ARCHIVED - RPP 2007-2008
Transportation Safety Board of Canada

• Previous Page
• Table of Contents
• Next Page

This page has been archived.

Section 2 - Analysis of Program Activity

2.1 Strategic Outcome

The TSB has one strategic outcome: to advance transportation safety, thereby reducing risks to people, property and the environment. This strategic outcome is reflected in the TSB mission statement and contributes to reach the broader Government of Canada outcome of "safe and secure communities."

2.2 Program Activity and Sub-Activities

The TSB also has only one program activity: safety investigations. The TSB conducts independent safety investigations into transportation occurrences in the federally regulated elements of the marine, pipeline, rail and air transportation systems to identify causes and contributing factors; formulates recommendations to improve safety; publishes investigation reports; and communicates safety information to stakeholders.

As indicated in the first section, the expected result of safety investigations is:

• the timely implementation of safety actions by stakeholders to improve transportation safety for Canadians.

In order to achieve this result, the safety investigations undertaken in each mode are therefore aimed at:

• the identification and communication of safety deficiencies in the transportation system to stakeholders and the public.

All five priorities identified in the first section are aimed at supporting and enhancing the TSB's ability to conduct safety investigations and to communicate safety information.

2.3 Key Service Areas

In order to optimize the use of resources and to effectively respond to its stakeholders, the TSB has defined four key service areas based on the four transportation modes included in its mandate: marine, pipeline, rail and air. The same classification has been used to identify the scope of each of our program architecture sub-activities and to report on their performance against our scorecard indicators. This approach also enables alignment with the transportation industry and the way it operates. Resources are therefore allocated, managed and measured separately for each of these key service areas. The costs associated to the various administrative and specialized areas are charged to each key service area in order to demonstrate the total costs incurred by each area.

Financial Resources ($ thousands)

Key Service Areas	2007-2008	2008-2009	2009-2010
Marine	7,026	7,053	7,039
Pipeline	761	641	640
Rail	6,217	6,091	6,078
Air	18,454	18,275	18,236
Total	32,458	32,060	31,993

Human Resources (FTE)

Key Service Areas	2007-2008	2008-2009	2009-2010
Marine	56	56	56
Pipeline	4	4	4
Rail	48	48	48
Air	127	127	127
Total	235	235	235

Activities carried out in all four key service areas are basically the same. Dedicated personnel collect information on occurrences, conduct investigations and analyses, identify safety deficiencies, draft investigation reports and communicate key safety information to stakeholders. Other specialized personnel, such as engineering, human performance, corporate services and communications staff, provide a full range of support services to all four key service areas.

2.4 Planning Context

The TSB is primarily funded by Parliament through an operating expenditures vote and, as a departmental corporation, it has authority to spend revenues received during the year. The TSB operates within the context of Canada's very large, complex, dynamic and ever-changing transportation system. For more details on the operating context, see the Transport Canada website and the National Energy Board website.

Many individuals and groups cooperate with the TSB in the fulfillment of its mandate. During the course of an investigation, the TSB interacts directly with:

• individuals, such as survivors, witnesses and next-of-kin;
• operators;
• other organizations and agencies, such as coroners, police, manufacturers, owners and insurance companies; and
• other federal government departments and agencies.

Their cooperation is essential to the conduct of the TSB's business, whether they contribute information or support services. More details on the investigation process are on the TSB web site.

The TSB is one of many Canadian and foreign organizations involved in improving transportation safety nationally and internationally. Because it has no formal authority to regulate, direct or enforce specific actions, the TSB can only succeed in fulfilling its strategic outcome through the actions of others. Operating at arm's length from other federal departments involved in the transportation field, the Board must present its findings and recommendations in such a manner that others feel compelled to act. This implies ongoing dialogue, information sharing and strategic coordination with organizations such as Transport Canada, the National Energy Board and the Canadian Coast Guard. The TSB must engage industry and foreign regulatory organizations in a similar fashion. Through various means, the TSB must present compelling arguments that will convince these "agents of change" to take action in response to identified safety deficiencies.

The TSB has established memorandums of understanding with a number of federal government departments for the coordination of activities and the provision of support services. These agreements define operating practices to ensure good coordination of activities and to avoid potential conflicts that could arise from the simultaneous implementation of various organizational mandates. They also provide the TSB with access to a range of support services that can rapidly supplement internal resources (for example, assistance in the recovery of wreckage, the documentation of evidence, and the examination or testing of components). Such agreements are currently in place with Transport Canada, the Department of National Defence, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Coast Guard, Human Resources and Social Development Canada, and the National Research Council. Similarly, the TSB has established strategic cooperation alliances with provincial and territorial coroners and with certain provincial government agencies (primarily in the rail area).

Further alliances have been established with the TSB's counterpart agencies in other countries such as the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, France and the United Kingdom. The TSB cooperates on a reciprocal basis with foreign safety investigation agencies through the ad hoc exchange of specialized services or the provision of assistance as a means of coping with capacity gaps. As one of the world leaders in its field, the TSB regularly shares its investigation techniques, methodologies and tools. For example, the Recorder Analysis and Playback System (RAPS), originally developed by the TSB for decoding, analysis and animation of flight recorder data, is being used in more than 10 countries to aid in safety investigations. The RAPS software was also commercialized by a Canadian company and renamed Insight, which expanded its worldwide use even further. Similarly, the TSB has contributed to the training of safety investigators from numerous countries, either by integrating foreign investigators into its in-house training programs or by sending senior staff to teach abroad. The TSB also shares data and reports with sister organizations and participates in international working groups and studies to advance transportation safety.

2.5 Risks and Challenges

The TSB faces many risks and challenges that have a potentially significant impact on the organization's ability to achieve its mandate. Managers are aware of these risks and challenges and are expected to take appropriate action to mitigate the risks while ensuring the delivery of their mandate. The most important challenges for 2007-2008 are described in the following paragraphs.

2.5.1 Organization's Capacity to Manage Workload and Priorities Within Available Resources

The TSB continues to receive many investigations requests from the public, and faces numerous internal and external pressures to sustain existing activities and undertake new initiatives or modify existing practices to meet government change requirements. Some of the government initiatives that have had or could have an impact on the TSB include the review of Treasury Board's management policies, the introduction of new policies for internal audits and learning, the procurement reform, the shared travel services initiative, the review of the expenditure management system, the assessment under the Management Accountability Framework, and the Federal Accountability Act. Other factors also continue to have an impact on the organization's capacities, including risk mitigation measures that need to be implemented in information technology security and business continuity planning. The challenge we have to face includes continuing to carry out our mandate with constantly shrinking financial resources while expectations and requirements are growing and some components of our infrastructure are aging or no longer meet our needs. We must therefore find the right balance between the level of activity and the capacity of available human and financial resources. This implies finding even more efficient ways of working, both internally and externally, and continuing to review our processes and practices, products, services and procedures to ensure that our resources are applied in the best possible way to achieve optimum results. For detailed information about our mitigating approaches for this risk, see section 2.6.2.

2.5.2 Maintaining a Knowledgeable and Professional Workforce

The TSB's success and credibility as an organization depend largely on the expertise, professionalism and competence of its employees. Although it has traditionally been stable, the TSB, like many organizations, faces a specific challenge with respect to its workforce. Many positions are "one-deep" - meaning that there is only one person responsible for a specific task or function. Over the next years, the TSB must continue to operate as efficiently as possible while many of its employees and managers retire and the shortage of workers in some operational support areas within the public service will not be remedied. A sustained effort will be required to pursue the implementation of a more systematic planning process for human resources needs, in the short and long terms, to obtain the skills we need and to develop succession plans and training and mentorship programs in order to ensure service delivery and to maintain the TSB's knowledge base and technical expertise.

The results of the 2005 Public Service Employee Survey provided us with an up-to-date assessment of employee satisfaction and concerns. Analysis of the key elements and problems raised showed that an effort will be required to respond to employee concerns in some areas including opportunities for advancement, job classification, career development and opportunity to have input into decisions. Here again, the challenge we face will be to invest resources and efforts to accommodate the concerns of employees and the demands of all our obligations. For detailed information about our mitigating approaches for this risk, see section 2.6.3.

2.5.3 Maintaining an Infrastructure to Meet Information Technology and Physical Asset Needs

As mentioned earlier, the TSB must balance its priorities to carry out its mandate consistently and economically while assuring stakeholder confidence in the integrity of its operations. Maintaining a reliable, sustainable infrastructure that meets our needs with respect to information technology or other asset categories is essential if we wish to reach this objective. The TSB currently has close to 13 million dollars in capital assets. However, a little under half a million dollars per year is expended to replace or acquire new assets, which is not nearly enough. We therefore are making ourselves vulnerable to major risks that could compromise our capacity to meet our needs in the longer term if we do not rapidly take steps to optimize the management of our assets and the resources allocated to them. For detailed information about our mitigating approaches for this risk, see section 2.6.4.

2.5.4 Transitioning the Investigation and Information Management System from the Project Stage to a Work Tool

We have invested substantial time, resources and money to develop an investigation and information management system to better manage our business while meeting government information management and technology requirements. To ensure the system's ongoing viability, we must use it and follow the change process (beyond the initial buy-in period) through the systematic change management approach that is integrated into the Investigation and Information Management System. The sustained participation of investigators in managing change as we move forward will be essential to guarantee compliance with the fundamental principles that are the basis of the system. We will have to encourage efforts to find ways to meet our needs for investigation information using the Investigation and Information Management System, and managers at all levels of the organization will have to discourage the introduction of independent alternatives.

Significant work also still remains to make all the components of the Investigation and Information Management System fully functional. This remaining work will have to be done in parallel with the ongoing maintenance and change management required to ensure that the investigation management module becomes stable, thereby increasing the workload of the system design team and IT staff. Because of the limited number of internal staff dedicated to system design, we will have to hire consultants to supplement the database design and development skills available internally.

Investigators and support staff will also see their workloads increase because they will need to participate in designing and testing other system features. Ongoing expenditures will also be necessary to operate and maintain the new working environment of the Investigation and Information Management System. Not meeting these challenges would have a significant impact on the delivery of products and services given that we have made a conscious decision not to revert to old tools and systems. Partial adoption and use of the Investigation and Information Management System would result in loss of productivity and create inefficiencies in work processes. For detailed information about our mitigating approaches for this risk, see section 2.6.1.

2.5.5 Managing Commitments and External Expectations

Over the past few years, a number of TSB communications initiatives have raised public and stakeholder awareness of the Board and its program. While these initiatives enabled the Board to influence key change agents for the improvement of transportation safety, they also increased the related stakeholder demands (for example, live broadcasts and updated information constantly requested by the media). Given our operating methods and increasingly limited resources, we will continue to ensure that our external communication products and services are available, up to date and of the highest quality in order to retain the levels of integrity and credibility required to fully achieve our mandate. We will also expend more effort to focus our awareness activities on safety issues where it is necessary to obtain results. For detailed information about our mitigating approaches for this risk, see section 2.6.2.

2.6 Departmental Plans and Priorities

The TSB is committed to providing Canadians with advancements in transportation safety through independent, objective and timely investigations and subsequent identification and analysis of safety deficiencies in the federally regulated transportation system.

Based on the risks identified and on input received from managers during their annual conference, five priorities have been identified for 2007-2008. All require strategic investments aimed at enhancing the TSB's contribution to transportation safety in Canada and internationally and strengthening the internal management of the organization. These priorities are described briefly in the following paragraphs.

The TSB will also develop a Business Plan that will describe its 2007-2008 priorities in greater detail. Resources will be allocated to specific initiatives, responsibilities will be clearly defined and timelines will be established. In early April, the TSB Business Plan will be found on this site.

2.6.1 Continuous Improvement of Information Management

In 2006-2007, we deployed a large part of the Investigation and Information Management System, which follows central documentation principles and allows us to collaborate and share information and employ consistent procedures and processes across all modes.

This year, in addition to providing ongoing user support services, we will concentrate on incorporating stronger information management practices into investigation activities. Initially, we will continue our effort to improve links between the Investigation and Information Management System and other TSB systems. The activities we will be undertaking include designing a safety communications tracking system, conducting an analysis to re-design the modal databases into a single database, developing, designing and implementing the "workload management monitoring" and "workload management dashboard" tools, and reassessing the report production module.

To prepare for the implementation of an electronic management system for our files, we will complete the development and implementation of the TSB's updated file classification plans.

2.6.2 Management of Workload and Priorities Within Available Resources

To offset the impact of our shrinking resources over the years and to ensure that we are able to respond to growing public expectations as regards our investigations, taking our workload and priorities into consideration, this year, we will be reviewing/benchmarking the TSB organizational structure to ensure that it is suitable to meet our future challenges. We will also be examining our financial management structure and processes to ensure that they are being used optimally in order to achieve the desired results. This exercise will allow us to examine the cost of each of our activities in detail and to allocate our budget according to the activities that meet our immediate and future business requirements, and will also help us identify opportunities to improve our financial management and processes structure. To support full implementation of the Management, Resources and Results Structure Policy and the review of the government's Expenditure Management System, we will also examine the TSB's program activity architecture, and we will complete development of its performance management framework.

2.6.3 Increased Human Resources Planning to Ensure the Retention of a Professional Workforce

The TSB's credibility and success are based largely on its capacity to build and maintain a professional workforce to ensure continuity in its operations. At the TSB's annual planning meeting in the fall of 2006, the managers highlighted the major human resources issues the organization was facing. Management subsequently committed to making enhanced human resources planning a priority in this fiscal year to be able to recruit the employees it needs to fulfill its mandate, ensure knowledge transfer from experienced employees to new hires, and train and develop the employees already in place. It also expanded the need to carry out human resources planning activities to all TSB managers to be able to plan its human resources needs even more strategically over the next few years, and it set up a special fund to encourage the transfer of knowledge that is deemed essential for carrying out TSB operations.

The TSB will also implement an action plan to remedy the concerns identified by its workforce in the 2005 Public Service Employee Survey.

2.6.4 Review the Sustainability of the TSB Infrastructure

Because of the ongoing erosion of our resources and to maintain our capacity to fulfill our mandate and meet future challenges, this year, we will conduct a detailed analysis of all the assets in our infrastructure (the building that houses our engineering laboratory, furniture, laboratory and computer equipment, software, vehicles). The purpose of the study will be to develop a strategic asset management framework and introduce a capital plan based on the lifecycle of our assets that takes into account the direct and indirect cost of the assets, as well as affordability.

2.6.5 Continuation of Residual 2006-2007 Priority Projects

We will also pursue the initiatives started last year to improve business continuity planning. We will complete and test our continuity plans to guarantee the ongoing availability of TSB services and assets that are essential for fulfilling our mandate for Canadians. These plans will include provisions to ensure business continuity should the TSB be affected by a catastrophic event or in the case of an investigation into a major event falling under our responsibility. We will also establish a permanent governance and review process with respect to our business continuity plans.

Further, we will finish implementing the information technology security standards. We will offer security awareness courses to all employees, update our IT security policies and procedures, and complete threat and risk assessment reports for our network infrastructure, main IT systems and physical installations.

With respect to communications, we will introduce a terminology database for the TSB that all employees will be able to access through a system of gateways for managing TSB information and investigations.

2.7 Performance Measurement

The TSB has developed a balanced scorecard that will be used to measure organizational performance. This scorecard will provide performance information from four different perspectives: financial, client/stakeholder, internal business processes, and learning and growth.

The financial perspective makes linkages between operational and financial results. Financial analysis will be used to evaluate the cost of investigations. Financial results will be benchmarked between modes and with other safety investigation organizations, if possible.

The client/stakeholder perspective will measure the TSB's performance through stakeholder feedback and stakeholder action. First, stakeholder awareness and satisfaction will be measured through formal and informal processes. Then, stakeholder action based on the TSB's work will be measured by tracking responses to TSB recommendations and safety actions taken. Finally, the TSB will continue to measure transportation occurrence rates as an ultimate measure of the achievement of its strategic outcome.

Results from the internal business processes perspective will be measured with the use of productivity ratio analysis and benchmarking of results between modes, as well as with other safety investigation organizations, if possible.

Under the learning and growth perspective, the TSB will measure investments in employee training and critical knowledge transfer as well as employee attrition rates.

It will also measure the achievement of the results expected for the projects that will be undertaken to support its priorities through the performance measures identified for each of them in the Business Plan.

Finally, the TSB will also act on the recommendations that will be made by the Treasury Board Secretariat during its assessment of the management capacity of the Department against the Treasury Board's Management Accountability Framework.

The following table summarizes the key performance indicators included in the scorecard, with appropriate links to the current year's priorities. Additional efforts will be spent this year to review our program architecture and complete the development of our performance management framework so that it meets the requirements outlined by Treasury Board Secretariat in its action plan for the implementation of the Management, Resources and Results Structure Policy.

Perspective	Performance Indicators
Financial	Cost of investigations
	Cost of Business Plan projects
Client/Stakeholder	Stakeholder awareness
	Stakeholder satisfaction (quality and timeliness)
	Responsiveness to TSB recommendations
	Timely safety actions taken per investigation
	Occurrence rates
	Safety outputs issued
Internal Business Processes	Number of investigations in process
	Average time in process
	Posting of investigation reports on website
	Timely posting of other TSB information on the website
	Investigations started and completed per investigator
Learning & Growth	Investment in training per person
	Investment in critical knowledge transfer
	Employee attrition rates (excluding retirement)
	Effective use of partnerships
	Achievement of the results planned for the Business Plan priority projects
	Measures identified to follow-up on the assessment of the TSB performance against the Management Accountability Framework
	Measures taken to follow-up on the results to the 2005 Public Service Employee Survey

 

• Previous Page
• Table of Contents
• Next Page