Internal Services: planned results

Description

Internal Services are those groups of related activities and resources that the federal government considers to be services in support of Programs and/or required to meet corporate obligations of an organization. Internal Services refers to the activities and resources of the 10 distinct services that support Program delivery in the organization, regardless of the Internal Services delivery model in a department. These services are:

• Management and Oversight Services;
• Communications Services;
• Legal Services;
• Human Resources Management Services;
• Financial Management Services;
• Information Management Services;
• Information Technology Services;
• Real Property Management Services;
• Materiel Management Services; and
• Acquisition Management Services.

Planning highlights

Management and Oversight Services

Departmental Litigation Oversight

The recently implemented Departmental Litigation Oversight (DLO) capability provides a structured, persistent and deliberate approach to the management of the entire lifecycle of litigation for complex, multi-organizational litigation cases. In FY 2021-22, the DLO will focus on ensuring compliance in all aspects of the July 2019 final settlement agreement for the CAF-DND Sexual Misconduct Class Action lawsuit, enabling holistic coordination and reporting of the many lines of effort across the department. This includes the ongoing support to the administration of the claims period, which closes in November 2021, required for the department to meet legal and moral obligations related to these and other settlement agreement orders and to appropriately manage associated risks.

National Defence Act

The report of the third independent review of the National Defence Act is to be tabled in Parliament by the statutory deadline of June 2021. Mandated by Section 273.601 of the National Defence Act, these reviews pertain to military justice, military grievances, the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal, and the Military Police Complaints Commission and facilitate the continuing evolution of the military justice system, ensuring it is rigorously scrutinized and refined at regular intervals. Initiated in late 2020, the third independent review may, as with the past two reviews, result in significant legislative, regulatory, and/or policy changes.

Review Services

In order to advance corporate priorities and fulfill Core Responsibilities, independent evaluations, audits and investigations will continue to be conducted within the department to provide assurance on efficiency, effectiveness and economy of operations.

The Defence Ethics Programme will focus its efforts on working with internal stakeholders to further realize better coordinated approaches to education, culture renewal and increased coherence on strategic reform initiatives.

Defence Security Program

The department will continue to champion efforts to identify security risks through the execution of the DND Security Program, enabling DND/CAF to make evidence-based security risk decisions that support the execution of the Defence Services Program. Key focus areas for FY 2021-22 include:

• The implementation of innovative and modern business practices to improve the Defence Security Program, including but not limited to the business continuity management lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic; and
• The delivery of timely and efficient-security clearance processing in support of operations.

Communicating with Canadians

• DND/CAF use multiple formats and channels – digital and traditional – to communicate and engage with Canadians about the work the Defence Team is doing on their behalf. Openness and transparency are essential to increasing public understanding of Canada's defence priorities, issues, and challenges. Clear and accurate information helps to show how investments in Canada's defence not only keep the country secure, but also create jobs and generate economic growth in our communities.
• In FY 2021-22, communications efforts will continue to focus on the Defence Team's role in protecting Canada, defending North America in partnership with the United States, and supporting global peace and stability. The Defence Team's commitment to investing in the health and wellness of our people, and the equipment they need to serve Canada, will be reinforced in both internal and external communications activities.
• Engagement with media and stakeholders is a critical part of helping Canadians to better understand the role of DND/CAF. We will also continue to apply Gender-based analysis plus (GBA+) perspectives to meet the information needs of audiences that have not routinely been engaged in the past, inspire qualified applicants to join the CAF, and strengthen diversity and inclusion across the Defence Team.

Legal Services

In FY 2021-22, the Judge Advocate General will continue to provide legal advice and services. The strategic intent is to advance the modernization of the military justice system through a series of initiatives, work which will continue throughout FY 2021-22, and will include:

• Support the independent review of aspects of the National Defence Act, and the Government of Canada response, to be tabled before Parliament in June 2021; and
• Continue to progress the Government of Canada response to the Auditor General's 2018 report on the administration of justice in the CAF through the ongoing development of the Justice Administration and Information Management System, a real-time centralized military justice workflow-management and data-collection system which will facilitate the administration of military justice.

Develop the regulations required to implement An Act to amend the National Defence Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts (the Act), formerly Bill C-77. The Act, which received Royal Assent on June 21, 2019, strengthens the military justice system by aligning it more closely with the civilian criminal justice system, while respecting the unique requirements of the military. Certain provisions of the Act came into force upon royal assent. The remaining provisions of the Act, including a Declaration of Victims' Rights and changes to the summary hearing system, will come into force once necessary amendments to the Queen's Regulations and Orders for the Canadian Forces are completed.

Civilian Human Resources Management

The focus for FY 2021-22 will be ensuring that employee experience is front of mind and supported through sound people management and the civilian Human Resources (HR) business model. In the COVID-19 context, ensuring the safety, health, and wellness of our people is at the core of our agenda. COVID-19 has emphasized the importance of a sufficiently agile, responsive, and resilient civilian workforce to respond to future uncertainties and ensure the Defence Team including the CAF is supported. Providing services to support our workforce in these unprecedented times is crucial to ensure continuity in the services that the civilian workforce provides. Identifying the future civilian workforce requirements of the Defence Team and developing strategies to achieve the workforce needed to deliver on SSE will be critical to the department's success.

Civilian HR will continue to modernize its tools and processes through digital HR initiatives and through the increased use of data and analytics, which will enable better, smarter, faster HR and alleviate HR administrative burdens to create the space for good people management. Our civilian employees and military managers of civilians will have increased access to direct HR support that provides excellent user experience and solutions that are tailored to their specific needs.

Employee experience will be monitored through the Public Service Employee Survey as will the performance of employee-centric programs including the Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, the expansion of the Office of Disability Management and a new outcomes-based approach to labour relations. Looking forward, we will increase the understanding of DND's future of work through interactive workforce analytics, HR business intelligence and future thinking for informed workforce insights and decision-making.

In FY 2021-22 the department will build off progress already made, and will continue to reduce the backlog of pay cases, with the ultimate objective of ensuring timely and accurate pay. To achieve this, DND's compensation team will design, develop and implement personalized client centric services to support employees and managers. The service design philosophy will be to put the client first, build trust, and provide excellent services that lead to positive pay outcomes.

Events have brought systemic racism and discrimination to the fore across the world and the Defence Team recognizes the urgent need to examine and identify actions to address and eliminate racism, hateful conduct and discrimination. Diversity and inclusion is a long-standing priority at DND and Civilian HR will continue to partner with supporting stakeholders to review and adjust current HR policies and processes to identify barriers and systemic discrimination, apply GBA+ to all new HR policies, develop resources and tools for employees and managers, and promote cultural awareness, racism, discrimination, and harassment-related learning opportunities for civilian employees.

The coming into force of Bill C-65 and the changes to the definition of violence and harassment necessitate a consistent and comprehensive workplace harassment and violence program. Civilian HR is the focal point to provide these services for the civilian members of the Defence Team, including prevention (policy, training), response (formal recourse), support (i.e. employee assistance programs), and improved reporting and monitoring. Civilian HR will partner with other CAF initiatives, such as Operation HONOUR and Hateful Conduct, to continue to support the Defence Team in creating and maintaining a workplace free of harassment and violence.

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Financial Management and Planning

DND/CAF approach to financial stewardship is underpinned by Strong, Secure, Engaged: Canada's Defence Policy (SSE), which made significant strides in improving the financial transparency, oversight, and accountability of the defence budget and Defence's commitment to deliver results that meet the expectations of Canadians. The approach to financial management and planning in DND/CAF is to be a transformative leader in financial practices and to modernize the business of Defence. In FY 2021-22, the DND/CAF financial community will continue to provide oversight for the implementation of SSE through the ongoing sound stewardship of resources.

To achieve Canada's defence needs at home and abroad, and to succeed in a complex and unpredictable security environment, defence funding must be affordable, achievable, and informed by rigorous evidence-based costing analysis that accurately and effectively measures the resources required to make critical investments that can deliver on our longer-term defence and security priorities. The Financial Planning and Forecasting tool continues to provide valuable insight and analysis to Defence Team. The accuracy of our data is critical to high-performance costing and forecasting that delivers results and supports the DND/CAF with capabilities and capacities that are able to meet our real-time challenges, threats, and opportunities. Well-supported planning and guidance will continue to be developed to meet the changing nature of conflict, new emerging threats, and keep pace with evolving technology.

Information Management

The department will continue to support the Government of Canada's information and data management priorities that are included in the Treasury Board's Policy on Service and Digital, as well as continue to support the Treasury Board's Directive on Open Government. Pursuant to evolving policy direction, emergent technologies and recent implementation of Defence 365 to support a remote workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic, the department will be conducting Defence 365 Proof of Concept to explore how the solution could be leveraged to mature information management throughout DND/CAF.

In parallel, the department will be initiating a multi-year renewal of DND’s Enterprise Information Architecture, in collaboration with Library and Archives Canada, to better support and facilitate electronic recordkeeping. 

Information Technology

DND will continue to modernize its Enterprise Resource Management systems to support the department’s transition to evidence-based decision-making to mature data architecture and management. The systems are used to capture DND’s business information related to finance, human resources, materiel and real property to inform decision-making and produce reports. Substantial effort and resources will be applied to its financial and materiel system of record based on SAP technology to modernize its business; improve its reporting, business intelligence and analytics capabilities; and maintain alignment with the Government of Canada enterprise financial management system.

DND will continue to evolve an Enterprise Architecture assessment capacity for new digital investments. These assessments will be performed on select projects to help establish alignment with important design principles. As part of this effort, DND will also incorporate Government of Canada principles to ensure adherence to Government of Canada policy. DND will leverage the Enterprise Architecture to make more efficient and effective solution design decisions to respond to departmental requirements.

Service Management

In order to advance and meet the requirements of the Policy on Service and Digital, the Department will continue to evolve our client-centric service design and delivery for external facing services to Canadians. We will look for ways to continue to incorporate client feedback mechanisms, mature our end-to-end online services, evolve our service standards, and provide snapshots of departmental services and related data through our service inventory.

Data Management

DND/CAF will continue to prioritize electronic data management and analytics throughout the department in order to implement Defence Policy initiatives. In FY 2021-22, we will:

• Build our capacity for enterprise-wide data management, following the direction of the new Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) Policy on Service and Digital, and in accordance with the DND/CAF Data Strategy;
• Implement our data governance framework, which sets out authorities and processes for making decisions about how data are captured, stored, used and disposed of;
• Develop processes and infrastructure to enable us to connect data across the Defence enterprise, with other national agencies, and with our allies and partners;
• Foster a culture that recognizes the value of data as an asset, build data literacy and develop skills at appropriate levels throughout the Defence Team; and
• Leverage data management and data-driven innovation to mature reporting of real-time performance information for service standards, in accordance with TBS direction and guidance.

Defence Enterprise Modernization

The department will work to update core policies and processes and to take advantage of the rapid evolution of information management that is providing the modern tools needed for success, specifically with respect to modernizing the business of Defence. In FY 2021-22, we will build the capacity for Defence Enterprise Modernization, which will:

• Tackle large-scale transformation projects that update and improve business processes and policies across the Defence enterprise, taking advantage of comprehensive software upgrades to improve business processes and information flows;
• Improve the results of (and reporting on) the Defence Policy initiatives that require improved data sharing and increased integration;
• Increase business resource management efficiency and consistency;
• Contribute to future force development;
• Increase trust and reliability of data and information; and
• Enable a modern workforce and workplace.

Experimentation

In FY 2021-22, the department will continue to evolve data maturity and deliver on proofs of concept related to internal business process challenges through the launch of a new data lab capability and digital modernization initiatives which will provide an experimentation environment for predictive analysis, cloud-computing and other data science and data engineering solutions.

As part of our commitment to Beyond2020, we will work with the private sector to experiment with digital platforms designed to solicit ideas from amongst our workforce, and provide a means for tracking and managing ideas to see continued innovation and modernization.

Additionally, we will continue investigating and testing further analytic enhancements, automation and mobile technology to better support the Defence Team through optimized HR service delivery.

Additional defence-related experimentation activities are outlined in this report under Core Responsibility 4 – Future Force Design.

Key Corporate Risk(s)

Information Technology Management – There is a risk that DND/CAF may have difficulty maintaining its information technology capabilities at the right level to support operations.

The risk above can affect the department's ability to achieve the Departmental Results of the Internal Services Core Responsibility.

As the Defence Departmental Results Framework reflects a chain of delivery from conceiving of the required armed forces, to developing them and then executing operations, the activities to mitigate the risks of the Internal Services Core Responsibility can also be found in other Core Responsibilities which deliver building blocks that enable the results Internal Services.

Planned budgetary financial resources

2021–22 budgetary spending (as indicated in Main Estimates)	2021–22 planned spending	2022–23 planned spending	2023–24 planned spending
744,630,785	744,630,785	761,153,272	781,495,899

Planned human resources

2021–22 planned full-time equivalents	2022–23 planned full-time equivalents	2023–24 planned full-time equivalents
4,470	4,456	4,436

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