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Strategic outcomes

Taxpayers meet their obligations and Canada's revenue base is protected; and Eligible families and individuals receive timely and correct benefit payments.

Program activity 7: Internal services

Program activity description

• The internal services program activity supports all strategic outcomes and is common across government.

Internal services are groups of related activities and resources that are administered to support the needs of programs and other corporate obligations of an organization. These groups are: management and oversight services; communications services; legal services; human resources management services; financial management services; information management services; information technology services; real property services; materiel services; acquisition services; and travel and other administrative services. Internal services include only those activities and resources that apply across an organization and not to those provided specifically to a program.

Excludes amount deemed appropriated to Shared Services Canada.

Excludes amount deemed appropriated to Shared Services Canada.

Performance summary and analysis of program activity

Improving our human resources capacity

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

Strategic planning

In June 2011, we published an updated version of the Agency Strategic Workforce Plan. We identified positions and knowledge areas that are critical for achieving our objectives. They will remain a priority for the CRA in 2012-2013.

We established an Integrity Framework to formalize our culture of integrity in workplace policies, programs, and processes. We launched a communication strategy in late 2011-2012 to promote awareness and understanding of our Integrity Framework among employees.

The CRA's Leadership Continuum initiative ensures that leadership learning and development are strategic and integrated. In 2011-2012, key initiatives of this program included:

• launching a mandatory learning program for newly appointed executives;
• offering “armchair discussions” to address topics of interest to executives; and
• reviewing our Executive Development Program, Middle Management Development Program, and Learning Program.

Responsiveness

In 2011-2012, we addressed a number of significant human resource challenges.

• The results of a 2011 referendum in British Columbia will see the return of a provincial sales tax (PST) and the goods and services tax (GST) on April 1, 2013. We worked with British Columbia to secure provincial employment opportunities for 129 employees who joined the CRA when the harmonized sales tax was implemented in British Columbia in 2010.
• 817 former Ontario government employees joined CRA offices throughout the Ontario region in March 2012 when the HST was implemented in that province Footnote 1.

Information technology responsiveness and sustainability

The CRA has a strong reputation for excellent and innovative service delivery. Maintaining this reputation requires an ongoing investment in information technology as well as the continued advancement of our annual sustainability assessment process to identify the health of our systems and ensure that highest-priority applications receive funding. The return on this investment is visible in the case of online service offerings. We also invest in less visible innovations that shadow our online offerings. These investments enable our core business operations and contribute to our excellent service delivery.

In 2011-2012:

• we enhanced our protection of taxpayer and benefit recipient information by moving from an older technology to a newer, more secure electronic data file transfer system that transmits close to four terabytes of encrypted data quickly and efficiently;
• we completed a project to ensure that our IT system for human resources financial management will continue to provide reliable and efficient support for internal transactions;
• we transferred IT infrastructure services for the CRA to Shared Services Canada;
• we entered into a trilateral arrangement with the Bank of Canada and Public Works and Government Services Canada to ensure sustainability of our data centre services in the National Capital Region from the private sector; and
• we were recognized at the Government Technology Exhibition and Conference as Distinction Award Honourees for five projects.

Accountability and operational efficiency

Transparency is important in demonstrating results and maintaining taxpayers' trust. In the past year, we continued to enhance our internal financial controls and our governance structure.

Certify the effectiveness of internal controls

In 2011-2012, we devoted significant effort to making sure we have a strong system of controls over our financial management and reporting.

• We implemented our chief executive officer (CEO) and chief financial officer (CFO) certification process to help ensure that our internal controls and financial reporting are accurate and reliable.
• We completed a risk assessment exercise to identify and address significant enterprise risks.
• Our CEO and CFO signed our first annual Statement of Management Responsibility and annex, including internal controls over financial reporting.
• We issued a detailed report, audited by the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, to the provinces and territories on the design of controls over financial reporting on the individual income tax program.
• We completed an assessment of the operating effectiveness of controls over financial reporting for our corporate income tax program.

Implement the emergency management program strategy

In 2011-2012, we enhanced our emergency management practices and governance structure in line with the Emergency Management Act and the Federal Policy for Emergency Management. These enhancements will improve our resilience in the event of an emergency.

Improving security

Security and the protection of information are of utmost importance to the CRA.

In 2011-2012, we:

• adopted a risk-based approach to ensure that highest priorities receive our greatest attention;
• implemented the first phase, and launched the second and third phases, of our Identity and Access Management project. The project focuses on enhancing how we verify identity and provide access privileges only to authorized users, and only to the extent needed to perform their duties;
• continued to modernize our national audit trail system to proactively monitor employees' access to CRA systems and detect questionable transactions; and
• increased the resources allocated to our security and internal affairs function to further strengthen our ability to prevent, detect, and manage breaches of integrity.

Advance the internal fraud control program

To advance our Internal Fraud Control Program, we:

• updated and communicated our Internal Fraud Control Policy;
• developed a strategy for managing the risk of internal fraud to strengthen and formalize our current practices; and
• developed a method of assessing internal fraud risk to better understand potential vulnerabilities, and to assess and improve the effectiveness of our existing internal controls to lessen the risks.

Employ enterprise risk management consistently and systematically

The CRA incorporates risk management into its decision-making, planning, and reporting processes. Our risks focus on five primary themes:

• protecting the revenue base;
• maintain public trust;
• enablers: resources, systems, and processes;
• ability to move forward and evolve; and
• capitalizing on information and knowledge.

In 2011-2012, we introduced our Corporate Risk Profile, which combined three enterprise risk reports into one. The new comprehensive 2011 risk profile includes all information about our enterprise risks including action plans for risks requiring mitigation.

We also strengthened internal partnerships and integrated the risk management function into key corporate processes. Results include:

• mapping our risk profile to the priorities presented in our Corporate Business Plan and program activity architecture;
• integrating risk information and risk management practices into our investment planning and management processes; and
• encouraging continued coordination and information-sharing between our risk and audit functions.

Risk and performance reporting was improved this past year by developing risk snapshots and including them in our risk profile. Risk snapshots provide a concise and complete overview of each risk and are used to monitor and report on risks and their mitigation plans.

Contribution to the federal sustainable development strategy

We tabled our fifth Sustainable Development Strategy through the CRA 2011-2012 Report on Plans and Priorities. The strategy will ensure that we continue to achieve targets set in the federal sustainable development strategy.

Over the past year:

• We reduced office paper use per employee by an additional 19%, surpassing our internal paper reduction target of 28% from 2005-2006 levels.
• We implemented a national initiative to reduce the number of printing units and achieved a 6:1 average ratio of employees to printing units.
• We achieved 10.5% green procurement for goods and services and reached a 97% level of procurement officers trained in green procurement.
• We developed a national plan for sound and secure disposal of surplus electronic and electrical equipment.

The CRA is a participant in the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy (FSDS) and contributes to the Greening Government Operations targets through the Internal Services program activity. The department contributes to the following target areas of Theme IV (Shrinking the Environmental Footprint – Beginning with Government) of the FSDS:

• Greenhouse gas emissions
• Electronic waste
• Managed print
• Internal paper consumption
• Green meeting guide
• Green procurement

For additional details on the CRA's Greening Government Operations activities, please see the List of Supplementary Information Tables in Section III.

Management oversight

To make sure that we are effectively meeting our responsibilities for accountability, we use two complementary tools: the Management Accountability Framework assessment conducted by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and the Board of Management Oversight Framework assessment conducted by our Board of Management. Together, the two assessment tools provide a complete evaluation of the CRA's management performance.

The 2011-2012 Management Accountability Framework assessment examined three indicators. The CRA received “strong” ratings for one indicator and “acceptable” for the other two. Our Board of Management conducted its fifth Board of Management assessment. Of the 14 indicators considered, none required attention, two presented an opportunity for improvement, and twelve were found to be “strong” or “acceptable”.

The positive results of these assessments provide Canadians with assurance that the CRA is actively pursuing management excellence.

Lessons learned

The CRA is a large and mature organization operating in a complex socio-economic context. In the past year, we continued to develop innovative management practices and sound infrastructure. We are confident, based on internal and external assessments and our demonstrated achievements, that we met our objective of enabled core business operations and delivered on our management priorities.

For supplementary information on this program activity, please visit: www.cra.gc.ca/annualreport

Implementation of the in Ontario resulted in permanent employees from that province being offered employment at the .

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