Report Finds Private Sector Increasing Canadians’ Expectations for Quicker Government Service
The private sector has raised Canadians’ expectations of faster, better service in the federal government, according to a Department of Employment report.
Managers said while the private sector “evolved rapidly” through advancing technologies, the department currently struggles with months-long backlogs for handing out government benefits.
“As a result clients increasingly expect the delivery of government services to keep pace,” the report says. “This means making services digital, easy to access, available at any time and accompanied by timely assistance. Modernizing services for Canadians has become a Government of Canada priority over the past two decades.”
The report reviewed the effectiveness of a $75.3 million program launched in 2016 to speed up the processing of pension claims, as it previously had a “service standard” of up to four months to process some claims. The report says there was “insufficient data” to determine if processes to decrease manual work were impacting turnaround times for making decisions or issuing payments to clients.
“There was insufficient data to determine if the implementation of workload management improvements affected the backlog,” it adds.
New applications for benefits like Old Age Security number more than 60,000 a week, according to official estimates. The department, in a separate Sept. 29 briefing, said processing was so slow it accumulated a backlog of 1.2 million pension claims last year.
Benefits claims are processed through Service Canada, an agency that was established in 2005 to process applications for Old Age Security and the Canada Pension Plan. Since then, the number of Service Canada offices has grown from 317 to more than 600 across the country.
Repeated initiatives “pertaining to the improvement of client service, performance and results” were uneven, the report said. The auditors cited staff turnover and “significant pressure” with growing volumes of claims.
The processing of 6.6 million Canada Pension Plan claims alone cost more than $244 million for the 2020-21 fiscal year, according to the report. The department cited an unexpected 50 percent increase in “online application volume” in addition to callers and walk-in claimants.
