The Action Plan for Official Languages requires all federal institutions to report on the way in which they are fulfilling their commitments and obligations under the Official Languages Act. Reporting on our collective accountability has made the development of a horizontal management framework necessary.
For the federal government, such a framework enables management to consider the overall effect of a group of activities. It encompasses governance, performance objectives, accountability measures and reports to Canadians. It does not replace the performance measurement systems specific to departments and agencies that evaluate in detail those initiatives for which they are responsible. Horizontal management frameworks strengthen the function of modern comptrollership whereby information on expenditures and performance is gathered, and managers are provided with appropriate control systems, a considered approach to risk management, and a common set of values and ethical principles.
The initiatives of the Action Plan cannot be separated from the whole set of activities undertaken by the government in compliance with the Official Languages Act and in support of linguistic duality. The framework deals with the Official Languages Program (OLP) as a whole 8. It emphasizes the links between the priorities of all areas, it offers an overview of activities, funding and progress and it sheds light on how programs work together to achieve results, make use of resources, pursue activities and report to Canadians. The framework was designed to be applied over time to all federal institutions.
Official Languages, Intergovernmental Affairs, Privy Council Office, have coordinated and managed a complex structure of interdepartmental committees and working groups established specifically to build the horizontal management framework: a steering committee responsible for directing the project, a senior working group which clarified the content and prepared reports for the Committee of Deputy Ministers on Official Languages (CDMOL), and a broader working group including representatives of ten departments and agencies, in particular fields (policy officers, program managers, evaluation experts and other specialists) as well as assistance from the communities.
Work was based on the following approach:
• examination of documents (e.g. the OLA and the Action Plan, the 1994 protocol and its designation of the institutions having the most direct impact on communities and the equal status of French and English, briefs submitted during the development of the Action Plan, etc.);
• examination of management frameworks, audit frameworks and other documents guiding the implementation of the Action Plan initiatives by each department;
• working sessions on strategies for performance measurement, evaluation and risk management; and
• consultation sessions on indicators and the performance measurement framework with non-governmental partners and especially communities.
• The horizontal management framework reflects the contributions made by numerous participants in an environment which was marked by an openness to learn. It also owes a great deal to the comments and suggestions made by the communities, the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, and parliamentarians. Implementation of the framework has just begun.
The horizontal management framework has four components:
• a governance structure for the OLP (Figure 1, p.45), in which: the Prime Minister and the Cabinet have ultimate responsibility; the Minister responsible for Official Languages, the Ministers whose mandate is described in the Act and the Group of Ministers play a leadership role; the Privy Council Office, the Committee of Deputy Ministers and senior officials ensure the consistency of policies and the interdepartmental collaboration necessary, and so on throughout all levels of the federal system, with partners outside the government being taken into account;
• a results-based logic model (Figure 2, p.46), that fits the goals of all institutions together with the rationale for the overall program, illustrates the connections between the targeted results and the activities required to achieve them, and integrates the logic models of the departments and agencies in their specific areas;
• a measurement framework and an evaluation strategy, which describe how the government and its partners will seek the relevant data and measure progress in light of the expected results; and,
• an accountability strategy that details the evaluation activities and reports expected from federal partners.
This also represents an attempt at harmonizing departmental evaluation cycles. The midterm report and the official launch of the horizontal framework in the Fall are part of this strategy. There will be formative evaluations from which preliminary conclusions may be drawn in 2006 which will serve as a point of reference for the summative evaluation of 2007. The results reported by the federal partners in the context of these evaluations, and the annual reports by Canadian Heritage, the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency, and the Commissioner of Official Languages will be taken into account in the overall analysis of the data gathered on the OLP to prepare the final report in 2008.
The horizontal management framework is already being used, more or less extensively, depending on whether an institution is one of the ten partners in the Action Plan, belongs to the 30 designated institutions whose impact on the development of the minority communities and promotion of French and English is the greatest, or is one of the 190 or more subject to the Official Languages Act. To use it to best advantage, federal institutions must not only collaborate among themselves but also call on the governments of the provinces and territories–as well as the community organizations and other groups interested in official languages–to be involved.
The horizontal framework is the work of numerous stakeholders and its use will be central in reports by the government to Canadians. It must evolve with time as changes occur in the field of official languages. Use of the framework will grow as a larger number of federal institutions and stakeholders enter data and tailor it to meet their needs. Eventually, the institutional silos will disappear and the effects of policies and programs in relation to one another will be clear. It will become natural to ask whether measures taken in education are preparing Canadians for continuous learning; whether community development encompasses identity, cultural, economic and social factors; and whether the example of the public service is influencing society and the communities.
Figure 1: Governance for the Official Languages Program
Figure 2: Logic Model – Official Languages
Program
8. See the introduction to this Report and Annex 1.