investigations and professional service delivery. Activities will include continuing to develop and communicate consistent interpretations of the Access to Information Act through guidance documents and final reports.
• Maintain the OIC’s reputation as an authority on access to information. The OIC and the Commissioner will participate, as requested, in the government and Parliamentary reviews of the Act, expected to begin in 2020-21.

A multi-year operational plan will set out specific initiatives under each priority at the sector and division levels for the coming years.

In his December 2019 mandate letters, the Prime Minister asked all ministers to read and be guided by Open and Accountable Government. This guide, first issued by the Prime Minister in 2015, notes that “Ministers, their deputy ministers and heads of agencies are ultimately responsible for the application of the [Access to Information Act] in their respective institutions and within the overall ministerial portfolio.”

For more information on the OIC’s plans, priorities and planned results, see the “Planned results and resources, and key risks, for core responsibility” section of this report.

Core responsibility

The OIC has one core responsibility: government transparency.

Planned results and resources, and key risks, for core responsibility

This section contains detailed information on the OIC’s planned results and resources for its core responsibility. It also contains information on key risks related to achieving those results.

Government transparency

Description

The Information Commissioner is the first level of independent review of government decisions relating to requests for access to information under the control of government institutions. The Access to Information Act requires the Commissioner to investigate all the complaints she receives. (With the June 2019 amendments to the Act, the Commissioner may now decline or cease to investigate complaints she considers to be trivial, frivolous, vexatious, made in bad faith or otherwise an abuse of the right of access.) The second level of independent review is the Federal Court.

Planning highlights

In 2020–21, the OIC will pursue activities under three priorities to meet its core responsibility: government transparency.

Invest in and support resources

• Attract and retain a versatile, innovative, qualified and high-performing workforce. This will include expanding the OIC’s investigator development program to offer staff the experience and mentoring they need to work on increasingly complex files.
• Manage all resources responsibly. The OIC will complete and respond to a program evaluation of the investigation function.

Innovate and transform operations

• Work collaboratively with all stakeholders. The Commissioner and her officials will continue to meet with their institutional counterparts throughout the year, to share best practices, identify challenges and take joint steps to advance complaints.
• Leverage expertise, innovative tools and streamlined processes to ensure continuous improvement. The OIC will make substantial efforts to leverage technology to become more efficient. This includes moving to all-electronic investigations, including with regard to how investigators manage files, and how complainants and institutions submit records and information. The IM/IT group will continue to add functionality to the OIC case management system. New policies and procedures will govern the handling and approval of investigation files and the related records in this new environment.

Maintain and enhance reputation

• Significantly reduce the inventory of complaints and reduce turnaround times for investigations. In particular, the OIC will pursue the following activities in 2020–21 to ensure the investigative function is as efficient and effective as possible:
  • continue to shape investigative teams to respond to the type of files in the inventory, along with the subject matters and institutions to which they relate;
  • exercise the Commissioner’s new powers under the Act, including to order institutions to resolve matters in a particular way; and
  • continue to refine the role and activities of the Registry, which is responsible for overall file management.
• Achieve coherent and consistent outcomes through impartial and rigorous investigations and professional service delivery. The OIC will continue to develop and communicate consistent interpretations of the Act through guidance documents and final reports, further adjust the investigation process in response to complainant and institutional feedback, and ensure all investigators receive the tools and training they require.
• Maintain the OIC’s reputation as an access to information authority. The OIC and the Commissioner will participate, as requested, in the government and Parliamentary reviews of the Act, expected to begin in 2020-21. An internal committee will consider options and develop proposals for further amendments to the legislation to address shortcomings and respond to current circumstances, based on the results of investigations. The Commissioner and officials will also continue to gather and share best practices from across the federal government and Canada, and around the world with regard to access to information, inventory reduction and legislative reform.

Gender-based analysis plus

The OIC is looking to compile disaggregated statistics that could shed light on whether the OIC’s program contains barriers to access, however unintentional, to groups covered by gender-based analysis plus.

United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the UN Sustainable Development Goals

The OIC will continue to support the transition to a low-carbon economy through green procurement in line with Sustainable Development Goal 12, Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.

Experimentation

With limited resources to respond effectively to its significantly increasing workload and uncertainty about its financial situation for 2020–21, the OIC has no dedicated experimentation projects planned. However, the organization is moving towards all-electronic investigations, and will continue to develop, implement and adjust the necessary policies, processes, technology and performance measures throughout the year to successfully make that transition.

Key risks

Resources. As more and more Canadians use the access to information system, the OIC’s complaint volume continues to grow: a 25-percent increase in 2017–18 over the previous year and a jump of upwards of 150 percent in 2019–20 (resulting in the largest volume, by far, in OIC history). The OIC expects the increase to continue at an elevated level for at least the next two years.

The investigators funded by the OIC’s A-base close approximately 1,600 files each year. The OIC has received temporary (one-year) funding each year since 2016-17 to hire more investigators and complete more investigations. However, operating with temporary funding year after year has led to significant inefficiencies, broken continuity and stalled momentum, ultimately preventing adequate service to Canadians and resulting in a growing inventory.

The OIC has made notable gains in efficiency in recent years—which it will continue to pursue in 2020-21—and has requested funds through Budget 2020 to permanently augment its investigative capacity. At the time of writing, the OIC had no indication whether this request would be granted. If it were not, the inventory would grow substantially in light of the elevated incoming complaint volume. This would put the integrity of the OIC’s program at significant risk, in the form of substantial delays in investigating complaints and slower response times.

Institutional capacity. By increasing its investigative capacity, the OIC risks overwhelming the ability of institutions to respond to investigators’ inquiries, to the detriment of the OIC’s work and also to institutions’ being able to respond to access to information requests. Successfully mitigating this risk continues to be of paramount importance to the OIC. In recent years, the OIC has engaged institutions’ cooperation through ongoing communications with institutional officials at various levels. While recognizing that how institutions allocate their resources is out of its control, the OIC takes into consideration institutional workload when assigning files. To date, most institutions have been able to keep up with the demand. (The OIC receives complaints against more than 85 institutions each year.)

Staff recruitment and retention. In increasing its investigative capacity, the OIC risks further draining the already small pool of access specialists available across federal institutions. To mitigate this risk, the OIC has expanded the pool of potential employees (in terms of their experience and educational background) from which it draws. At the same time, in the face of high staff turnover, turnover attributable to this high demand and the resulting intense competition between institutions to attract talent, the OIC enrolls new staff in its development program, and provides other internal opportunities for professional growth and advancement, with the goal of increasing retention.

Planned results for government transparency

*From the date files are assigned to investigators.

**As of December 31, 2019.

In 2020–21, the OIC will update its Departmental Results Framework to reflect its recent performance and current priorities in order to clearly show how it is achieving results for Canadians. The new results indicators and targets will come into effect in 2021–22. 

Planned budgetary financial resources for government transparency

Planned human resources for government transparency

Financial, human resources and performance information for the OIC’s Program Inventory is available in the GC InfoBase.

Planned results for Internal Services

Description

Internal Services are those groups of related activities and resources that the federal government considers to be services in support of Programs and/or required to meet corporate obligations of an organization. These services are: Management and Oversight Services; Internal Audit and Program Evaluation Services; Human Resources Management Services; Financial Management Services; Information Management Services; Information Technology Services; Real Property Management Services; Materiel Management Services; Communications Services and Acquisition Management Services.

Planning highlights

The OIC’s internal services team will continue to provide crucial support to the program in 2020–21.

• The IM/IT group will continue its preparations to move the OIC’s computing environment to the cloud. It will also continue developing, testing and implementing the functionality for all-electronic investigations through the OIC’s case management system.
• The strategic planning group, with support from other parts of the organization, including IM/IT and Legal Services, will ensure the proper policy framework, and corporate policies, directives and procedures are in place to support document management and approvals in this new all-digital environment.
• The IM/IT group will develop and implement a centralized information management database.
• Human Resources will support the expansion of the investigator development program to include PM-03s, and complete staffing actions promptly to fill vacancies in the investigations group quickly.
• The Communications team will continue to support the investigations group in preparing and disseminating procedures and interpretation-related guidance, and ensuring high-quality final reports and orders in both official languages.
• The OIC’s Occupational Health and Safety Committee’s work plan for 2020–21 includes activities related to mental and physical health and safety, in response to issues highlighted in the OIC’s most recent Public Service Employee Survey results.
• The OIC’s new Transformation Steering Committee will oversee activities in 2020–21 to improve planning, consultations and communications related to operational and organizational change, while leveraging technology to achieve better results.

Planned budgetary financial resources for Internal Services

Planned human resources for Internal Services

Spending and human resources

This section provides an overview of the OIC’s planned spending and human resources for the next three consecutive fiscal years, and compares planned spending for the upcoming year with the current and previous years’ actual spending.

Planned spending

Spending 2017–18 to 2022–23

The following graph presents planned (voted and statutory) spending over time.

Budgetary planning summary for core responsibility and Internal Services (dollars)

The following table shows actual, forecast and planned spending for the OIC’s core responsibility and Internal Services for the years relevant to the current planning year.

The figures for 2017-18 in the above graph and chart include $1.8 million re-profiled from the previous year. The figures for 2018-19 and 2019-20 include temporary resources for inventory reduction: $2.9 million (Budget 2018) and $3 million (Budget 2019). The totals for 2019-20 and onward include $1.7 million in permanent funding to implement the Commissioner’s new responsibilities under Bill C‑58.

The OIC plans to spend $13.1 million in 2020–21 and ongoing to carry out its program and meet its strategic outcome. The vast majority of the OIC’s spending (70 percent) is for salaries and associated employee costs.

The OIC remains challenged by having to operate with temporary funding. This has prevented the organization from moving seamlessly from year to year with a consistent complement of investigators. To address this situation, the OIC has requested funding through Budget 2020 to increase its investigative capacity permanently. With sufficient permanent funding, the OIC would be able to maximize the impact of its efforts and the results it could achieve for Canadians.

Planned human resources

The following table shows actual, forecast and planned full-time equivalents (FTEs) for the OIC’s core responsibility and Internal Services for the years relevant to the current planning year.

Human resources planning summary for core responsibility and Internal Services