Evaluation of the Canada
Business Service Centres
National Secretariat
April 1999

Summary

This report was prepared for the Evaluation Study Steering Committee by the Management Consulting Centre and Consulting and Audit Canada.

Background

The National Secretariat was established to provide on-going support for the network of Canada Business Service Centres (CBSCs), which provide federal, provincial and private sector business information to Canadian business people. The National Secretariat has been operational since 1994, and acts on behalf of the four federal Managing Partners – Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions (CED), Industry Canada (IC) and Western Economic Diversification (WD). The services it provides to the twelve CBSCs, the Managing Partners and other members of the network fall into five broad categories: information products; technical support; marketing/advocacy; secretariat support and operational policy development; and strategic planning, reporting and long-term policy development.

Purpose of the Study

This is the first evaluation of the National Secretariat. The objectives of the evaluation are:

• to determine if it makes sense for the National Secretariat to continue delivering its services;



• to determine which National Secretariat services are key and to identify potential improvements;



• to measure the impacts and effects of the National Secretariat services; and



• to assess what progress the National Secretariat has made towards achieving its objectives and to identify potential barriers.

Note that the scope of the evaluation was restricted to the role the National Secretariat plays within the CBSC initiative; it does not examine the rationale of the CBSC initiative itself.

Main Findings

• Overall, the National Secretariat's clients are very pleased with the services they obtain from the National Secretariat. They feel the National Secretariat has made a valuable contribution to the CBSC initiative, especially by ensuring that Centres operate as a national network.



• The information products and the technical infrastructure developed and coordinated by the National Secretariat are vital to the operation of the Centres.



• Treasury Board cites the CBSC as an example of an innovative and improved service delivery.



• The demand for services and the efficiencies achieved for the network indicate that the National Secretariat should continue to provide these services.



• All the services provided were identified as key, and satisfaction with the services and personnel is high.



• Suggestions were made on how to improve the services, but many of these were enhancements and few common problems were identified.



• The National Secretariat’s objectives continue to be relevant.



• The National Secretariat has achieved its objectives that deal with operating as a national network, providing core information products and a technical infrastructure.



• Some improvement can still be made in the objective of acting as the federal government's source of managerial information, especially reporting on the status of the network.



• More work remains to be done with respect to creating an awareness of and support for the CBSC network among the partners.

Some areas of concern were identified as follows:

• Informing partners of the benefits of participation was consistently identified by managers as an area where the National Secretariat could be doing more.



• An area where many suggestions were made to enhance services currently offered is that of communications.

Recommendations

The Report identifies three recommendations that could further benefit the CBSC's initiative: formalizing roles and responsibilities; marketing, and communications.

1. Formalizing roles and responsibilities

One issue which sparked a lot of interest and divergent views was whether the authority granted to the National Secretariat, on behalf of the Managing Partners, is sufficient to achieve the National Secretariat objectives. Personnel from the Managing Partners and the Centres acknowledged that the National Secretariat did a good job of balancing the interests of the partners involved in the initiative. However, the evaluation detected inconsistent views of the roles and responsibilities of the National Secretariat and the Managing Partners, and some operational areas (such as the collection of statistics) where increasing the authority to the National Secretariat could provide important benefits to the CBSC network.

It is recommended that the National Secretariat and Managing Partners clarify their respective roles and responsibilities.

It is recommended that the National Secretariat and Managing Partners take a closer look at whether there are some operational areas over which the National Secretariat could be given more authority, such as the collection of statistics or where clearly defined Federal policy exists.

2. Marketing

Centres and Managing Partners identified a need for more marketing activities, especially to partners. The current funding of National Secretariat marketing activities does not provide much room to increase the level of activities. Centres and Managing Partners also feel a national marketing strategy would help them coordinate their activities with those of the National Secretariat.

It is recommended that the National Secretariat should have a stronger role in national marketing to partner departments, coordinated with enhanced regional activities and that the role should be adequately resourced.

A national marketing strategy should include a schedule of national organizations targeted to receive national status reports from National Secretariat, a clear commitment to continue supporting national initiatives relevant to the CBSC network and suggestions on how the strategy can be adapted to regional and provincial needs. There is an expectation that providing partners with national status reports will be very beneficial to the CBSC network. In order to ensure that these reports are available and reliable it is important that the National Secretariat, the Managing Partners and the Centres continue to support the Client Service System.

3. Communications

Many suggestions were made to enhance communications. The National Secretariat is doing an excellent job of ensuring that the Centres operate as a national network, however, specific problem areas were identified that would benefit from increased communications.

It is recommended that the National Secretariat continue to strengthen communications within the network by: providing Centres with a communications schedule for the roll-out of a project; providing Centres with sufficient time to consult with their partners; and, seeking opportunities to provide National Secretariat staff with front-line experience at Centres.

Management Action Taken (November 2000)

Action steps were discussed at a Managing Partners Committee meeting held in Halifax on July 22, 1999. Representatives from ACOA, WD, CED, IC and the National Secretariat were in attendance and several action steps were identified.

1. To strengthen the roles and responsibilities of the National Secretariat and the federal lead departments, a committee of Directors General was formalized creating a forum for more frequent and regular discussion on operational policies and strategic plans. This committee has met regularly in the last year.



2. It was agreed that effort to improve CBSC statistics was required and that the National Secretariat should play a stronger role in statistics and performance reporting, particularly in enforcing definitions and consistency, and developing national and regional reports, as well as the annual report. To date, the National Secretariat has accomplished the following:



• redesign of the National Statistics Reporting System in 2000-2001. The new system is used as the single consistent source of management information and performance reporting statistics by each of the four federal lead departments (ACOA, WD, CED and IC).



• the National Secretariat has increased its organizational capacity to address performance reporting.


3. It was also agreed that the National Secretariat should have a stronger role in national marketing to partner departments. It was recognized that marketing would have to be selective and focused on the most significant partner departments and initiatives. There was also strong support for providing partners with feedback and developing an annual CBSC report in 1999-2000, particularly an electronic version published on the Web. The National Secretariat has done the following:



• developed the new CBSC Annual Report which will provide more comprehensive information on the CBSCs as a single, national initiative to supplement existing reporting. This joint annual report will improve the communication of CBSC results to the 36 federal departments and agencies on whose behalf the CBSCs deliver this information service. The first report covers 1999-2000 and will be available on the Web in December 2000 at: http://www.canadabusiness.ca/annual_report/index.cfm.



• other examples of national marketing initiatives include:



• new partnerships are being developed with Service Canada and Government-on-line (GOL) initiatives;
• CBSCs were included in the booklet "Government of Canada Services for You" distributed to 11.1 million households by the Canada Information Office.


4. Internal communications between the National Secretariat and the CBSCs on projects will be strengthened through improvements to project management approaches, particularly in the area of information management (new products) and technology (applications and systems changes). The implementation of the pilot project "Talk to Us" is a good example of improved project communication, involving the four pilot sites in regular conference calls and updates.

Adobe Acrobat Version (PDF - 150KB - 39 pages)

Note: to read the PDF version, you need Adobe Acrobat Reader on your system. If the Adobe download site is not accessible to you, you can download Acrobat Reader from an accessible page. If the accessibility of PDF is a concern, you can have the file converted to HTML or ASCII text by using one of the access services provide by Adobe.