Internal Services: Planned Results

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Description

Internal Services are the services that are provided within a department so that it can meet its corporate obligations and deliver its programs. There are ten categories of internal services:

• 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
• Acquisition Management Services

Planning Highlights

Initiatives under the Department of Justice Canada’s Internal Services program will enable business and legal excellence with a focus on the Department’s workforce and modernization efforts.

Supporting Employees

Employment Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Justice Canada is committed to cultivating diversity, inclusion and a healthy work environment. To fulfil these commitments, the Department will implement measurable initiatives to foster a more representative, respectful, inclusive, accessible and barrier-free workplace to strengthen its workforce. The Justice Employment Equity Plan 2022–2025 serves to outline both ongoing and new commitments and initiatives to be undertaken by Justice Canada to ensure that it has an inclusive, diverse, representative, and productive workforce. Initiatives that will take place in 2023–24 include training for employees, targeted recruitment for equity groups, mentorship and sponsorship to promote career progression, and use of Statistics Canada’s advanced dynamic population projection model to project active labour force data for future-oriented hiring targets. These efforts will ensure that the Department is well equipped to monitor and ultimately achieve the Plan’s objectives. The Department will also identify and implement additional measures to support Black employees, and, more broadly, support a restorative engagement process and actions to further address harassment, discrimination and other barriers in the federal workplace.

The 2021–2024 Anti-Racism and Anti-Discrimination Results Framework and the Employment Equity Plan 2022–25 propose actions that will be key to achieving substantive transformation of the organization’s culture. Both documents focus on raising awareness of anti-racism, equity, diversity and inclusion for all employees and on providing a work environment where members of equity groups feel a sense of belonging so they can contribute and participate fully in the organization.

The 2022–2025 Justice Accessibility Plan aims to eliminate barriers to access for employees and those served by the Department. Justice Canada will implement several initiatives outlined in the 2022–2025 Justice Accessibility Plan, to improve knowledge and awareness and build a culture of accessibility. For example, in 2023–24, Justice Canada will provide accessibility guides and tools to all employees as well as support to those designing services to ensure that accessibility is incorporated from the onset.

Mental Health

The Department will continue to promote a psychologically healthy and safe, respectful, and inclusive workplace by implementing measures to address psychological and physical risks identified in the Workplace Assessment and update the Hazard Prevention Program. The Department will also continue to implement the initiatives within its Mental Health Action Plan to support a healthy work environment and resilient workforce.

Human Resources Management

Justice Canada aims to build capacity for the future in a workplace that is safe, supportive and adaptable through innovative, client-focused solutions. Through its Human Resources Management Strategy 2021–2024, the Department will continue to advance strategic recruitment, development and retention of a diverse and inclusive workforce with the skills and competencies needed to meet current and future business needs and support a healthy and safe workplace.

Justice Canada will also participate in the review of the staffing appointment framework and resulting policies following recent modifications to the Public Service Employment Act to ensure that departmental practices and processes are aligned to further strengthen diversity and inclusion and remove or mitigate potential barriers faced by equity-seeking groups.

Compensation and Phoenix

The Department will continue to implement strategies, in collaboration with the Government of Canada Pay Centre, to minimize employee compensation-related issues resulting from the Phoenix pay system. This will be achieved by providing additional dedicated departmental compensation resources to improve internal processes, including direct one-on-one support and guidance for employees. In addition, Justice Canada will continue to focus on addressing the backlog of pay-related transactions by repatriating additional pay transactions from the Pay Centre, using a new departmental pay file reconciliation tool, and providing managers and employees with critical information on roles and responsibilities and ways to prevent compensation-related issues.

Promoting Innovation and Collaboration

Future of Work

The Department will draw on the new tools and techniques that have been developed during the COVID-19 pandemic to adapt to a new hybrid work model, where both on- and off-site work models co-exist. As Justice Canada adjusts to this new way of working, best practices and lessons learned through this period of experimentation will be shared internally to help modernize how the Department works. These efforts will need to align with the implementation of the National Workplace Accommodations Strategy. Using an iterative approach, the Department’s work in this area will help shape the design and use of Justice Canada workspaces in the future.

Digital and Data Capabilities

Justice Canada is committed to prioritizing digital and data capabilities to support its mandate and better inform legal, policy and program decisions. To achieve this, the Department continues to focus on the user experience in promoting digital information sharing and technology to improve collaboration within the organization, across government, and with external partners, while maintaining rigorous cybersecurity practices. With improved network infrastructure and access to new software and reliable digital platforms, the Department will continue to ensure employees have the necessary tools to support their work. In 2023–24, Justice Canada will build upon the existing Justice Cloud infrastructure advancements and tool deployment to provide secure integrated Cloud services for all Justice employees. The Department will also advance the migration of the Department’s Digital Workspace and Corporate Repositories to the Cloud and roll out the Power Apps platform.

The Department will also make further progress on implementing a strategy to embed data-driven insight and intelligence into decision-making and provide better services to clients and Canadians. This will include actions that ensure stronger internal standards for how data are gathered, stored, processed, and disposed of. Additionally, Justice Canada will develop data-analysis expertise and experiment with artificial intelligence to leverage the data collected to better deliver on the Department’s mandate.

Inclusive and Digital-by-Design Communications with Canadians and Employees

The Department will continue its efforts to provide plain language, accessible, inclusive communications that can be easily understood by Canadians. These efforts inform Canadians about the Minister’s priorities and aim to meet the diverse information needs of the public. The Department will also continue to create visually appealing online content that takes a user-centred approach informed by user experiences, feedback and analysis.

Justice Canada will continue to improve efforts to meet the information and engagement needs of employees through the renewal of its intranet site. Work is ongoing to make the site more accessible for employees across the Department, including those who work in departmental legal services units. The goal is to position the site as the authoritative source and central communications channel for employees for high-level departmental information (priorities, news, and corporate messages), and to provide simplified access to Justice Canada and Government of Canada resources, services, and tools. The renewal project will also include user research and usability testing by departmental stakeholders, including employees. The information gathered will help inform improvements to information architecture, design, accessibility and usability.

Sustainable Development

In support of the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy 2022–26 and the Justice Sustainable Development Strategy (JSDS) 2020–23, the Department will continue to shift to low-carbon, climate-resilient and green government. To improve awareness of greening initiatives at Justice Canada, the Department will host regular outreach activities and training. Additionally, the Department will continue exploring new initiatives, technologies and partnerships to strengthen existing commitments and identify new ones to support greening of services and operations.

Progress made on commitments outlined in the JSDS 2020–23 is tracked and monitored annually through the Departmental Sustainable Development Strategy Report. The JSDS 2023–27, which will be published in November 2023, will build upon the Department’s ongoing efforts to green business practices and will set out actions that contribute to the advancement of Federal Sustainable Development Strategy goals and departmental priorities.

Innovation

Workplace Management

Justice Canada will explore ways to better manage the use of workplace accommodations in implementing the hybrid work model. The Department will experiment with different technologies that allow employees to reserve an on-site workspace, while integrating required health and safety policies and protocols.

Justipedia

Through its official legal knowledge management system, Justipedia, Justice Canada will experiment with tools to help legal professionals be more efficient. Different avenues will be explored to offer, among other things, writing and research assistance as well as automation of data extraction.

In 2023–24, the Department intends to accelerate innovation through new pioneering opportunities. This will include new technologies that automatically generate additional content such as keywords, summaries and newsletters, in order to improve the quality of the departmental data set and search relevancy. Also, a succession planning component is being implemented to enhance legal knowledge management services. Finally, Justice Canada will explore new possibilities offered by the Cloud, such as automatic translation of documents and chatBot assistance.

Artificial Intelligence Solutions

The Department will examine new possibilities available through artificial intelligence and machine learning. Different teams will collaborate to develop solutions that could be used across Justice Canada, such as a translation tool. In 2023–24, Justice Canada will leverage Deep Learning Artificial Intelligence language models to build an automated legal document summarizer. The Department is developing pilot projects focused on court decisions and will adjust the tools based on the results of the projects to produce higher-quality summarization. The Department will release an early beta version of the product in 2023–24.

Key Risks

There is a risk that an increased use of and reliance on technology, driven in part by remote work and digitization, will expose the Department to new cyber threats, losses or disruption through attacks on, or breaches of, technological infrastructure. This risk is heightened by an increased reliance on information technology (IT) infrastructure and the migration to cloud-based IT solutions. Justice Canada continues to mitigate this risk through departmental cybersecurity activities in collaboration with Shared Services Canada, Public Safety Canada, Public Services and Procurement Canada, the Communications Security Establishment and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, and other partners.

Taking into account the changing context in which we work, the Department must also ensure it manages risks related to sustaining a skilled workforce that is representative of the Canadian population. It will also be important to address workload across the Department, which could affect internal capacity to deliver effective and timely services while responding to new priorities. These risks will continue to be addressed through initiatives outlined in the Department’s Human Resources Strategy.

Planning for Contracts Awarded to Indigenous Businesses

Justice Canada will increase procurement with Indigenous businesses through two primary planning strategies. First, major procurements will consider whether an Indigenous set-aside strategy is viable at the procurement planning stage. This approach, where senior management project sponsors must consider Indigenous procurement for major projects, is now included as a step in all procurement proposals that require Project and Procurement Review Board (PPRB)^{Footnote 49} approval. Procurement officers will also consider voluntary set-asides for Indigenous businesses whenever applicable and feasible. Second, the Department will conduct various Indigenous procurement awareness activities for stakeholders involved in procurement processes, including engagement, training, working groups and communiqués. The Department’s contracting team has conducted a series of specific engagement discussions with key internal procurement stakeholders to sensitize, promote and encourage Indigenous procurement within the Department. In addition, Indigenous procurement is regularly reported on to senior management to monitor progress to achieve the minimum 5% target.

The table below lists the forecasted Indigenous procurement value for 2022–23 and 2023–24. The forecasted percentage is based on monthly Indigenous procurement reports for 2022–23 and historical procurement data, in conjunction with potential planned Indigenous procurement files for 2023–24. Note that contracts may be signed with Indigenous businesses that are not registered in the Indigenous Business Directory, which may result in an underestimation of the business provided to Indigenous companies.

In 2023–24, the Department will continue to conduct various procurement processes and activities in an effort to increase Indigenous procurement volume and awareness at the departmental level. For example, the PPRB will continue its oversight of Indigenous procurement considerations on major procurement files. Furthermore, the Contracting Division’s Indigenous Procurement Working Group will provide guidance and best practices on Indigenous procurement. Monthly Indigenous procurement reports will continually monitor progress toward the Department’s Indigenous procurement target.

Planned Budgetary Spending for Internal Services

The following table shows, for Internal Services, budgetary spending for 2023–24, as well as planned spending for that year and for each of the next two fiscal years.

N.B.: Financial resources for planned spending are based on Main Estimates and are net of respendable revenues. These exclude any funding to be received through Budget 2023.

Planned Human Resources for Internal Services

The following table shows, in full-time equivalents, the human resources the Department will need to carry out its internal services for 2023–24 and for each of the next two fiscal years.

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