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Planning, Reporting and Accountability Structure

Planning, Reporting and Accountability Structure -- TSB

Section I: Introduction

Chairman's Overview

The Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board, usually known by its applied title of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB), was established as an independent Departmental Corporation in March 1990. The agency is concerned with the analysis of safety failures in the federally regulated elements of the marine, rail, commodity pipeline, and air transportation systems. Creation of the TSB eliminated the conflict of interest that existed when government bodies regulated or operated transportation activities and also investigated the failures associated with their own regulations and operations.

The TSB is comprised of up to five Board Members which includes the Chairperson. The Board Members are Governor- in- Council appointees and their functions and duties are enunciated in the enabling legislation. The distinction between the duties of staff and Board Members is also stated in the Act.

The TSB has one business line, the advancement of transportation safety, and two service lines, Investigations and Corporate Services. This framework comprises the TSB's strategic objectives, key results and measurement strategies. It takes into account the requirement to maintain its independence from the regulators and the industry while meeting its obligation to assume accountability for its voted funds.

The continued refinement of the Board's Occurrence Classification Policy will be key to achieve productivity gains to enhance the quality and timeliness of investigations and the identification of safety deficiencies.

Benoît Bouchard

Section II: Departmental Overview

Mandate

Under its legislation, the TSB's only object is the advancement of transportation safety. The end purpose of the Board's investigations is accident prevention. The Board seeks to identify safety deficiencies shown by transportation occurrences and to make recommendations designed to eliminate or reduce those safety deficiencies. The TSB has the exclusive authority to make findings as to causes and contributing factors when it investigates a transportation occurrence. In addition to investigations and, if necessary, public inquiries into individual occurrences, the Board may conduct studies of matters compromising transportation safety.

Mission and Strategic Objectives

The object of the Board is to advance transportation safety. It does this by :

• conducting independent investigations and, if necessary, public inquiries into transportation occurrences in order to make findings as to their causes and contributing factors;



• reporting publicly on its investigations and public inquiries and on the findings in relation thereto;



• identifying safety deficiencies as evidenced by transportation occurrences;



• making recommendations designed to eliminate or reduce any such safety deficiencies; and



• initiating and conducting special studies and special investigations on matters pertaining to safety in transportation.

Section III: Business Line

As noted in section one, the TSB has one business line which is the advancement of transportation safety and two service lines, Investigations and Corporate Services.

Objective

The objective is to advance transportation safety by conducting independent investigations of transportation occurrences, by identifying safety deficiencies and by reporting publicly on its findings and recommendations. The Board bases it decision to investigate on its Occurrence Classification Policy. With over 4,000 occurrences reported each year, the Board's prime criterion for deciding to investigate is whether or not an investigation is likely to lead to a reduction in risk to persons, property or the environment

Description

The TSB provides services to Canadians in general and to various identifiable groups such as manufacturers, owners, operators and regulators within the transportation system through the following service lines: Investigations and Corporate Services

1. Investigations

Conducts independent investigations into transportation occurrences involving ship, railway, commodity pipeline and aircraft operations and reports publicly on its findings and any safety deficiencies that it has identified including recommendations based on its findings.

2. Corporate Services

Provides the TSB with support in the areas of human resources, finance, administration, informatics, policy and planning and secretariat services to the Board.

Key Results

The TSB is one of many organizations who have safety of the transportation system as an objective. It is the only one however whose sole purpose is the advancement of transportation safety. The key result is the elimination of identified safety deficiencies.

Concomitant to this, is the ability for any person or organization to have readily available access to pertinent safety information so that they can also contribute to the attainment of the first result.

Another outcome would be that risk to persons, property or the environment would be reduced through the use by governments and industry of independent, credible and timely investigations findings.

The Canadian public is confident that transportation accidents are being investigated by an independent, credible agency.

Finally in its own internal management processes, the TSB must ensure that standards for internal service levels are established and measured.

How the TSB will measure its performance in the attainment of these results is still in development and will continuously have to be revised over the years as it gains experience with the tools available. Some of the elements of the strategy would be:

• Periodic ( every two or three years) surveys of various stakeholders to obtain their views on how well the TSB is achieving its espoused objectives.



• Safety actions taken during and following investigations will be tracked as will the extent to which Board recommendations are implemented.



• The number of hits to the TSB web site will be tracked as well as who is accessing the material and the areas of particular interest. The numbers of requests for transportation safety data, occurrence reports and other material received informally or through the Access to Information and Privacy Acts will also be tracked.



• Corporate Services will be measured against published standards and client satisfaction with the levels of service.

Given that the TSB is small agency with only one business line the Chairperson is accountable for the delivery of the key results although other executives will be held accountable for results of the service lines.

Linkages Between Business Line/ Service Lines and Key Results

Appendix

Resources Allocated to Business Line

1997-98 Budget $ (000)

Total Transportation Safety Board of Canada

22107