The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
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Public Service Commission joint Advisory Committee Report

22 NOV 2017

The Public Service Joint Advisory Committee (PSCJAC) met on 7 NOV 2017. Due to a heavily laden management agenda, the report from the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) on the PSCJAC survey was handled in the round table and at a separate teleconference which is being scheduled to discuss next steps in the communication of the New Direction in Staffing (NDS) Public Service Commission (PSC) initiative to our members. I will report back to the Advisory Council and Board of Directors once the teleconference meeting has taken place on the PSC response to the survey questions data we provided from the Advisory Council (AC).

The PSC presented NDS scenarios for Human Resources Advisors and/or sub-delegated managers illustrating various staffing-related decisions to encourage managers to explore reasonable approaches to achieving their business objectives. The PSC provided direction for questions on these situations or others to the newly established Staffing Support Advisors (SSA).

The PSC presented a pilot for Position Specific Assessment for Second Language Oral Proficiency. The pilot is intended to respond in part to the objectives of NDS and exploring potential new flexibilities and efficiencies in second language evaluation. This is in an effort to have a positive impact on staff who evaluate these proficiencies. The presentation was limited to management concerns and potential risks involved in evaluation processes.

I reminded the committee that the members of the Institute members who have engaged in staffing activities have not been afforded the opportunity to take full time language training, which in my experience is available to managers and supervisors.

This has resulted in our members being screened out or simply not being qualified to apply for advancement solely based on Official Language requirements in the staffing notice.

I further pointed out that there is a “gap” in training due to the previous federal governments’ cuts to Official Language (OL) training. The department offers an online training for OL but the staffing activities are asking for a higher level proficiency that cannot be achieved online. This situation has now resulted in a lack of qualified people applying for senior level positions that possess the technical requirement but cannot apply due the OL requirements and that departments are not investing in opportunities to participate in full time instructor-lead training.

I explained that this issue has been one of the items discussed with Members of Parliament during the recent Institute “Lobby Day”. So we are hopeful that new direction will be forthcoming from PSC to departments on OL to correct this gap and discriminating practice of using second language training to screen applicants.

PSC provided another presentation on Modernizing the Investigation Function. The topic is and presentation is an attempt to address staffing irregularities as understood by the Commission.

As the PSC understands it the following are concerns:

•     Mostly errors at the beginning (eg. Global assessment)

•     Fraud/ Improper conduct (2008 – 2010)

•     Increased number of cases of cheating such as copy-paste and plagiarism (2011 – 2012) due to greater use of unsupervised assessments, and departments referred more cases as a result of PSC outreach activities.

•     External Review Pane Report on the PSC Investigations Function (2013) underlined the need to reserve findings of fraud for the most egregious irregularities

•     Federal Court decisions such as Seck (Nov. 2012) and Ligonde(Dec. 2015) provided more clarity on fraud and the “required intention to commit fraud” in the context of the federal public service staffing system

The presentation provided scenarios and the approach to resolve them based on the old system and the new approach.

Emphasis on resolution/correction on the following definition of irregularities:

•    Error/Omission, Improper conduct and fraud

There was little in the way of addressing irregularities save for two bullet points on the approach and the implementation o of a communication strategy as methods of preventing fraud.

Personally, I believe that the departments are now going to have to develop their own approach, policies and practices to address these concerns since the PSC has adopted the NDS strategy.

I encourage Consultation Team Presidents to place the issue of co-development of staffing including pools, practices and processes on their National agenda. It is my hope that the departments who have had very limited training on the NDS will be looking for our ideas, suggestions and experience to address this serious lack of a coordination of staffing in the public service.

Glenn Maxwell

Advisory Council Director