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. Internal Services refers to the activities and resources of the 10 distinct services that support Program delivery in the organization, regardless of the Internal Services delivery model in a department. These services are:
- Management and Oversight Services
- Communications Services
- Legal Services
- Human Resources Management Services
- Financial Management Services
- Information Technology Services
- Real Property Management Services
- Materiel Management Services
- Acquisition Management Services.
Planning highlights
Statistics Canada's internal services will continue to evolve to meet the changing context by focusing on the agency's COVID-19 response, processes, controls and oversight practices. As the government continues to address public health and economic challenges, the agency's enabling corporate and internal services will provide support and solutions to meet business and employee needs. Decision making will be informed by a data infrastructure that continues to be more integrated, providing timely insights to foster the agency's cultural values and accountability for outcomes. Internal services will keep providing more user-centric and efficient services.
COVID-19 response
Over the last several months, the agency has prioritized its response to COVID-19, which entails delivering mission-critical programs while maintaining the safety and health of employees. As the situation continues to stabilize, the agency will remain focused on supporting employees adjusting to a new reality. This will include revising return-to-office plans, including Occupational Health and Safety programs to ensure that employees working remotely and on-site—whether in offices, the field or research data centres—are safe. The agency will also support employees by providing existing mental health and wellness training online and launching new initiatives in response to employee pulse survey results.
Internal services expertise and support will also enable the 2021 Census to be conducted successfully, with practices adapted for the pandemic.
Gender equity, Diversity and inclusion
Over the next year, the agency will deliver on an ambitious gender equity, diversity and inclusion agenda, encompassing accessibility and official languages. Statistics Canada will continue to implement its diversity and inclusion action plan and support progress in five areas: recruitment, development, awareness-raising, visible leadership and accountability, and accessibility. A multi-year, multi-phase accessibility roadmap will be created. Many of the planned actions will be undertaken through focus groups held with groups designated as visible minorities and Indigenous people. The agency will also continue co-developing an accessibility index with the Office of Public Service Accessibility and other key departments and agencies.
Skill sets and talent management
Employee and manager learning and development programs will be emphasized. Required skills, for now and the future, will continue to be identified, and this will include piloting an approach for employees to self-identify skills and areas of interest. The objective is to identify existing skills and areas for development within the agency and allocate employee skill sets to agency priorities in an agile way.
The agency will also focus on talent management for all levels and will implement a leadership development program for executives. Furthermore, a data-driven approach to performance management will be established to make the agency's approach to performance management ratings and results-based management more consistent.
Leveraging data analytics
The agency's corporate services will continue to experiment with new ways of leveraging data analytics to inform decision-making. For instance, in 2021–22, data from Statistics Canada's human resources analytics tool will be expanded to include recent results from the Public Service Employee Survey and internal pulse surveys. Additionally, different corporate service data sources will begin to be integrated to generate new solutions to business problems, such as facilitating employees' return to work. These enhancements will strengthen the agency's business intelligence posture by providing critical and timely information to managers. Furthermore, the agency will continue to work with government organizations to improve their data analytics capacity and develop indexes for priority areas such as accessibility.
Transformation of processes
To ensure effective stewardship of public resources, as well as proactive and agile processes, the agency will continue to transform its processes in 2021–22 by developing coherent corporate business planning frameworks. The frameworks will support strategy-setting and investment, planning, and the use of performance indicators to monitor progress. They will ensure the agency is effectively meeting its objectives.
Internal audit and evaluation
In 2021–22, the Audit and Evaluation Branch will conduct audits and evaluations to yield insight into the appropriateness of decision-making and governance structures and processes that enable the agency's employees to operate effectively within a strong management regime. Moreover, evaluations with a user-centric focus will assess the relevance of programs. This will provide insight into the degree to which user needs are being considered and met in program design and delivery.
Governance
Statistics Canada is continuing to strengthen its governance structure by implementing a principled performance model. The governance team will ensure timely, relevant, actionable and integrated enterprise data are available to support evidence-based decision-making. The agency will also continue to operationalize the senior committees and will formalize additional principal officers (P-suite) roles for executive officers to further strengthen the horizontal perspective. The P-suite will have clearly defined compliance management roles, aligned with corporate risks, and will regularly assess adherence to policy requirements and inform senior management of required adjustments. In the coming year, the agency will also update its foundational framework, processes and procedures for governing instruments, while ensuring horizontal standardization.
Digital solutions
As the lead on one of the Government of Canada's cloud pathfinder projects, Statistics Canada is uniquely positioned to explore, develop and adopt new technologies. The agency will continue to draw on its talent as it charts a way forward for technology in government. This will eventually affect how the Government of Canada does business and will have a positive impact on the lives of Canadians.
Adopting cloud services is a crucial part of the agency's modernization efforts. Most existing technological solutions are migrating to the agency's secure cloud environment, and most new solutions are being developed in the cloud and are positioned for successful production deployment. The transition to the cloud environment will enable more agility to ramp up or down infrastructure needs and robustness by having more redundancy and fail safe solutions.
The innovative Data Analytics as a Service platform, which leverages cloud delivery services, has been accessible for external user feedback using public data. It became an integral part of Statistics Canada's response to the pandemic, increasing critical data such as on the PPE dashboard. Over the next year, more data—beyond what Statistics Canada collects—will be added to and integrated into the platform. This will facilitate the research needed to arrive at meaningful insights and support evidence-based decisions.
| 2021-22 budgetary spending (as indicated in Main Estimates) | 2021-22 planned spending | 2022-23 planned spending | 2023-24 planned spending |
|---|---|---|---|
| 66,905,037 | 66,905,037 | 65,930,587 | 65,977,108 |
| Note: Main Estimates, planned spending and full-time equivalent figures do not include Budget 2021 announcements. More information will be provided in the 2021–22 Supplementary Estimates and Departmental Results Report, as applicable. | |||
| 2021-22 planned full-time equivalents | 2022-23 planned full-time equivalents | 2023-24 planned full-time equivalents |
|---|---|---|
| 563 | 546 | 546 |
| Note: Main Estimates, planned spending and full-time equivalent figures do not include Budget 2021 announcements. More information will be provided in the 2021–22 Supplementary Estimates and Departmental Results Report, as applicable. | ||