Domains

The Treasury Board approves new shared systems clusters and may also declare a "domain" fully mature and thus restrict departments from acquiring or developing a new application for the domain (this has only been done for financial systems to date).

The TBS functional policy centres are responsible for developing policies for Treasury Board approval and leadership on horizontal issues across government. The functional domains of TBS are partners in the development of strategic plans for the Shared Systems Initiative. They consider the impact of central policies and guidelines on departments' ability to deliver programs and are called upon to balance mandatory adherence to central direction with flexibility to permit departments to effectively and efficiently deliver services to Canadians.

Functional heads within TBS provide active leadership within their respective functional domains, including communicating and planning policy changes with all affected clusters. They review business plans developed by the Clusters, within their respective domains.

Comptrollership domain

The Comptrollership Branch of TBS is the policy centre responsible for financial management, materiel and asset management, real property, budgetary and planning functions among others.  The Branch provides domain leadership for shared systems in finance, materiel management, salary management, and real property.

Financial Management Systems cover a broad range of accounting, budgeting, financial control and management reporting functions. Typically, the comprehensive systems used for department-wide financial management include functionality for accounts payable, commitment control, appropriation control, accounts receivable, revenue accounting, and interfaces with Receiver General systems and a variety of other functions and interfaces.

Salary Management is a function that provides a bridge between the financial, human resource and payroll systems in government. Some financial systems provide some capability to support management of salary budgets, expenses and forecasts. A number of departments use a shared salary management system as a bridge among the financial, human resources and compensation systems.

Materiel Management functionality is integrated with some of the comprehensive financial systems provided by commercial suppliers. In addition, one approved materiel management system provides this functionality for a group of departments.

A small number of custodial departments have been working with TBS on the development of a real property Cluster.

Human Resources domain

Three clusters exist in the human resources systems. A significant number of departments do not yet participate in them for a variety of reasons. The approved cluster groups are Human Resources Management System (HRMS - PeopleSoft), Human Resources Information System (HRIS) and Human Resources Management Information System (HRMIS).

Information Management domain

The information management domain covers records, documents and the management of information.

Future Development Opportunities

The goal of reducing the number of administrative systems in use across government has been realised to a significant degree in some domains. Functional areas in Finance, Materiel, Real Property, Human Resource and Information Management are at different stages of maturity in terms of clustering. As a result there are opportunities to improve the operation of existing clusters, create new clusters in less mature domains as well as to bring non-cluster members into the fold.

With the emergence of key government-wide initiatives such as GOL, there may be a need to re-examine what is the optimal mix of systems to support GOL. This could result in a rationalisation of the number of endorsed systems.

Modernization initiatives already underway include:

• E-Human Resources -  on-line staffing advertisements, applications. Also opportunity to provide employee information at the desktop e.g. leave, personal information, benefits information, pension etc. Several studies are underway to develop an e-HR strategy for government. Several new initiatives to begin May, 2001.
  
• E-Procurement - an opportunity to adopt integrated end-to-end procurement solutions. PWGSC is conducting a pilot to develop an electronic supply chain. There are 3-4 participating departments at present.
  
• Travel Modernization - an opportunity to adopt integrated end-to-end solutions for travel (including electronic authorization and bookings, mandatory use of credit cards and integration of expense settlement and payment systems). Under the direction of an interdepartmental ADM level Steering Committee, a number of interdepartmental working groups were established to review and develop recommendations for both short-term and long-term changes to the travel policy, processes and systems. The short-term improvements and the concept of the longer term end-to-end travel solution were developed in consultation with departments and agencies across government, through the ADM Steering Committee, TBSAC, the National Joint Council Travel Committee, and a series of interdepartmental working groups. Work is continuing.

Contacts

Please feel free to contact the respective domain lead for more information.