Management Results

The CRA delivers high-quality tax, benefit, and related services on behalf of governments across Canada. In support of our two strategic themes, our human resources, information technology, and other management areas that work across the CRA must be fully integrated to ensure that our tax and benefit services have the guidance, infrastructure, and resources needed for successful delivery.

Our goal

In 2009-2010, our goal was to ensure that we had in place the modern and innovative management practices and sound infrastructure necessary to sustain the high-quality tax, benefit, and related services we deliver on behalf of governments across Canada.

Our outcome

In 2009-2010, we delivered on our management priorities through timely and responsive decision-making, a fully accountable senior management culture, streamlined management policies and practices, and improved planning and reporting.

Our challenge

In 2009-2010, our challenge was to make the best use of all available resources, from human resources capacity and capability to information technology sustainability and responsiveness, to support new and ongoing business needs, and cope with the shifting landscape in which the CRA operates.

Spending Profile

Management oversight

In 1999, the Canada Revenue Agency Act established a unique governance structure for the CRA. This structure encompasses a direct, legislated relationship between the Minister of National Revenue and the Board of Management, as well as specific, legislated roles and responsibilities for each.

To ensure that we are effectively meeting our responsibilities for accountability, we use two complementary tools: the Management Accountability Framework (MAF) assessment conducted by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS) and the Board of Management Oversight Framework (BoMOF) assessment conducted by our own Board of Management. Together, the two assessment tools provide a complete evaluation of the CRA’s management performance.

Our 2009-2010 MAF assessment was very positive. Of the 11 indicators, we received 7 “strong” and 4 “acceptable.” A notable achievement is the progress we made in the area of information management, which received a rating of “acceptable” in 2009-2010 compared with “opportunity for improvement” in 2008-2009.

In 2009-2010, our Board of Management conducted the third BoMOF assessment and the results were positive. Out of the 18 indicators, we received 14 “strong” and 4 “acceptable.” However, our Service Redress Mechanism received a lower rating this year (from “strong” to “acceptable”). The lower rating is consistent with Budget 2010, which commits the CRA to undertake a review of the Service Complaints Program with a view to making it more visible and accessible to taxpayers.

The positive results of these assessments provide Canadians with assurance that the CRA is actively engaged in pursuing management excellence. A full report card of the MAF and the BoMOF assessments is at the end of this section.

2009-2010 priority initiatives

The CRA is widely recognized as a highly efficient and robust organization entrusted with administering many of the Government of Canada’s critical income tax and income redistribution policies. Business sustainability is the key driver in identifying the CRA’s priorities, ensuring that our tax and benefit services have the guidance, infrastructure, and resources necessary for successful delivery. We are making significant strategic enhancements to the following areas of management.

Human resources capacity and capability

Effective people management was a key leadership priority at the CRA during 2009-2010. We implemented our Agency Workforce Plan 2009-2010 to 2011-2012, which outlines the human resources initiatives that we will pursue over three years. The workforce plan is a key element of our planning strategy and has three distinct themes:

• knowledge transfer and succession planning;
• managing employees’ careers and development and managing change; and
• strategic recruitment and faster staffing time.

This year, progress was made to integrate the management of our workforce along with these themes to support our business objectives and respond to changing environmental conditions.

Knowledge transfer and succession planning

Many employees with valuable corporate knowledge are in a position to retire within the next few years and their departure will pose a challenge in terms of the potential loss of experience and expertise.

The CRA developed and published guidelines to help managers with succession planning. During 2009-2010, progress was made in identifying the key jobs within the CRA forwhich knowledge transfer strategies will need to be developed to lessen the risk of corporate knowledge loss in certain areas. Furthermore, specific products, such as the Job Shadowing Toolkit and Community of Practice, were developed to facilitate the transfer of knowledge.

In addition, we offered a new three-day Management Challenge workshop (Continuing Development Program for Experienced Managers) as part of the Management Learning Program. It contributes to knowledge transfer by allowing executives and senior managers to provide coaching and feedback to managers.

Managing employees' careers and development and managing change

Investing in employee development continues to be one of the CRA’s commitments. In 2009-2010, to complement the CRA Learning Policy, a directive and procedures were developed to strengthen the planning, evaluation, and alignment of learning investments with CRA objectives. In addition, through career discussions with their managers, employees identify learning needs related to current work and future career objectives. In 2009-2010, 96% of employees had completed Individual Learning Plans, exceeding the results from last year of 94.5% and our target of 90%.

We remain committed to continuous learning in order to maintain a highly skilled, capable workforce and to promote excellence in the workplace. In 2009-2010, we invested about $146.2 million on learning, with an average of 9.4 days of training per employee. We also increased the intake of new participants in Management Development Programs from 54 in 2008-2009 to 66 in 2009-2010, surpassing our annual commitment of 65.

Strategic recruitment and faster staffing time

As part of our commitment to program and workplace excellence, we continue to identify opportunities to strengthen and streamline our staffing and recruitment processes. We took important and fundamental steps toward advancing our Competency Based Human Resources Management regime in 2009-2010, including the continued use of mandatory pre-qualified processes (PQPs) and the migration to End-State PQPs project. End-State PQPs require employees to have base competency levels as pre requisites before applying on a selection process. Initial results indicate that the time to staff positions was reduced from 185 days to less than 100 days.

We recruited 298 post-secondary graduates, exceeding our commitment of 275. We also increased our recruitment rate for permanent employees to 8.6% (2,975) from 7.5% (2,544) from the previous year.

Our achievements during 2009-2010 contribute to having talented employees with the competencies best suited to our current and future business requirements.

Information technology responsiveness and sustainability

Information technology (IT) is a fundamental element of the CRA’s capacity to deliver its programs and services to Canadians. To maintain this capacity, we work diligently to ensure that our systems and infrastructure are robust, secure, reliable, and recoverable. In 2009-2010, we pursued several priorities to invest proper resources in renewing our applications in order to meet growing business needs and achieve long-term sustainability. Notably, in 2009-2010 we enhanced our Application Sustainability Program, which allows us to consistently assess and manage the sustainability risk of applications as they age, so that we continue to meet current and future business needs. Enhancements such as these, coupled with the implementation of our multi-year Managed Distributed Environment Program, addressed shortcomings in our computing environment.

Among our key IT objectives is the ongoing development of effective technological solutions that support our core business priorities. In 2009-2010 we successfully implemented the Corporate Tax Administration for Ontario, Enterprise Content Management, Integrated Revenue Collections, and the Compliance Systems Redesign projects to meet evolving CRA business requirements.

The CRA’s online services continue to gain popularity. In October 2009 we replaced older technology, resulting in significant improvements in system capacity and application stability. This technology will enable us to continue to provide Canadian citizens and businesses with high-level service for Web-based applications. In addition, we implemented environmental upgrades at the CRA’s data centres, while ensuring recoverability efforts continue to meet business requirements for all CRA systems.

During the year, we maintained high levels of availability for the multiple national CRA and Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) systems, while meeting the challenges of safeguarding our IT assets from accidental or deliberate security threats. We also worked with the CBSA to ensure that our shared IT services relationship, the largest within the Government of Canada, continues to be cost effective for the Government, and we are committed to continuing in this relationship for the foreseeable future. In 2009, we completed an external review of the IT services the CRA provides to the CBSA, and measures have been initiated to strengthen the partnership.

In October 2009, we received two awards from the Government Technology Exhibition and Conference for our information technology achievements. Our IT strategy focuses on our commitment to sustain and improve our performance by strengthening the governance of our IT investments and implementing best practices for risk management.

Secure management of information

The CRA devotes considerable resources and attention to protecting the vast amount of information that individual taxpayers, benefit recipients, businesses, and trusts provide to us. In support of this priority, and to enhance the controls already in place to prevent the inappropriate access and disclosure of information, the CRA began to develop an Identity and Access Management program. We also pursued the modernization of the National Audit Trail System to identify unauthorized access to taxpayer information, and the development of a comprehensive internal fraud control program. These three initiatives will give Canadians further assurance that their information is well protected.

In addition, over the past year, we further advanced our vulnerability assessment and management capabilities by deploying anti-spyware technology to all CRA workstations.

The availability of high-quality, authoritative information to decision-makers supports the delivery of programs and services, which then makes the CRA more responsive and accountable to Canadians. During 2009-2010, we developed the CRA Information Management Strategy 2010-2011 to 2012-2013. Developed in consideration of program and service information requirements, as well as legislation and policies governing the management of information, the strategy identifies areas where the CRA’s information management practices are less mature and sets a collaborative change agenda across the CRA to address those areas.

By achieving the strategy’s objectives, the CRA will ensure its information management practices effectively and efficiently support current needs, allow us to align with Government of Canada directions for record keeping to support accountable and transparent decision-making, and position the CRA to meet emerging challenges, such as gathering electronic information in response to litigation.

Enterprise risk management

Our Enterprise Risk Management Program was created to ensure that we develop and implement a systematic and comprehensive approach to managing risks that is fully integrated into our strategic, operational, and financial decision-making processes and mechanisms.

To keep abreast of the risks the CRA faces as an organization, during the planning period, we completed our Corporate Risk Inventory 2009, an integral part our annual strategic planning exercise. The five key priorities of the Corporate Business Plan 2010-2011 to 2012-2013 were based on the highest CRA risks identified in the 2009 inventory (related to payment compliance and the underground economy). A CRA risk action plan was also developed to ensure that we have appropriate response strategies for all the risks identified in the inventory. In this way, the 2009 risk inventory guided the strategic and operational business priorities for the 2010-2011 planning period and led us to integrate risk management in our day-to-day business.

An update to the Corporate Risk Inventory 2009 was also initiated in early 2010. The update indicated that the overall risk profile of the CRA remains generally unchanged from 2009.

We believe that our approach to risk management will help us maintain services to the Canadian public and protect their interests.

Sound comptrollership

Effective resource management requires that our resource base be applied optimally, aligning investments with the strategic direction and priorities of the organization. In 2009-2010, to promote the efficient and effective use of financial resources, we improved our financial systems and processes, and the linkages between our resources and the results we achieved.

The CRA implemented its first multi-year strategic investment plan, supported by a documented project portfolio management approach. Through the investment plan and its underlying long-range approach, senior management was given information to determine the investment priorities and funding strategies needed to sustain our applications and assets so we can deliver key services to Canadians. The spring 2010 report of the Auditor General of Canada on aging information technology systems reflected positively on the CRA’s achievements with respect to strategic investment planning. It noted that the Agency Management Committee regularly reviewed investment projects to ensure resources are allocated to the CRA’s highest priorities.

In response to the Government’s direction and approach, as expressed by Treasury Board Policy, we made progress in developing the Financial Resource Management, Information and Reporting Policy, and associated directives. By building on existing tools and guidance, these policy instruments reaffirm the importance of sound financial resource management as achieved through effective planning, budgeting, and reporting, as well as clearly defining the roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities of resource management stakeholders. They also address Canadians’ expectations that the CRA use public funds in a prudent, efficient, and economic manner.

In support of the statement on internal controls that deputy heads and chief financial officers must sign under the new Treasury Board Policy on Internal Control, we completed an assessment of our entity-level controls that helps ensure that our financial reporting to stakeholders is accurate and reliable.

Communication

Effective communications enable the CRA to inform Canadians about tax, benefit, and related services and play a critical role in the CRA’s overall approach to compliance.

The CRA implemented two advertising campaigns during the past fiscal year: one promoting the Home Renovation Tax Credit (HRTC) from mid-July to mid-November 2009, and one promoting tax relief measures (TRM) from mid-January to late March 2010.

The HRTC campaign was intended to raise awareness about the tax credit and it featured a partnership program in addition to paid mass advertising. This program consisted of point-of-sale displays and HRTC receipt envelopes in the stores of nine major national retail chains that sold home renovation products. Visibility for the ad campaign and its partnership program was so high that an additional 60 chains and individual retailers contacted the CRA to receive partnership materials to display in their stores.

The TRM campaign was intended to raise awareness about the wide range of credits and benefits available to Canadians when they file their tax returns. An evaluation conducted after the TRM ad campaign found that 39% of respondents recalled seeing the advertising. Of those who saw it, 20% conducted home improvements/renovations, 16% applied for the home renovation tax credit, and 14% went online to get more information.

In addition, the first YouTube contest “The Underground Economy: Not your problem?” was launched in 2009 and invited Canadians to create short videos about the negative consequences of participating in, or supporting, the underground economy. By tapping into social networks, the CRA is educating as broad a demographic as possible about non-compliance.

Conclusion

During the past year, we delivered on our management priorities through our strong performance, timely and responsive decision-making, improved planning and reporting, and a fully accountable senior management culture. We believe that, based on our achievements this past year and the steps we took to strengthen our management infrastructure, we have supported our strategic outcomes for administering Canada’s tax laws and for delivering benefits.

Board of Management Oversight Framework and Management Accountability Framework

Our Results (two-year comparison)

Date modified:

2010-11-02