Anticipated Result: Sound strategic direction, financial and treasury management

The CCRA's Board is very active in providing strategic oversight in human resources and general administration, and has taken a keen interest in the annual Corporate Business Plan. The Board's actions have significantly impacted our organization in the following areas:

• a comprehensive review of our progress on the reform of the human resources function, which assessed our progress to date;
• the approval of the code of ethics and conduct that guides the work of all employees;
• the approval of the Corporate Business Plan and Annual Report; and
• the approval of a new Information Management Policy.

The CCRA reports on its strategic direction and performance to shareholders using accountability instruments. Our key instruments, the Corporate Business Plan (CBP), which sets out the Agency's planned priorities and deliverables, and the Annual Report (AR), which reports on our progress to Parliament, provide critical measures of the Agency's management performance. The Auditor General of Canada stated in her assessment of our 2002-2003 Annual Report that performance information in the Annual Report provides a “fair and reliable account, in most significant respects, of the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency's performance,” and that “the Agency continues to make noteworthy advancements in improving its report...”.

Through the CCRA's executive performance agreements, the priorities of the CBP and the AR are translated into commitments for about 700 of the CCRA's executives and senior managers. In 2003-2004, 98% of the Agency's executive cadre had performance agreements in place. Furthermore, the year-end performance assessments were subject to a rigorous senior management review process to ensure commitments were met.

The CCRA's corporate audit and evaluation function contributes to agency strategic and program management by providing independent and objective assurance to the Board of Management and the CCRA's senior management that programs are on track. In 2003-2004, this function's reviews contributed to realizing the commitments made in the 2002-2003 Annual Report's Performance Improvement Plan. These included the Selected Fiscal Year-End Procedures Audit; the Balanced Scorecard Pre-Implementation Audit; and others. Summary reports are found on Treasury Board's Web site
www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/rma/database .

An important agency priority is to meet the clients' expectations of our programs and services. The 2003 results of the annual survey entitled “Measuring Up: How Canadians View the CCRA” show that the public's perceptions of the CCRA continue to be generally favourable, based on a response rate of approximately 13% 1 (Figure 22).

Figure 22 Canadians perceived performance of CCRA from 2001 to 2003 is generally favourable

It is critical that our financial stewardship be of the highest standard. We continued to make progress through the Modern Comptrollership initiative. Though the CCRA recognizes that it still has more work to do on its financial controls, we have enhanced our ability to bring together financial and non-financial information for better decision making and priority setting. We did this by:

• improving the Budget Management process;
• refining the Quarterly Budgeting and Reporting system;
• supplementing the annual reporting framework with Quarterly In-Year Management Reports;
• improving quality controls in our internal Corporate Administrative System (CAS);
• strengthening controls in our Revenue Ledger (RL) accounting and reporting systems;
• revising our practices to strengthen our financial accounting stewardship performance;
• demonstrating our commitment to transparency for results to Canadians, by posting the Annual Report and a Summary of the CBP on the Internet at www.cra-arc.gc.ca/agency/menu-e.html; and
• assessing the Modern Comptrollership management capacity and developing an action plan to address priorities for performance improvement.

This is the final year of the CCRA's three-year Administrative Reform and Renewal initiative, during which estimated savings of $13 million were realized in publishing, telephony, e-procurement, and warehousing. These savings were reallocated to partially offset increased program requirements, including increased workload pressures. Since April 2002, we have estimated cumulative savings of $21 million of the targeted $53 million for the period from April 2002 to March 2006.

Further potential savings and efficiencies of $26 million for 2004-2005 were identified using Horizontal Reviews. Also, the Human Resources Program review identified potential savings of $15.3 million (about 13% of the HR 2003-2004 budget), to meet future HR budget requirements.

For 2003-04, for tax funds combined, 96.3% of the volume of receipts representing 95.6% of the value of tax funds were deposited within the 24 hour window. This is a slight decline in performance from 2002-03 when 98.2% of the volume of receipts representing 97.4% of the value of tax funds were deposited within the 24 hour window.

The agency made progress in the final year of the CCRA's second Sustainable Development Strategy (2001-2004). Overall, we have achieved over 80% completion of the 83 commitments set out in this strategy, and demonstrated leadership in a number of initiatives. Information about our Sustainable Development program and performance results can be found at www.cra-arc.gc.ca/sds .

1 The CCRA conducts an annual public opinion survey by telephone to track satisfaction with services it provides. The most recent survey was conducted in the fall of 2003. Completed interviews were obtained from 12% of a random sample (3,051 respondents) and an additional 17% (845 respondents) of booster samples consisting of Canadians who had previously had dealings with the CCRA. These rates are typical for the public opinion research industry, although they may not lead to representative samples.

Date modified:

2004-10-28