Commissioner’s Message
When I took on the role of Information Commissioner in 2018, one of my priorities was to address the backlog of complaints I had inherited. In order to reduce this inventory, my team realized that we would need to increase the number of complaints the OIC was able to close annually. I therefore instituted a continuous improvement approach to our investigations, introducing a series of new practices and innovations aimed at streamlining and speeding up internal processes. In the first few years of my mandate the establishment of a registry, the creation of portfolios and other such innovations resulted in a year-over-year increases in the number of complaints investigated.
In 2020, we went a step further. In the OIC’s strategic plan, we identified innovating and transforming our operations as one of the three strategic pillars by which we would achieve our vision, deliver on our mission, and live out our values. Under this pillar of the strategic plan, we re-committed ourselves to working collaboratively with all stakeholders, leveraging expertise, innovative tools and streamlined processes to ensure continuous improvement, and building a proactive change management culture, thereby ensuring that these areas of focus would be at the heart of our operations going forward.
In order to fully evaluate the impact of our improvements on the overall effectiveness of our operations, I launched a multi-phase evaluation of the Investigations Program in 2021. During the first phase, the OIC’s registry function was evaluated, while the 2022 Evaluation of the Investigations Program was conducted from the perspective of institutions and senior investigations officers.
The Complainant Consultation regarding the Office of the Information Commissioner’s Investigations Program completed last year is the final component of this evaluation. This Management response to the consultation report attests to my ongoing commitment to the continuous improvement ethos I introduced at the OIC when I first arrived. It also speaks to my team’s ongoing commitment to the OIC’s core values of respect, collaboration, transparency, accountability, and credibility. While the OIC has no control over the volume complaints it receives nor the complexity of the investigations required, thanks to my team’s efforts, we continue to optimize our operations in order to uphold the right of access for Canadians.