ARCHIVED - Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada

• Previous Page
• Table of Contents
• Next Page

This page has been archived.

Section II: Analysis of Program Activity by Strategic Outcome

Strategic Outcome: Individuals’ rights under the Access to Information Act are safeguarded

As the ombudsman responsible for investigating access complaints against federal institutions, the Information Commissioner represents an independent source of expert knowledge with a unique perspective on freedom of information and the importance to democracy of transparency and openness in government. In order to maximize the Commissioner’s and the Office’s influence and promote requestors’ rights, the Office must complement its investigative work by sharing its expertise with stakeholders and being as transparent as possible about its decisions and ways of doing business.

Program Activity by Strategic Outcome

All expected results contribute to the Office’s single Strategic Outcome: Individuals’ rights under the Access to Information Act are safeguarded.

Program Activity: Compliance with access to information obligations

2008-2009 Financial Resources ($ million)			2008-2009 Human Resources (full-time equivalents)
Planned Spending	Total Authorities	Actual Spending	Planned	Actual	Difference
9.638	10.227	9.834	90	59	31

Expected Results	Performance Indicators2	Targets	Performance Status	Performance Summary
1. Requestors benefit from a fair and effective complaints resolution process	Quality and timeliness of the investigation process	• 90 percent of investigations adhere to quality assurance standards at first round of review; complaints are responded to within service standards (therefore improving turnaround time)	Somewhat met	See Performance Analysis, below.
2. Stakeholders understand the role and perspective of the Office of the Information Commissioner in ensuring compliance with the Access to Information Act	Reach to, and feedback from, stakeholders	• Stakeholders have ready access to Office publications, tools and information, namely via a website that is redesigned to be comprehensive, up-to-date and user-friendly, and stakeholder feedback is generally positive	Somewhat met
3. Federal institutions meet their obligations under the Access to Information Act	Proportion of investigation and report card recommendations adopted	• 95 percent of complaints investigation recommendations are adopted • 80 percent of report cards recommendations are adopted	Met all
4. The courts receive useful representations and relevant evidence about access issues, the proper interpretation of the provisions of the Access to Information Act, and of related statutes, regulations and jurisprudence	Proportion of the court cases where judgments support OIC [Office of the Information Commissioner] representations and/or, OIC evidence was considered as part of the Courts’ deliberations	• 90 percent of court judgments either support Office representations or consider Office evidence	Met all
5. Parliament receives clear, relevant information and timely objective advice about the access to information implications of legislation, jurisprudence, regulations and policies	Value of information and advice from the Office of the Information Commissioner provided to parliamentarians and parliamentary committees	• 80 percent of information access-relevant parliamentary committee reports refer to Office advice; positive feedback from parliamentarians, committee chairs and members	Met all

² As stated in the 2008–2009 Report on Plans and Priorities, the Office is implementing these performance indicators incrementally over 2008–2009 and 2009–2010. Hence, only some of the performance information relating to these indicators was available for this report. The remainder will be reported on next year.

Benefits for Canadians

Under the Access to Information Act, anyone who makes a request for information to a federal institution and is dissatisfied with the response or the way it was handled has the right to complain to the Office of the Information Commissioner. The Office is committed to investigating these complaints in an objective and fair manner and as efficiently as possible. This complaint function is crucial to safeguarding the rights of individual Canadians and organizations under the Act, since it helps ensure that they are getting the information about their government to which they are entitled under the law.

To effect greater compliance across federal institutions and to reduce the number of complaints it receives, the Office approaches certain problems that regularly occur with a strategic and proactive approach. In 2008–2009, the Office placed increased emphasis on investigating systemic issues, particularly to get at the root causes of non-compliance with the Access to Information Act. The Office also uses a variety of tools of general and specific applications—those are interdependent and complement investigations and systemic actions—to maximize compliance. This in turn maximizes service to Canadians.

In this same spirit, the Office’s communications activities, performance assessments, work on legal cases and parliamentary relations activities all focus on ensuring that Canadians know that they have the right to complain about the handling of their information requests and that institutions have a responsibility to respond to those requests as quickly and completely as possible within the legal deadlines.

Performance Analysis

1. Requestors benefit from a fair and effective complaints resolution process: In 2008–2009, the Office made significant improvements to its complaint-handling process. In particular, the Office developed and implemented a new way of doing business to meet four specific objectives:

• to improve the effectiveness and timeliness of operations with a view to reducing the carry-over of complaints each year to a manageable level of 200 to 500 complaints within the next five years;
• to eliminate the historical backlog of long-standing complaints and to prevent a large number of long-standing complaints from accumulating;
• to adopt a strategic and proactive approach to systemic issues in order to detect, investigate and remedy the underlying sources of the problem;
• to take advantage of the spectrum of tools the Office has at its disposal—from collaboration and mediation to adversarial actions—to complement the Office’s investigations and systemic actions and maximize compliance in a context of limited resources.

In 2008–2009, the Office closed more complaints (1,770) than it ever had before. This was no small feat, given the large number of new complaints (2,018) it received during the year. The table and figures below provide more information on the Office’s workload in recent years.

During the past year, the Office closed half of the cases in its historical backlog of long-standing complaints (pre-April 1, 2008). This represents a major achievement in fulfilling the Office’s commitment to eliminate its historical backlog by March 31, 2010. As it works to close the remaining old cases, the average completion time for investigations—which was 13 months in 2008–2009—will likely drop significantly.

Following the new business model, chief investigators review and sign off on most of the investigation files once they verify the quality and accuracy of the investigation. This procedure also improves the efficiency of the investigative process and increases the turnaround time for the greater benefits of requestors.

The Office completed a significant systemic investigation into a complaint by the Canadian Newspaper Association, which looked into the practices of 21 institutions in responding to access requests from the media. The investigation found that delays did occur but not exclusively for media requests; the Office found that institutions were delaying requests from parliamentarians, organizations, academics and lawyers as well. The Office set out numerous recommendations at the conclusion of this investigation, which the institutions and Treasury Board Secretariat agreed to follow. The Office followed up on these recommendations in early 2009 to ensure the promised actions were being taken, namely that all information requests are processed without unwarranted delays.

Summary of Caseload, 2006–2007 to 2008–2009

	2006–2007	2007–2008	2008–2009
Complaints Received
Complaints carried over from the previous year	1,453	1,420	2,293*
New complaints	1,317	2,387	2,018
Complaints cancelled during the year	82	108	28**
Complaints pending at year-end	1,420	2,318*	2,513
Outcome of Complaints
Complaints discontinued during the year	449	108	652
Complaints completed during the year with findings	819	1,273	1,118
Total of complaints closed during the year	1, 268	1,381	1,770
Commissioner-Initiated Complaints
Complaints carried over from the previous year	423	237	0
New complaints	393	0	1
Complaints closed during the year	579	237	0
Complaints pending at year-end	237	0	1
Report cards initiated during the year	17	10	***

* Figure adjusted after year-end to avoid duplication: 25 complaints received at the end of March 2008 were registered at the beginning of April 2008.

** The Office stopped using the “cancelled” category in June 2008 when it set up its new intake process. These 28 complaints were cancelled before this change was made. In the past, a complaint was registered upon receipt and then cancelled after an investigator determined that it was not valid under the Act (for example, it was made beyond the time allowed or the complainant withdrew or abandoned it before the investigation began). As of June 2008, the Office registers a complaint once an officer reviews it and obtains, when necessary, sufficient information to determine that it is a valid complaint. A complaint that is found not to be valid is now treated as a general enquiry.

*** The 2007–2008 report cards were completed during the following fiscal year and published in February 2009.

Trends in the status at month-end of the inventory of all active complaints, 2008–2009

Turnaround times for complaints closed, 2008–2009

2. Stakeholders understand the role and perspective of the Office of the Information Commissioner in ensuring compliance with the Access to Information Act: In 2008–2009, the Office published a new brochure about its role in the access to information system. It also stepped up its communications activities, gaining more exposure for the Commissioner and the work of the Office: a special report to Parliament, appearances of the Commissioner and senior officials before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, presentations at various domestic and international conferences, and a wide range of activities during the annual Right to Know Week. Media coverage of the Commissioner, his role and access to information issues was extensive this year. The planned redesign of the website was well under way in 2008–2009 but was not completed. It will be a priority for the Office in 2009–2010.

3. Federal institutions meet their obligations under the Access to Information Act: The Office revamped its performance assessment process (known as report cards) to increase its relevance and usefulness. The new report cards process was designed to offer more insight into the contextual factors that affect institutions’ performance in handling access requests while keeping a strong focus on timeliness. The Office examined access issues from a system-wide perspective and tabled a special report before Parliament in the winter of 2009. The report includes the results for the 10 institutions that were assessed, concrete recommendations for improvements as well as the institutions’ response. During the process, the Office also identified areas for improvement by Treasury Board Secretariat to ensure that all players in the access system respond to access requests as quickly and completely as possible for the benefit of Canadians. The Office has committed, in particular, to responding to institutions’ feedback about the process itself. The effectiveness of the report cards will be a key measure of the Office’s performance in upcoming years.

4. The courts receive useful representations and relevant evidence about access issues, the proper interpretation of the provisions of the Access to Information Act, and of related statutes, regulations and jurisprudence: A fundamental principle of the Access to Information Act is that decisions on disclosure of government information may be reviewed independently of government by the Office when it investigates complaints or by the Federal Court of Canada. In 2008–2009, Office counsel participated in a number of court cases, clearly communicating the perspective of the Commissioner on a variety of access-related issues. Some of these resulted from the Commissioner’s findings from investigations over the years; others dealt with issues of broad application that might affect the interpretation of the Access to Information Act.

5. Parliament receives clear, relevant information and timely, objective advice about the access to information implications of legislation, jurisprudence, regulations and policies: In 2008–2009, the Office produced a special report to Parliament on the performance of federal institutions in the area of access to information as well as systemic issues affecting access to information in Canada. The Commissioner appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics three times during 2008–2009. He advised on the performance of federal institutions and systemic issues and presented proposals for an urgent reform of the Access to Information Act in March 2009.

Lessons Learned

In 2008–2009, the Office started implementing its new business model, and promising signs of success were to be found in the number of complaints it closed by year-end. This sets the bar for efficient performance even higher for 2009–2010.

Fully implementing the business model will require time, sustained efforts and sufficient resources. The Office anticipates a five-year timeframe to achieve its goals, given the large volume of complaints it needs to process, the magnitude of the IM/IT renewal strategy and ongoing challenges with respect to human resources management. As it moves into year two, the Office will build on its early successes to ensure that its approach is as timely and effectively as possible.

During the past year, the Office also introduced its new performance assessment process, which led to the publication of a solid report on performance and recommendations for improvement—both for individual institutions and for the system as a whole. This experience suggests that the report cards process is a crucial exercise to increase institutional compliance with the Access to Information Act. Consequently, the Office will continue to produce in-depth report cards and to devise strategies to proactively address systemic issues. A three-year plan for report cards has been published in July 2009 by the Interim Commissioner. The plan takes an integrated approach to the assessment of delays in responses to access requests while encouraging greater proactive compliance from institutions.

To further enhance its organizational capacity, the Office must now turn its attention to recruiting and developing people with relevant skills and experience, such as conducting investigations, audits or evaluations. Over the last year, the Office was successful in recruiting seven new investigators and is providing on-the-job training in the particulars of its investigative function. The Office will report on its recruiting and training efforts in future performance reports.

Finally, the introduction of the new business model also requires that the Office examine how it measures its performance. In 2009–2010, the Office will review the various items under its Program Activity, particularly its performance indicators and targets, to ensure that it can accurately measure its performance and that its work is focused on attaining its Strategic Outcome.

• Previous Page
• Table of Contents
• Next Page