Session 5 – Budget Reforms and

the Economic crisis

Canada’s Experience:

Strengthening Expenditure Decision-

Making through Better Metrics

Presentation by:

Brian Pagan, Assistant Secretary

Expenditure Management Sector

Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

36th Annual Meeting of OECD Senior Budget Officials

Rome, Italy

Friday, June 12, 2015

Purpose

2

To provide an overview of Canada’s approach

for strengthening government management

through metrics and analytics on cost and

performance

3

The Government has controlled

departmental spending …

Budget 2015 – Budget Plan, p. 338:

http://www.budget.gc.ca/2015/docs/plan/budget2015-eng.pdf

4

And returned to budgetary balance …

Budget 2015 – Budget Plan, p. 339:

http://www.budget.gc.ca/2015/docs/plan/budget2015-eng.pdf

But more comprehensive tools are required

5

$0

$50

$100

$150

$200

$250

$300

2009-10 2010-11 2011-12 2012-13 2013-14

Bill

ion

s

Supplementary Estimates (A, B and C)

Main Estimates

Statutory

$245.9B $238.5B $238.8B $239.1B $231.4B

Distribution of program spending by source of spending authority,

2009-2014

Scrutinized by TB

No direct TB scrutiny

No ongoing scrutiny by TB

Diagnostique of Current Status

• Despite major spending restraint efforts, total

operating expenses remain a pressure

• Need to progress towards more strategic perspective

on departmental performance in support of Budget

Office deliberations on resource allocation, re-

allocation and Government management

6

The Vision: Reinforcing Sound Stewardship

through Relevant and Comparable

Information

7

Leveraging and creating usable, comparable

information to support sound decision-making based

on benchmarks, advanced costing methods, and

performance metrics

Decision-makers will have access to cost and

performance benchmarks, and horizontal

information on similar programs

Step 1- Standardized Metrics

8

Standardized metrics

Outcome

Efficiency Service Standards

Government Programs

Departmental programs, including:

Service-oriented

programs

Programs that administer grants and

contributions

Internal Services

Initial focus on Internal Services, Citizen Services, and programs that

administer financial grants and contributions

Assess metrics

standardization

Step 2- Metrics and Analytics for

Major Program Types

9

Standardization

Compare the performance of like-programs or organizations by:

* Performance ‘heat maps’

* Cross-cutting analyses

* Clustering

* Benchmarking to best performers within government, and beyond government

Step 3- Systematic Use of Metrics

10

Upfront Discipline: Inform

decisions on new

spending

Improve program design and

implementation

Periodically assess spending against priorities

Performance

Information

Budget Office supported by more robust information on

performance of departmental programs

Key messages

11

• Expectations for efficient and effective government are

here to stay, it is not merely a short-term response to

the economic crisis

• Canada is building on work to date, driving

improvements in the quality, accessibility, and

usefulness of performance and costing data

information … for managers, for government-wide

oversight and restraint exercises, and for citizens

• We are keen to leverage best practices in other

jurisdictions

Annex: Treasury Board of Canada

Secretariat ‘InfoBase’

12 http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/ems-sgd/edb-bdd/index-eng.html#start