2007-2008 Public Service Renewal Action Plan

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The Action Plan outlines key results at the corporate level, as well as within individual departments and agencies, to move the Clerk’s four priorities forward this year.

Renewing the Public Service is an ongoing responsibility that will take time. However, to ensure momentum and credibility, it is important to achieve concrete progress this year. In 2007-08, we will deliver on the actions identified below. The Clerk will ask Deputy Ministers to report progress on results within their own department/agency, as of January 2008, as well as any other departmental results. This information will form the basis for the Clerk’s fifteenth annual report.

Over the same time period, we will be examining longer term issues such as the future of the Public Service, generational change, cultural issues of renewal, and learning from others and our own past, in order to build future action plans.

Priority Action Areas for 2007/08

1. Planning

The PS must improve human resources planning as part of integrated business planning. It is the basis for meeting our business goals and for making sound decisions on employee recruitment, development and all other human resources management issues required to meet those goals.

• By March 2008, all departments / agencies will have distributed to their employees and put on their website their integrated plan.

2. Recruitment

We need to ensure that the PS can hire its share of the most qualified graduates in all fields, reflecting Canada’s diversity. We also need to develop an approach to branding the Public Service of Canada that combines an overall identity with department-specific features.

• By March 2008, DMs will increase the number of post-secondary graduates appointed directly to indeterminate positions to at least 3000 up from about 2100 last year and will ensure all of these new entrants have orientation and development plans.
  
  
• By March 2008, the Canada Public Service Agency will work with functional communities and departments/agencies to implement recruitment plans to address the needs of the following functional communities:
  
  
  • Human Resources (recruitment of 75 PEs and 100 compensation specialists); and
    
    
  • Information Services (recruitment of 100 ISs).

  Also, the Office of the Comptroller General has established pre-qualified pools from which departments/agencies will appoint: 7 Directors General/Executive Directors (EX-03), 130 mid-level financial officers, and more than 200 entry-level candidates.

• In order to support longer term succession planning, DMs will ensure that the requirements for entry-level executive jobs take full account of potential contribution to the Public Service into the future in order to achieve a demographic profile (i.e. age, gender, employment equity groups, etc.) appropriate to future needs.

3. Employee Development

Continuous learning for all employees is critical to organizational effectiveness and to individual capacity, as is ensuring sound people management capacity for all managers.

• By March 2008, DMs will ensure at least 90% of PS employees have learning plans in place and that a corresponding discussion and an assessment of the plans between employee and supervisor occurs annually in connection with performance review.

• In 2007/08, COSO and DMs will implement talent management plans for all Assistant Deputy Ministers.

• In 2007/08, COSO and CSPS will launch an Advanced Leadership Program.

• In 2007/08, working with TBS, the CPSA will:
  
  
  • Revise the performance management regime for excluded managers and unrepresented employees to be more in line with the approach taken for executives;
  
  
  • Develop a performance management approach for all managers with substantial people management responsibilities that recognizes people management, based on the CRA model, for consideration in the context of this round of collective bargaining.
    
    
• Beginning in 2007/08, all executives, including deputy ministers will be formally assessed on people management. The CPSA will develop tools to support the assessment.

4. Enabling Infrastructure

The enabling infrastructure will build organizational capacity, including the capacity of the community of human resources professionals. We will also simplify our processes in order to reduce classification and staffing times, develop benchmarks and measure our progress.

• In 2007/08, the PSC, as a first step, will reduce the time it takes to access second language oral interaction testing by 50%.

• In 2007/08, the CPSA will produce a GoC web-based tool to facilitate the secure electronic transfer of an employee’s HR record from one department or agency to another, reducing processing time from six months to six minutes.

• In 2007/08, the CPSA will enable the adoption of the ‘Fast Track’ staffing model developed by Agriculture and Agri-food Canada in at least two other departments as a first step towards system-wide application.

• In 2007/08, the CPSA will deliver pre-classified generic work descriptions, reducing the number of work descriptions for the Computer Science (CS) group from 1500 to 37 in medium and large IT organizations, and for the Human Resources (PE) functional community from 2000 to 20, covering 80% of the PE population.

• In 2007/08, the CPSA in collaboration with the TBS and the PSC, will review reporting requirements, including the alignment of MAF/PCMAF/SMAF, to reduce requirements to the greatest extent possible.