Ce rapport est aussi disponible en français.
The views expressed herein are those of the supplier/authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Public Services and Procurement Canada.
© Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, as represented by the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada
Information contained in this publication or product may be reproduced, in part or in whole, and by any means as stipulated in the Open Government Licence – Canada.
For additional information, contact:
Public Services and Procurement Canada Communications
11 Laurier Street, Phase III, Place du Portage
Gatineau, Quebec
Canada K1A 0S5
Departmental Contact Information: questions@pwgsc-tpsgc.gc.ca
The Publishing and Depository Services Directorate (PDSD) maintains a central database of Government of Canada publications that is searchable and available to the public. All institutions of the Government of Canada identified in Schedules I, I.1 and II of the Financial Administration Act are obligated to provide their portable electronic publications to PDSD as identified in the Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada (TBS) Procedures for Publishing.
The Publishing and Depository Services Directorate (PDSD) is responsible for cataloguing publications from Government of Canada departments and agencies. The Directorate’s collection includes more than 355,000 bibliographic records, with over 235,000 downloadable electronic publications which can be accessed through the online catalogue via publications.gc.ca. The Weekly Acquisitions List (WAL) is generated at the end of each week based on newly catalogued records from PDSD. A URL linking to the WAL is distributed each Monday via the INFODEP mailing list which consists of clients from public, academic, legislative, special, and government libraries to inform them of the newly catalogued titles. In 2016-2017, the publications website had approximately 150,000 visitors a month and approximately 100,000 publications were downloaded on a monthly basis. Visitors can visit the publications.gc.ca website, contact PDSD by phone, my mail, by email or by fax.
The Directorate has been in transition for some time. In 2014, the Directorate moved to an exclusively electronic publication environment. More recently with the introduction of the Web Renewal Initiative, and the Open Government Initiative, many changes have occurred and there is ambiguity as to how Government of Canada information is disseminated and through which platform. In this context, the Directorate has had to adapt quickly to a changing environment.
Given these challenges, the PDSD seeks information and insight from key audiences, notably library professionals and other users of the publications.gc.ca website in order to better position itself for its future role, and to highlight which aspects of its service delivery to focus on. Information is sought in the following key areas for each target audience:
The methodology employed in this study consisted of both qualitative and quantitative components. Qualitative interviews by telephone were conducted with PDSD staff to gather information from an internal perspective about the nature of the clientele at PDSD and some of their challenges. Library professionals were queried with on-line bulletin boards, followed by a quantitative survey. Finally, visitors to the publications website (www.publications.gc.ca) were queried via an on-line survey.
One of the immediate and most important findings in this study is that more than half of the visitors to publications.gc.ca and roughly half of those contacting the PDSD via telephone, email and through other more direct channels are not looking for a publication, but rather a variety of other things – information on general topics, government forms, information on products and services and so on. In this light, adjustments to the analysis framework were necessary. Very obviously, the mixed nature of this clientele has obvious implications for quality of service measurement, not least of which is the need to separate publication seekers from the rest. This is necessary because each clientele is looking for different things and as a result would not evaluate the work of the PDSD in comparable terms. Consequently, the analysis of data from the quantitative survey was done with visitors to publications.gc.ca to ensure that each topic was assessed with the appropriate clientele.
Accordingly, the different topics addressed in the study were broken down as follows:
The principal findings in this study are summarized as follows and presented in the same order as above:
From this study, we have learned that a minority (42%) of visitors to publications.gc.ca indicate that they were looking for a publication, and that among this group, almost a third indicated that they were also looking for other kinds of information. This means many users of the publications.gc.ca site were in fact coming to the site in search of something it does not provide. The group of publication seekers is composed of 34% general public users, another 28% of users representing other government organizations, 20% of users from educational institutions, and another 16% from other sources. The general public makes up a bigger (55%) proportion of non-publication seekers, but also includes sizable proportions of government employees (20%), users from education institutions (13%) and another 9% from other places.
From this basic data, the survey seems to indicate that the various conduits to the site, be they search engines, links and so on are sub-optimal. Although our study gives some indication of what pathways these groups used to find the site, we do not have sufficient or the right data to properly diagnose the source of the problem. Our data does suggest, however, that the problem is being experienced by a wide variety of both experienced and inexperienced users, and that it is most likely attributable to several root causes.
All audiences who contributed their perspective to this study agree (to only slightly different degrees) that government publications are highly important. Publication-seeking respondents to the pop-up site survey and library professionals indicate as much in their numerical ratings around this question, which in most cases are rated 4 or above on a 5-point scale. The recognition of importance extends not only to publications themselves, but also to aspects of the PDSD mission, notably its self-service focus, maintaining a catalogue and pursuing the digitization of paper publications, maintaining resources necessary to allow users to contact the PDSD directly and so on. Only the maintenance of a weekly listing of publications fell below this threshold, although other qualitative results suggest that it is the frequency of this list that is less important and not the list itself.
Library professionals, for their part, endorse the importance of these aspects even more strongly in the survey, but it is their qualitative perspective that provided the most resonant articulation of the importance of Government of Canada publications and what the PDSD does in their regard: Library professionals deem government publications “unique”, of particular resonance, part of an important historical record, and essential to government accountability, an engaged citizenry and the nation’s capacity to learn from the past. Those aspects of the PDSD’s mission, notably its work to identify and catalogue publications, its efforts to ensure compliance with Treasury Board directives and its expertise were also deemed highly important, in particular because of the constant evolutions in the digital world. Library professionals articulated a strong and emphatic imperative around the need for continuity in this record, for comprehensive accounting for the entire body of publications, for durable links and change-resistant archiving, and for consideration of challenges to come and long-term planning to ensure that this material is preserved for posterity. The fact that the majority of surveyed libraries catalogue publications and point to the publications.gc.ca URL reinforces the point.
Overall satisfaction with the publications website were 3.6/5 among all publication seekers, and dropping to scores in or around 3.2/5 for “in the end I got what I needed”, “the basic search engine capabilities were effective”, and finally “It was easy to find what I was looking for.” These lower scores may reflect the fact that the PDSD doesn’t have what the visitor was looking for ( i.e. something other than a document), or that the PDSD isn’t in possession of a document that exists, which can happen for a variety of reasons.
Library professionals, for their part, tend to be more generous in their appraisal of the publications.gc.ca web experience (overall satisfaction 3.9/5 from a sample of 116 respondents), and favorably inclined about “I am able to find the Government of Canada publications I am looking for” (3.7/5).
Our data shows that 88 respondents rated their satisfaction following direct contact with the PDSD, either by phone (6% of contacts), email (10% of contacts), by regular mail (1% of contacts) or in person (2% of contacts). This group of 88 respondents further divides between publication-seekers (N=49, or 55%) and non-publication seekers (N=39, or 45%). Though this sample base is too small to rely on for anything other than directional findings, the data suggests that the PDSD staff satisfy groups about equally, even though the requests from non-publication seekers are not what PDSD staff are trained for.
Library professionals, for their part, tend to be more satisfied with the quality of service delivered by PDSD staff for requests made directly: 4.2/5 on the “overall level of satisfaction with the quality of services received.”, and 4.1/5 on “the amount of time it took to receive the service”.
This study has highlighted the importance of publications to users, and has identified some of the issues and obstacles that the PDSD’s clientele faces in their quest for Government of Canada publications. In particular, the study shows that those seeking publications encountered challenges with aspects of the web experience, and with things such as the search capabilities and the overall ease in finding their desired publication. When these users make direct contact with the Directorate, however, they indicate relatively high levels of satisfaction with the personal aspects of the service. All of this suggests that finding a publication and other information in the Government of Canada web environment is a process that can be improved.
Although the underlying reasons are not clear, this study has demonstrated that the larger web structures surrounding publications.gc.ca and the various tools and methods that are used to direct users toward the right kinds of government information are sub-optimal. While a diagnosis on how and why this is happening is beyond the scope of this project and the data, it is important to recognize the potential impact of so many non-publication seekers on our estimation of the quality of service the PDSD provides. It has been necessary to carefully differentiate users between publication and non-publication seekers, and to ensure that only those users with an intent to find a publication evaluate the PDSD’s service. The root causes of this mixed clientele are not illuminated by our data. That said, the fact that non-publication seekers come from government organizations (20%) and from educational institutions (13%) as well as the general public (55%) suggests that the problem is experienced by all comers. Additional research (which would presumably be part of the government’s ongoing efforts to perfect its web offer) on how users of all kinds think of and decode the offer of “publications” relative to the specific topics they seek information on would warrant consideration.
Finally, this study has provided rich and compelling evidence from library professionals about the importance of Government of Canada publications and especially of preserving this body of information for posterity. The library professionals who participated in this study, either by way of the bulletin board or the survey articulate similar imperatives:
Finally, library professionals provided a wealth of suggestions and recommendations on how to better achieve these aims which are accessible in the annex of this report.