Summary of the Corporate Business Plan 2013-2014 to 2015-2016

6 [our corporate foundation]

[total planned spending]

(thousands of dollars)

Forecast spending 2012-2013	Planned spending 2013-2014	Planned spending 2014-2015	Planned spending 2015-2016
1,399,696	1,128,367	1,099,782	1,089,215

[introduction]

The CRA is recognized as a world-class tax and benefit administrator. We play a central role in delivering important benefit programs that provide income support for the federal, provincial, and territorial governments. We support economic growth by reducing the compliance burden, helping to make Canada a desirable place to do business. Our success as an organization is built on a solid corporate foundation that is sustained by modern business practices, a sound infrastructure, and a professional and innovative workforce.

[what we want to achieve]

To maintain sustainable, high-quality tax, benefit, and related services through modern management practices and a sound infrastructure.

[strategic context]

As we modernize our public-facing services to be in line with the principles identified in our strategic directions, we have found many opportunities to apply similar efficiencies and improvements to our back-office operations. Our strategic directions also call on us to evolve the culture of our workforce and workplace into a highly engaged and collaborative organization capable of responding to the challenges of the future.

We have made progress in many areas, such as:

• we now have paperless workflows and self-service tools that are streamlining operations and delivering efficiency gains;
• activities that were once paper-based or required face-to-face interactions are now occurring independent of geographic location;
• knowledge workers, with diverse skill sets, are a growing proportion of our workforce; and
• we are leveraging technology to create a more dynamic work environment that allows employees and managers to be more productive and collaborative.

However, we recognize that to move closer to realizing our strategic vision we must go further to:

• improve business intelligence to allow us to more effectively identify emerging risks and trends;
• capitalize on opportunities to develop greater organizational agility;
• maximize productivity to achieve efficiencies and maintain services; and
• build on our culture of integrity to maintain the public’s trust in our ability to safeguard their personal information and carry out our mandate.

[our activities to enable core business operations]

We use modern management methods and practices that ensure that we:

• carry out effective human resources practices that support the achievement of business objectives;
• sustain and develop our information technology (IT) assets, which are critical to delivering our programs;
• comply with the accountability requirements of financial and administrative legislation, regulations, government policies, and directives;
• protect the confidentiality and ensure the security of taxpayer and benefit recipient information at all times; and
• use sound risk management principles for responsible decision-making and good governance.

[moving forward]

integrity and security

Integrity and ethical behaviour from our employees is essential to maintaining trust and confidence in our tax and benefit administration. Using tools such as the Integrity Framework, we will continue to foster employee adherence to the CRA's core values of integrity, professionalism, respect, and co-operation. To help accomplish this goal we are investing $24 million in projects that will strengthen controls over employee access to sensitive information, as well as ensure that taxpayer information is being used for its intended purpose.

The CRA's Integrity Framework brings together our policies, programs, and processes in a way that further contributes to a strong integrity culture and helps us identify areas that we need to strengthen.

In recent years we have focused on improving the controls we use to prevent inappropriate access to or disclosure of information. Given that we have a very large Internet presence and manage vast quantities of sensitive and confidential taxpayer information, our objective is to ensure that CRA information holdings and IT assets continue to be protected from all existing and future threats, including Internet-based service attacks.

Over the planning period, we will:

• improve the way we manage employee access to the systems that contain sensitive information;
• continue to develop and implement a comprehensive security awareness program and update security-related policy instruments; and
• evolve our IT security program to ensure that the CRA continues to meet or exceed the standards set out by the Government of Canada.

efficiency

The CRA continues to promote the efficient and effective use of financial resources. In addition to rigorous financial controls that ensure spending is authorized and appropriate, the CRA undertakes thorough planning to allocate resources to initiatives and activities that clearly support program outcomes and government priorities, while addressing emerging threats and risks. We will continue to ensure that full information, including the results of research and analytics at the CRA level, is available to guide decisions on strategic investments.

Automation is one means that the CRA uses to become more efficient. The investments we have made and continue to make in technology are reducing the cost of individual transactions. Leveraging IT infrastructure has provided us with some flexibility to direct resources to other areas of priority, including those that will continue to rely on knowledge workers due to the complexity of work and judgement required.

As an organization, the CRA is present in many buildings across Canada. By adopting efficient approaches to our use of buildings and office space, we will improve sustainability and reduce our overall spending on real property, while maintaining a good working environment for our employees.

We continue to pursue innovative arrangements when they make good business sense. Recently, in response to the Library and Archives Canada's announcement of its intention to suspend its paper storage services, the CRA announced that it would be moving to a managed storage solution for paper records.

The CRA is re-designing its approach to the management of paper records to eliminate processing steps and increase efficiencies. This process will help the CRA manage the decreasing workload associated with paper records as the uptake of e-services by Canadians increases. As the CRA takes the security of all taxpayer information very seriously, we will ensure that the personal information and privacy of taxpayers and benefit recipients continues to be safeguarded with this new approach.

More and more, tax authorities around the world are turning to business intelligence to better understand taxpayer behaviour and to identify more efficient administrative processes. The CRA has made significant progress in using business intelligence in several programs and will develop a strategy for the comprehensive application of intelligence across programs where this will make us more effective and efficient.

Over the planning period, we will:

• continue to advance technology-enabled automation and self-service in internal and external activities;
• engage a private-sector service provider to manage paper records storage and retrieval processes;
• undertake measures to improve efficiency and sustainability in our use of office space; and
• develop a business intelligence strategy.

sustainability

We are working to ensure that resources are invested to meet our growing business needs and achieve long term sustainability, ensuring that our tax and benefit services have the proper resources, infrastructure, and guidance.

One of our biggest sustainability priorities is redesigning the T1 individual income tax program automated system (T1 redesign). With this long-term project, which underpins our largest tax program, we are working to make sure our automated system continues to support uninterrupted service and lays the foundation to achieve improved taxpayer service and enhanced operational effectiveness. The Government has provided $251 million to the CRA so that we can update this key system over the next seven years.

For the CRA to remain successful in this environment of rapid change and restrained spending, we must keep up to date with the risks we face as an organization.

Over the planning period, we will:

• improve our monitoring of and reporting on the progress of the activities being done to address identified enterprise risks; and
• meet sustainability targets and T1 redesign milestones.

[our people]

Our success is built on our forward-looking approach to strategic human resources planning and our ability to respond to the changing socio-economic environment. A knowledgeable and mobilized workforce is essential if we want to maintain the trust of taxpayers and support our core business operations.

qualified and skilled employees

We continue to count on the expertise and resilience of our workforce to deliver our core service and compliance activities, and the internal services that support them.

There will always be a need for qualified, skilled employees in our organization that focus on providing the best service to Canadians. Comprehensive, forward-looking documents like HR 2020 and the Agency Strategic Workforce plan include enhanced succession planning approaches that will ensure that the CRA continues to have the appropriate workforce capacity and capability to deliver on its priorities and programs. Through training and development, as well as targeted recruitment activities, we are confident that our workforce will contain the right mix of flexibility and adaptability to meet the challenges of the future.

agile workplace

Agility and innovation will be the watchwords as the CRA maintains business excellence while continuously transforming in response to changes in our operating environment. Collaboration will be a key to our success in meeting future challenges. We must be able to effectively work with other areas of the CRA, with other public sector organizations, the key stakeholders in the community, tax intermediaries, and international tax administrators.

Collaborative technologies will help empower this transition by offering new tools to enable change and innovation and to provide more organizational agility. For example, electronic workload distribution, virtual management, and self-service tools will streamline our operations and improve our efficiency.

high performing organization

The CRA's healthy work environment – focused on alignment, strong results and renewal, and characterized by trust – will be built on a partnership of executives, managers, and employees. Each partner will be willing to innovate and to challenge traditional ways of thinking and working together.

Executives will continue to actively undertake their people-management responsibilities by communicating openly and sharing information. Managers will be a vital link in the communications chain, translating the CRA's mandate and strategic vision into concrete program objectives and meaningful responsibilities for individual employees. Performance management will be anchored in continuous feedback between managers and employees, reported on through the performance expectations and assessment process.

integrity-based leadership

Engaging and inspiring our people to contribute their best by ensuring a healthy work environment, communicating direction and its purpose, connecting meaningfully, and encouraging them to share their ideas for improvement are central to our people management approach.

Succession planning and leadership development will enable the organization to have the right leaders in place who are ready, willing, and capable of delivering on our program objectives. Given the evolution of the CRA business, operating environment and workforce, there will be a focus on equipping managers and executives for their increasingly important transformational leadership and change management roles. Leaders are key to the successful implementation of business transformations because they can influence and shape their organization’s attitude and beliefs on change and innovation.

Over the planning period, we will:

• develop and publish the 2013-2016 Agency Strategic Workforce plan in alignment with Vision 2020 to ensure that the CRA has the workforce needed to meet its current and future business needs; and
• in the 2013-2014 cycle, the CRA will develop and implement new processes that strengthen the performance management program.

[conclusion]

The CRA is a large and mature organization operating in a complex socio-economic context. To address our evolving business requirements, we will continue to develop innovative management practices. We are confident that, based on our human resources capacity and our solid financial and administrative processes, our corporate foundation will advance our strategic directions and ensure the sustainability of our core business activities.

Date modified:

2013-03-28