Annual Report: 2003-2004

Status report on access requests in a deemed-refusal situation

l. BACKGROUND

For several years, a number of institutions were subject to review because of evidence of chronic difficulty in meeting response deadlines. In his 1996-97 Annual Report to Parliament, the former information commissioner reported that delays in responding to access requests had reached crisis proportions.

As a result, the Information Commissioner has adopted the following standard as being the best measure of a department’s compliance with response deadlines: percentage of requests received which end as deemed refusals. Every department reviewed has been assessed against the following grading standard:

2. COMPLIANCE HISTORY

In February 2003, the Office of the Information Commissioner issued a Report Card on Public Works and Government Services Canada’s (PWGSC) compliance with the statutory time requirements of the Access to Information Act. The Report Card contained a number of recommendations on measures that could be taken to reduce the number of requests in a deemed-refusal situation. In the 2003 Report Card, the department received a red alert grade of "F" with a 26.3% request to deemed-refusal ratio for access requests received from April 1 to November 30, 2002. PWGSC’s record slipped further to a ratio of 29.9% for the fiscal year 2002-2003.

This report reviews the progress of PWGSC to come into substantial compliance with the time requirements of the Access to Information Act since the January 2003 Status Report. In addition, it contains information on the status of the recommendations made in that report. PWGSC did a tremendous job in preparing for the ensuing interview, providing a comprehensive report along with statistics responding to all of the issues raised in the previous Report Card.

3. CURRENT STATUS

The department has made considerable improvements in a number of areas. All of these initiatives have led to a substantial turnaround in the deemed-refusal situation over the past year resulting in borderline compliance with the time requirements of the Access to Information Act. The new request to deemed-refusal ratio improved to 14.6% for the period from April 1 to November 30, 2003, for a grade of "C".

While this gives an accurate assessment of the deemed-refusal ratio to requests received within the above-noted reporting period, it does not take into consideration those requests carried over from the previous year, nor the number of requests already in a deemed-refusal status on April 1. To give a true indication of a department’s performance, these figures will be taken into consideration in future reports. However, for this report, the grading resulting from that inclusion is provided for information purposes only. In this instance, the results for April 1 to November 30, 2003, would be 10.6%, a substantial percentage improvement, representing a grade of "C".

There still remain numerous issues that result in PWGSC not being able to attain "ideal compliance" in the deemed-refusal to new request ratio. OPI response times, while not as serious as in past years, are still a contributing factor to the overall delay. The following chart focuses on responses for the current reporting period.

A number of factors have had a positive influence on the improvements achieved so far:

• Full staffing of currently approved manning levels
• More flexible management of resources to better accommodate workload
• Team structure providing better control of workload
• More focus on meeting timelines in dealing with third parties
• Better communications within the department
• Better monitoring of overall process
• Enhanced training
• Introduction of higher-level reports.

To enable these factors to come into play, PWGSC implemented a number of measures with a view to meeting the compliance requirements as recommended in last year’s Report Card. These included a dedicated ATIP Improvement Plan that introduced the following during the 2003-2004 reporting period:

• Weekly timeline reports
• A number of reviews of the ATI program were conducted to determine root causes for the departmental deemed-refusal situation, which identified two primary issues:
  

• Insufficient resources within the ATI program;
• Government-wide shortage of knowledgeable and experienced professionals;
  

A fee waiver policy has been put into effect;

• Enhanced training/briefing sessions for departmental employees and ATIP liaison officers;
  
• Development of an ATIP module in departmental orientation courses for employees.
  

PWGSC’s workload and performance for the past three years is reflected in the follow graphs:

4. FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS AND FURTHER RECOMMENDATIONS

Even with all of the measures implemented so far, there are a number of issues yet to be addressed. The ATIP Directorate has planned additional enhancements and measures for the upcoming fiscal year. These include:

• Further development of quarterly timeline reports
• Improved desk procedures for travel and hospitality expense and contracting requests
• Continue implementing the enhanced training plan for departmental employees
• A new long-term contract is being established as the existing competitive contract is expiring shortly
• Ongoing review of the ATIP Improvement Plan.

4.1 Resources

The current staffing provides for 22 FTEs broken down into four teams headed by a PM-5. Even with the staffing level that was approved for the 2001-2002 fiscal year, a 2003 review has indicated that, with the increasing volume of requests and associated workload, the Directorate is under resourced.

4.2. OPI Retrieval of Records

Although various meetings and information sessions have been conducted over the past years, record retrieval and timely OPI response still appears to be an issue. In that vein, the recommendation made last year remains.

4.3 Compliance Objective

Last year, the Commissioner’s Office recommended that PWGSC set an objective of maintaining a grade of "B" that constitutes substantial compliance with the time requirements of the Access to Information Act. The department, however, was not able to attain that goal but is further encouraged to attain at least substantial compliance with the time requirements of the Access to Information Act for the fiscal year 2004-2005.

5. STATUS OF 2003 RECOMMENDATIONS

In January 2003, recommendations were made to PWGSC on measures to further reduce the number of access requests in a deemed-refusal situation. The action taken on each recommendation is described below, following the text of the recommendation.

Action Taken: A comprehensive ATI Improvement Plan has been developed for not only the reporting period but also the following fiscal year. The tasks, deliverables and milestone are continually monitored and reviewed for applicability as well and completion.

Action Taken: A weekly timeline report has been developed and utilized while a quarterly timeline report for OPIs, ATIP Liaison officers, etc., is currently under review with an early 2004 rollout.

Action Taken: The Director, ATIP, has full delegated authority under the ATI Act. Amendments to the delegation of authorities are being considered at the ministerial level in relation to providing the ATIP Chiefs with limited delegated authority.

Action Taken: No specific action was taken associated with this recommendation; however, the process is constantly under review and, with the updated delegation authority, improvements in response times are anticipated.

Action Taken: With the departmental realignment in November 2003, the approval process was further streamlined to reduce the number of review stages in the process.

Action Taken: An Improvement Plan has been developed for 2003-2004 and 2004-2005, addressing all of the issues identified in the 2003 Report Card.

Action Taken: A comprehensive review was conducted over the past year, with a number of issues having been identified, including insufficient resourcing of the ATI program as well noting a government-wide shortage of knowledgeable and experienced ATIP professionals. Corrective measures resulting from the review have either been introduced or are planned for the near future.

Action Taken: A comprehensive training program has been developed for all levels of employees involved in any capacity in the ATIP process. This includes training and information sessions for OPIs, various management sectors and branches, briefing sessions for ATIP Liaison Officers, and ATIP modules for the employee orientation courses. The module for the Management Orientation course has been in place since fiscal year 2001-2002.

Action Taken: While not fulfilling this objective, considerable improvement has been realized in meeting the target by attaining a level of "C" for this reporting period. The department set a timeline compliance target rate of 80% for fiscal year 2003-2004 and 90% for fiscal year 2004-2005.

Action Taken: The mandatory training has formed part of the departmental management orientation course since fiscal year 2001-2002.

Action Taken: The existing long-term competitive contract provides flexibility in meeting the timeline requirements of the Act, particularly when there are unforeseen influxes of a high volume of requests. The contract will expire in September 2004 and will be replaced with a new long-term competitive contract.

Action Taken: A formal fee policy has been developed and is in effect.

Action Taken: Still under consideration.

EXCERPT FROM DEPUTY MINISTER’S RESPONSE TO STATUS REPORT

"I would like to thank you for the work you have done. Allow me to assure you that we are fully committed to improving our timeliness with respect to responding to Access to Information (ATI) requests, and that steps will be taken to rectify the situation.

Further, decisions taken at a January 2004 Management Committee meeting set a compliance rate of 90 percent for Financial Year 2004-2005 and additional resources have been allocated to the ATIP Directorate. We will also streamline the Delegation of Authorities to include the ATIP Chiefs in the decision-making, increase management accountabilities and reporting activities, as well as enhance the training being given to all employees with respect to the processing of ATI requests.

Please be assured that Public Works and Government Services Canada is continuing its efforts to implement your recommendations and to achieve a substantial compliance rate in Financial Year 2004-2005."