Anticipated Result: Excellence in the provision of internal services

Internal services such as information technology, security, and administration, support the CCRA's business lines that directly service Canadians. Effective internal services allow management and staff to focus on their primary duties, knowing that the tools they need are available when they need them. This anticipated result measures how well we have delivered on this requirement. This year, we have maintained our “met” rating by delivering improvements in CMD operations.

The success of CCRA's relationship with Canadians is based to a considerable extent on trust. From the survey “Measuring Up: How Canadians View the CCRA, 2003 1 ,” 80% of Canadians agreed that “the information that Canadians provide to the CCRA is treated confidentially.” Internally, the CCRA promoted Trust and Integrity by developing a Trust and Integrity portal site, producing posters on security awareness and ethics, and issuing several employee communiqués.

During 2003-2004, the CCRA faced challenges arising from a few isolated thefts of computers. The Information Technology (IT) function and the Finance and Administration function have:

• conducted a security sweep and security awareness sessions across the CCRA;
• begun development of a business case for the IT Security Modernization program. It proposes an investment in improved technology design and automated tools to enhance our ability to safeguard our systems and data; and
• developed a comprehensive Security Emergency Management policy and conducted a National Security Study that focused on preventing the loss of information and other assets. The study included a review of our physical and information security policies, our security awareness programs, the security of our facilities, and information systems security.

The number of Access to Information Act (ATIA) and Privacy Act (PA) requests ( Figure 24 ) received by the CCRA increased by about 25% and 4% respectively over 2002-2003, continuing the upward trend.

Figure 24 Access to Information Act (ATIA) and Privacy Act (PA) requests continue to increase

As in previous years, some requests for information were carried over to the next reporting period for a variety of reasons. Excluding the requests carried over, this year we were able to respond to about 90% of ATIA and about 94% of PA requests within the time frames allowed by the Acts. This is a decrease from last year's performance in processing in both ATIA and PA, although more requests were completed as compared with last year. This is primarily due to an increase in total requests within the same resource base as last year. Overall, we met or exceeded our 90% internal processing service standard.

For the April 1, 2003 to November 30, 2003 period reviewed annually by the Information Commission of Canada, the CCRA received a “B” Grade which met our internal target, but was down from an “A” Grade last year.

The CCRA's IT capacity is critical to the CCRA's ability to deliver and make available services to Canadians on a 24 hours per day, 7 days per week basis. This is a sizeable task that involves the support of two data centres that process 1.7 million transactions per hour, seven mainframe computers, and about 1,600 servers for about 54,000 employees, including the CCRA and the Canada Border Service Agency (CBSA) staff.

During 2003-2004, notable IT improvements included:

• successfully completing Acceptance Testing for the e-business computing platform;
• initiating the Managed Distributed Environment Program which will review the end to end management of the distributed IT infrastructure across the agency;
• advancing the Service Availability Improvement and the IT Continuity initiatives that are aimed at improving the availability of critical systems by reducing scheduled and unplanned outages, reducing failure points, and improving fault tolerance;
• implementing major systems releases that met the requirements of the Tax, Benefits, and Appeals business lines, and, continuing to support CBSA systems' needs while providing ongoing maintenance for over 280 applications;
• further developing the Business Intelligence and Decision Support (BI/DS) project which is designed to improve the management of CCRA programs through the enhanced organization, integration, and management of corporate data;
• delivering benefits-related programs on behalf of other government jurisdictions by using existing functionality and infrastructure. Similarly, by re-using components developed for the Other Levies Program (OLP), we are in a position to automate similar tax programs at substantially reduced costs; and
• delivering business solutions that supported the broader goals of Government On-Line (GOL) by providing support and delivery of common pathfinders such as T4 Netfile, Common Registration Service (Authentication Management System), My Account (formerly Welcome Page), Income Verification, Interactive Information Service (IIS), and Old Age Security/Guaranteed Income Supplement/Canada Pension Plan (OAS/GIS/CPP).

In 2003-2004, the CCRA received five GTEC medals for information technology excellence.

Across the CCRA, internal service standards are being further developed to assist senior management in managing the CCRA business with more precision. Work continues on the Performance Measurement Program System (formerly the Balanced Scorecard), which will incorporate key internal service standards in quarterly in-year reporting.

With the creation of the CBSA, more than 10,000 employees whose work was related to Customs activities were transferred to the CBSA with minimal disruption to operations of both organizations. The CCRA supported the new agency with services in 2003-2004 and will continue to provide the CBSA, through the transition period, with IT service and support, security services, financial administration, pay and benefits, and real property management services.

1 See footnote on Page for further information regarding the CCRA's Annual Survey.

Date modified:

2004-10-28