CRA Annual Report to Parliament 2011-2012 (PDF - Agence du ...

[board’s priorities
and accomplishments
for 2011-2012]
As the CRA entered a period of significant change, the
Board provided real-time strategic advice and input on
key CRA and government–wide initiatives, while ensuring
that management remained focused on core business and
service commitments.
Against this backdrop, the Board closely monitored the
following challenges:
the need for the CRA to remain focused on its core
business and maintain a sustainable tax and
benefit system in the current environment;
the sustainability and responsiveness of
information technology mission-critical systems
and infrastructure to ensure they remain secure
and reliable, and respond to the increased
expectations of Canadians; and
the need to attract and retain the knowledgeable,
engaged, and mobilized workforce required to
preserve the trust of taxpayers and deliver core
business operations.
The following pages briefly describe some of the Board’s
accomplishments for each of its five general areas of
oversight:
administration of the CRA;
organization of the CRA;
management of resources;
management of services; and
management of personnel.
The Board continues to oversee its own governance
practices.
[administration
of the CRA]
CRA strategy and strategic planning – In the last few
budgets, the Government of Canada has committed to
ANNUAL REPORT
2011-2012
CANADA REVENUE AGENCY
reduce government spending while providing quality,
responsive, and transparent services to citizens. In doing
so, it introduced a number of initiatives such as
government–wide spending reviews and the creation of
Shared Services Canada.
The CRA exemplified leadership and foresight in its
response to the Government’s spending reviews. Well
before being asked to provide spending reduction
proposals, the CRA had already started work to define its
vision for 2020. A CRA-wide planning exercise called “CRA
Vision 2020” was designed to lay out the future direction
for the CRA and to engage employees in the
transformation agenda that would keep the CRA in step
with government priorities, technology, and changing
citizen expectations. Vision 2020 was instrumental to the
CRA in its ability to take a transformative approach to
spending reduction proposals by modernizing service
delivery, focusing compliance activities to where they add
the most value, and maximizing productivity. In this
respect, the Board provided guidance and insight on CRA’s
long term vision and on the development of its Corporate
Business Plan for 2012-2013 to 2014-2015.
Furthermore, given the Board oversight responsibilities
over the management of CRA resources, assets, and
personnel, and because information technology is an
integral part of the CRA’s capacity to effectively and
efficiently deliver its programs, in 2011-2012, the Board
undertook work to review the impacts, opportunities, and
risks associated with the transfer of CRA infrastructure
services to Shared Services Canada. In collaboration with
senior management, the Board was able to balance the
best interests of the CRA with those of the Government of
Canada. The Board worked with CRA management to help
secure a mutually acceptable operating protocol with
Shared Services Canada that would ensure stability during
the transition and contribute to a strong and trust–based
operating model between the two organizations.
Management oversight – An important tool the Board
uses to assess CRA’s management performance is the
Board of Management Oversight Framework (BoMOF).
Over time, the framework has evolved in concert with
management best practices. This past year, the Board and
CRA management collaborated in moving the framework
to a risk-based assessment approach. Doing so allowed