Evaluating Our Overall Performance

We Have Two Expected Outcomes

Benefit Programs and Other Services supports the achievement of the CCRA's two strategic outcomes—compliance and innovation—through the results it achieves against the following expected outcomes:

Canadians receive their rightful share of entitlements – It is critical that we provide Canadians with the right tools and information so that they can provide us with the information we need to register them on the appropriate benefit rolls and ensure they receive accurate and timely benefit payments. Canadians are likely to access these programs if they are informed about them and have a clear understanding of what they need to do to receive benefits. We also undertake review activities to verify eligibility and entitlements.

Provinces, territories, and other government departments rely on the CCRA as a key service provider – Our legislative flexibilities as an agency and the adaptability of our systems enable us to provide Canadians with a greater range of services on behalf of provinces, territories, and other government departments to reduce overall cost to taxpayers and reduce duplication.

Performance Context

Driving our performance improvement efforts is the need to achieve and maintain high levels of client satisfaction. Canadians trust us to let them know about their entitlements and to deliver benefits accurately, consistently, and on time. As well, provinces, territories, and other federal departments look to us for cost-effective ways of delivering programs to citizens, as well as data support for programs they administer themselves. Client satisfaction is driven by our ability to do the job and our capacity to innovatively respond to the changing needs and expectations of Canadians and their governments. In our validation and controls activities, we concentrate most of our efforts on areas where we believe the risk of non-compliance is higher and where more intense scrutiny is required.

High-level Success Criteria

Below, we assess our performance against our expected outcomes using the following high-level success criteria:

• our communications and benefit delivery services and compliance activities combine to efficiently promote an environment where qualifying individuals and families receive the right amount of benefits at the right time—no more and no less; and
• our strengthened partnerships with provinces, territories, and other government departments result in the CCRA's administration of additional programs and services using our delivery infrastructure.

Conclusions Against Expected Outcomes

On balance, we believe that by performing well against most aspects of the above two success criteria, we mostly met our first expected outcome and that we are generally on track in the second year of our innovation agenda.

In relation to Canadians receiving their rightful share of entitlements, we engage in a range of communications activities tailored to meet the information needs and diverse circumstances of our client base. For individual clients who need information about their own accounts, we have made significant progress in improving telephone accessibility, which increased to 91% for CCTB callers, exceeding our 80-85% internal performance standard. We also improved accessibility for GST/HST credit callers to 71%, although this remains below the 80-85% internal standard. To help reduce our clients' need to call, we also enhanced our Web site by adding a simulator that visitors can use to estimate their entitlements, as well as a facility to let clients tell us about address changes.

We achieved strong performance in issuing (via Public Works and Government Services Canada) over 99% of our 34 million CCTB payments and 33 million GST/HST credit payments on time. In addition, we processed an estimated 97% of new CCTB applications and issued first payments within two months. Our survey findings suggest that client satisfaction with all elements of the CCTB application process has increased. Although we achieved an estimated timeliness rate of only 80% for account maintenance activities, below our internal performance standard of 98%, additional impetus to improve performance for this workload will be provided as the internal timeliness performance standard becomes a service standard in 2002-2003.

As for accuracy, we estimate that rates of 98% for initial benefit applications and 95% for account maintenance activities were achieved. In line with our multi-year agenda, we have done substantial work to ensure the accuracy of the benefit rolls and identify areas of non-compliance. To this end, we reviewed 168,600 benefit accounts and processed adjustments to benefit levels and other client information in 31.6% of cases. Our efforts to improve our targeting of higher-risk accounts are on-going, and we are continuing our work to develop appropriate benchmarks against which to assess our performance in our validation programs. Our Annual Survey results indicate that an estimated three-quarters of our CCTB and GST/HST credit clients agree that the CCRA is doing a good or very good job in administering these programs.

We believe that we have made good progress in our three-year business development strategy to have provinces, territories, and other government departments rely on the CCRA as a key service provider. Taking advantage of our benefit delivery infrastructure, we implemented two new programs on schedule and within our overall funding levels, one for Newfoundland and Labrador and one for British Columbia. Data exchanges were enhanced to support the National Child Benefit (NCB) initiative. We also expanded partnerships for the delivery of other programs and services with Nova Scotia and several First Nations. Accountability to our partners was strengthened through meetings between the Commissioner and provincial and territorial counterparts, as well as through Service Management Framework agreements. Despite these accomplishments, we need to achieve further progress in the third year of our innovation agenda by pursuing opportunities to deliver additional programs and services for our partners.

The table in Exhibit 35 , the Benefit Programs and Other Services Report Card, provides a one-page summary of our performance against each of our three anticipated results. In the sections starting on page to , we discuss these findings in detail, and present our conclusions against detailed success criteria in place for each anticipated result.

Exhibit 35: Benefit Programs and Other Services Performance Report Card

Benefit Programs and Other Services Expected outcome – Canadians receive their rightful share of entitlements
	Anticipated results	This year's ratings	Last year's ratings	Variance		Actual results as demonstrated by	Page
Managing the Compliance Continuum	1. Program communication and delivery is fair and responsive to recipients' needs					Improved targeting of outreach activities and expanded information programs have contributed to improved awareness of our benefit programs.
						Telephone services have improved, with caller accessibility rates of 91% for Canada Child Tax Benefit (CCTB) callers and 71% for GST/HST credit callers. Access through alternative channels is increasing.
						An estimated three-quarters of CCTB and GST/HST credit clients continue to rate the CCRA as doing a good or very good job in administering these programs based on our Annual Survey.
	2. Entitled recipients receive accurate and timely payments and credits					According to information on our benefit rolls, over 99% of all payments to 3 million CCTB recipients and 9 million GST/HST credit recipients – including payments under related provincial and territorial benefit and credit programs – were issued on time. A review also showed that we met our internal performance standard in the payments and notices issued when processing CCTB applications, achieving an estimated 98% accuracy rate.
						The most recent available estimates suggest that approximately 95% of CCTB clients are fully compliant with their reporting requirements. The number of reviews under our validation and controls programs was increased, with adjustment rates also increasing to 31.6%.
						We processed an estimated 97% of CCTB applications in a timely manner, just below our 98% service standard. We also processed an estimated 80% of account maintenance adjustments on time, below our internal performance standard of 98%.
						We increased the timely processing of Canada Pension Plan/Employment Insurance (CPP/EI) rulings to 81%, but are still short of our 85% target.
Expected outcome – Provinces, territories, and other government departments rely on the CCRA as a key service provider
	Anticipated results	This year's ratings	Last year's ratings	Variance		Actual results as demonstrated by	Page
Innovating for the Future (Year 2 of 5)	3. Successful leveraging of CCRA systems expands service, eliminates duplication across all levels of government, and reduces overall cost to taxpayers					We have exceeded our second year expectations with respect to data exchanges and expansion of other services, and we are generally on track with respect to the remaining elements of our change agenda.
						We implemented two additional benefit programs on schedule and within overall funding levels, bringing to 20 the total number of on-going benefit programs and one-time payment programs delivered for provincial and territorial governments.
						Enhanced data exchanges in support of the National Child Benefit initiative through the Benefit Data Synchronization Link, a Technology in Government Week 2001 Gold Medal winner for enhancing government operations, and improving systems and services.
						Refund set-offs for other government organizations up $5 million, totalling some $105 million.
						Expansion of other services, including continued development of our Workers' Compensation Board (WCB) partnership and implementation of First-Time Home Buyers' HST Rebate for Nova Scotia, additional progress on expanding Business Number partnerships in place with Ontario and Nova Scotia to three more jurisdictions, as well as implementation of additional First Nations sales taxes.
						Meaningful and transparent accountability with provinces and territories through additional Service Management Framework agreements signed with four jurisdictions (bringing the total number of agreements in place to nine), as well as Commissioner's meetings, and annual reports.
						We are still unable to precisely measure the incremental costs associated with new services. This will be addressed as part of our agency-wide Activity-Based Costing initiative.

Contributions of Others

The achievement of our two expected outcomes is not solely attributable to the CCRA. Our job is made easier through the support of strong federal, provincial, and territorial legislation to clearly identify who is eligible to receive benefits and the amount of their entitlements. We rely on consultations with our partners to clarify program objectives and identify cost-effective solutions for delivering benefit programs and other services, using flexible and adaptable systems. Acting as our agent, we count on Public Works and Government Services Canada to issue cheques and direct deposit payments on our behalf. We also count on Canada Post to deliver our payments, so that clients receive the benefits they expect, and they receive them on time.

Logic Model

We have prepared a Benefit Programs and Other Services logic model (see ), which offers a roadmap showing the links between our inputs, activities, and outputs that are essential to achieving our three anticipated results in support of our two expected outcomes. It also shows how these fit into the CCRA's overall strategic outcomes. This logic model is the foundation of our performance report card, which summarizes our performance against each anticipated result.

Date modified:

2002-11-07