Evaluation of the Legislative Reform Initiative - Summary
About the initiative
In November 2014, the Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Accountability Act came into force, which introduced significant reforms to the RCMP Act, with the objective of enhancing the RCMP's responsibility to the Canadian public, and to ensuring a safe, healthy and respectful workplace for employees.
What we examined
The evaluation assessed the extent to which the Legislative Reform Initiative (LRI) modernized human resources management processes in the areas of conduct, investigation and resolution of harassment complaints, and the handling of grievances and appeals between November 2014 and December 2017. Multiple lines of evidence were analyzed to support the findings and recommendations of the report.
What we found
The evaluation found the LRI reforms provided new accountabilities, authorities and responsibilities, which increased flexibility in the administration and management of processes. The new conduct measures allowed for more flexibility in managing conduct and harassment cases, which allowed decision makers a greater range of options to impose. For grievances and appeals, authorities were enhanced to allow for greater flexibility in matters such as how hearings would proceed.
Policies and processes were established and practices were put in place to ensure consistent application. Policy instruments were developed to provide clarity and direction. National policy centres were established to provide support, service standards were developed, and training was provided.
The majority of cases related to conduct, harassment, and grievances and appeals were completed in a timely manner. However, evidence suggests improvements could be made. It was determined that, on average, cases were completed within a one-year timeframe.
While service standards were established for each policy area, not all policy areas collected data to measure progress against each standard.
Although a national electronic case management system was created, the evaluation found that policy area personnel were unable to utilize the system as their sole database, resulting in manual tracking and verification of data in spreadsheets. Despite these limitations, data was collected and used to inform decision making.
Finally, the evaluation found that funding was sufficient for the implementation of the LRI, but was unable to determine if the funding for the ongoing administration of the LRI was considered sufficient due to lack of performance information.
What we recommend
Based on the findings of the evaluation, the following three recommendations were made:
- Review and improve the approach to the tracking, collection and reporting of data and performance information to support decision-making, including addressing data input and system limitations.
- Review processing challenges in each policy area and implement measures to enhance the timeliness of processing files.
- Assess resource requirements for the ongoing administration of the conduct, harassment, and grievances and appeals process.
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