Ottawa pilots ‘name-blind’ recruitment to reduce ‘unconscious bias’ in hiring

2017/04/24 Leave a comment

This pilot will provide some real world data to the existing blind cv studies that have been conducted by Oreopoulos and Reitz.

Wisely, the government has chosen to pilot this in a number of departments with different representation challenges, as shown in the table below:

As the government has largely met the goal of being representative of the population it serves, implicit bias may be less of a factor in the government sector. Representation is somewhat less at more senior levels, where implicit bias is likely less of an issue given that candidates are known.

It would be ironic indeed if the pilot, intended to test for bias against visible minorities, would show a bias for visible minorities, given some of the “over-representation” in some departments. In any case, a valuable exercise.

Ottawa has launched a pilot project to reduce biases in the hiring of federal civil services through what is billed “name-blind” recruitment, a practice long urged by employment equity advocates.

The Liberal government’s move came on the heels of a joint study by University of Toronto and Ryerson University earlier this year that found job candidates with Asian names and Canadian qualifications are less likely to be called for interviews than counterparts with Anglo-Canadian names even if they have a better education.

“It’s not just an issue of concern for me but for a lot of people. A number of people have conducted research in Canada, the U.K., Australia and the U.S. that showed there is a subliminal bias in people reading too much into names,” said Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen, who first delivered the idea to Parliament last year as a rookie MP from Toronto.

“Name-blind recruitment could help ensure the public service reflects the people it serves by helping to reduce unconscious bias in the hiring process.”

Some companies in the private sector, including banks and accounting firms, have already adopted the practice, which removes names from application forms in order to stop “unconscious bias” against potential recruits from minority backgrounds.

In the United Kingdom, the government now requires name-blind applications for university admissions service and other applications for organizations such as the civil service, British Broadcasting Company and local government.

U of T sociology professor Jeffrey Reitz said the initiative is an important step forward but cautioned officials they must consult independent experts in developing the process and reviewing the results to make sure it is done correctly.

To conduct name-blind screening, he said, recruiters must remove any information on a resumé that would reveal the ethnicity of the person, such as name, birth place and membership in an association before coding the candidates in the talent pool.

“If the government is serious about it, they need to make the process transparent and allow researchers to look at the new procedures and the results,” said Reitz, a co-author of the Canadian study on name discrimination against Asians.

Debbie Douglas of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants said she hopes the pilot could benefit other minority groups, given studies have shown that white English- and French-speaking able-bodied women have been the primary beneficiaries of current employment equity programs.

“We hope as the government moves proactively to ensure diversity in hiring it will review the existing program and strengthen it to ensure the intentional inclusion of racialized and indigenous job seekers,” said Douglas.

Treasury Board President Scott Brison, who championed Hussen’s initial idea, said he welcomed the opportunity to explore new ways of recruiting talent for the public service.

“A person’s name should never be a barrier to employment. Diversity and inclusion in the workplace is critical to building an energized, innovative and effective public service that is better able to meet the demands of an ever-changing world,” said Brison at the launch of the pilot at Ryerson Thursday.

The six departments participating in the pilot include Department of National Defence; Global Affairs Canada; Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada; Public Services and Procurement Canada; Environment and Climate Change Canada; and the Treasury Board Secretariat. A report on the pilot is expected in October.

Using data from a recent large-scale Canadian employment study that examined interview callback rates for resumés with Asian and Anglo names, U of T and Ryerson researchers found Asian-named applicants consistently received fewer calls regardless of the size of the companies involved.

Although a master’s degree can improve Asian candidates’ chances of being called, it does not close the gap and their prospects don’t even measure up to those of Anglo applicants with undergraduate qualifications.

Compared to applicants with Anglos names, Asian-named applicants with all-Canadian qualifications had 20.1 per cent fewer calls from organizations with 500 or more employees, and 39.4 per cent and 37.1 per cent fewer calls, respectively, from medium-sized and small employers.

Source: Ottawa pilots ‘name-blind’ recruitment to reduce ‘unconscious bias’ in hiring | Toronto Star

Filed under Government, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , , ,

This is the Jeff Bezos playbook for preventing Amazon’s demise – Recode

2017/04/15 Leave a comment

Lots of interesting insights into Bezos’ thinking.

The one I found the most interesting, given my government background, was on the need for quick decision-making and related implications (impossible in government context given risk concerns but nevertheless helpful as a prompt to think more deeply about government processes):

High-Velocity Decision Making

Day 2 companies make high-quality decisions, but they make high-quality decisions slowly. To keep the energy and dynamism of Day 1, you have to somehow make high-quality, high-velocity decisions. Easy for start-ups and very challenging for large organizations. The senior team at Amazon is determined to keep our decision-making velocity high. Speed matters in business – plus a high-velocity decision-making environment is more fun too. We don’t know all the answers, but here are some thoughts.

First, never use a one-size-fits-all decision-making process. Many decisions are reversible, two-way doors. Those decisions can use a light-weight process. For those, so what if you’re wrong? I wrote about this in more detail in last year’s letter.

Second, most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow. Plus, either way, you need to be good at quickly recognizing and correcting bad decisions. If you’re good at course correcting, being wrong may be less costly than you think, whereas being slow is going to be expensive for sure.

Third, use the phrase “disagree and commit.” This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?” By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes.

This isn’t one way. If you’re the boss, you should do this too. I disagree and commit all the time. We recently greenlit a particular Amazon Studios original. I told the team my view: debatable whether it would be interesting enough, complicated to produce, the business terms aren’t that good, and we have lots of other opportunities. They had a completely different opinion and wanted to go ahead. I wrote back right away with “I disagree and commit and hope it becomes the most watched thing we’ve ever made.” Consider how much slower this decision cycle would have been if the team had actually had to convince me rather than simply get my commitment.

Note what this example is not: it’s not me thinking to myself “well, these guys are wrong and missing the point, but this isn’t worth me chasing.” It’s a genuine disagreement of opinion, a candid expression of my view, a chance for the team to weigh my view, and a quick, sincere commitment to go their way. And given that this team has already brought home 11 Emmys, 6 Golden Globes, and 3 Oscars, I’m just glad they let me in the room at all!

Fourth, recognize true misalignment issues early and escalate them immediately. Sometimes teams have different objectives and fundamentally different views. They are not aligned. No amount of discussion, no number of meetings will resolve that deep misalignment. Without escalation, the default dispute resolution mechanism for this scenario is exhaustion. Whoever has more stamina carries the decision.

I’ve seen many examples of sincere misalignment at Amazon over the years. When we decided to invite third-party sellers to compete directly against us on our own product detail pages – that was a big one. Many smart, well-intentioned Amazonians were simply not at all aligned with the direction. The big decision set up hundreds of smaller decisions, many of which needed to be escalated to the senior team.

“You’ve worn me down” is an awful decision-making process. It’s slow and de-energizing. Go for quick escalation instead – it’s better.

So, have you settled only for decision quality, or are you mindful of decision velocity too? Are the world’s trends tailwinds for you? Are you falling prey to proxies, or do they serve you? And most important of all, are you delighting customers? We can have the scope and capabilities of a large company and the spirit and heart of a small one. But we have to choose it.

Source: This is the Jeff Bezos playbook for preventing Amazon’s demise – Recode

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

Liberal bill would automatically increase user fees for federal services by rate of inflation

2017/04/13 Leave a comment

This kind of fundamental legislation should not be part of an omnibus bill but needs to be debated separately. As I have written before (The impact of citizenship fees on naturalization – Policy Options), CIC/IRCC obtained an exemption from the User Fees Act for citizenship fees in Budget 2013.

This allowed the department to raise fees twice in one year with minimal consultation and arguably misleading Parliament both with respect to the impact of the exemption (i.e., fee increases would not lead to a decline in applications) and that the second increase (from $300 to $530) was not mentioned during the C-24 hearings in either the House or Senate:

The Liberal government has introduced a bill that would significantly increase the fees that Canadians pay for a variety of federal services, such as campsites, fishing licences and passports.

In an omnibus budget bill brought forward Tuesday, the government proposes a new Service Fees Act that would automatically hike hundreds of fees by the level of inflation each year.

The move would also make it much easier for departments to apply for fee increases to better match the cost of providing services to individual Canadians and businesses. The proposed law is slated to come into effect April 1 next year.

The federal government collected about $2 billion in various fees in 2014-15, the latest year for which figures are available, but estimates it cost $3.4 billion to provide those services — resulting in a massive shortfall of $1.4 billion.

FedBudget 20170322

Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s last budget only hinted at the significant changes in user fees being contemplated. Over the four years, starting April 1, 2018, the government expects to collect $364 million in additional fees. (Justin Tang/Canadian Press)

The measure was briefly mentioned in last month’s budget document, which estimated aggregate fee revenues would increase by $36 million in 2018-2019, and by $147 million in extra revenues by 2021-2022.

The measure does not target specific fees. Rather, it replaces 13-year-old legislation that effectively froze fees by making it too onerous for departments to apply for increases as costs rose.

Federal officials estimate only about 20 per cent of all federal fees are captured by the User Fees Act of 2004. But the new legislation would capture almost all fees, and would require government to report in detail to Parliament each year on the amounts collected versus the cost of providing services.

Opposition critics have called the measure a tax grab, which can especially hurt low-income Canadians.

But a spokesman for Treasury Board President Scott Brison, who is shepherding the new user-fee regime, says the bill would relieve taxpayers of the unfair burden of paying for services enjoyed by individuals and corporations, while it also increases transparency.

Exempts some fees

“The government is always looking for ways to minimize costs for taxpayers and making the fee system transparent,” said Bruce Cheadle.

“We want to give everyone equal access to high-quality government services and we’re going to ensure middle-class Canadians aren’t disproportionately footing the bill for this.”

The new bill exempts some fees from the new regime, including fees under the Food and Drugs Act and some fees considered too small to be material.

The government also suggests that some costs, such as those related to food safety, will not always be fully charged back to users because there is a public good also attached to some government services.

CBC News first reported on the government’s plans in February, citing an internal briefing note for Brison that argued fees have been largely frozen since 2004 as departments shied away from the complex regulatory process of arguing for increases.

The briefing note from August 2016 said 84 per cent of existing user fees have not changed in 13 years, and cover a diminishing fraction of the actual cost of delivering the services.

Despite the fresh measures to increase fees, Brison last year eliminated all retrieval, processing and reproduction fees under the Access to Information Act. And this year, Parks Canada is waiving entry fees for its national parks and historic site to celebrate Canada’s 150th anniversary.

Source: Liberal bill would automatically increase user fees for federal services by rate of inflation – Politics – CBC News

Filed under Citizenship, Government Tagged with , ,

Samara’s 2017 Democracy 360 Second Report Card on How Canadians Communicate, Participate and Lead in Politics – Visible Minority Methodology Issues

2017/04/11 Leave a comment

While I have great respect for the work Samara does and continues to do, as exemplified in their latest report, I would be remiss in not pointing out some serious methodological mistakes made with respect to visible minority representation.

Their diversity numbers:

While our current Cabinet was selected to be more reflective of the Canadian population, Parliament generally, with 74% men, still has a long way to go. Women represent half of Canada’s population, but they are only 26% of its MPs. Visible minorities are better represented—they make up 17% of MPs and 19% of the population. Indigenous MPs make up 3% of the House and 4% of the population. In terms of representation of the youngest cohort of voters Canadians, representation has lost ground since 2015. Only 4% of MPs in the 41st Parliament are aged 18 to 30, a cohort that comprises 17% of the Canadian population.

The two mistakes are:

  • Using the wrong baseline for visible minority representation. Samara uses the overall population of visible minorities (19 percent) rather than the correct baseline of 15 percent, those visible minorities who are also Canadian citizens and thus able to vote. This is the second time that this incorrect baseline has been used and should be corrected for future reports; and,
  • Their count of the number of visible minority MPs is wrong. The correct count is 47, not the 53 indicated in the chart below.

The corrected numbers show visible minorities forming 14 percent of the House of Commons (2015 election), compared to 15 percent of the visible minority voting population. A good result.

Samara and I have shared our respective data sets and discussed these concerns and they have been forthcoming on the reasons for the discrepancies. Their count of visible minorities included some Indigenous MPs and Alexandra Mendès (but not Pablo Rodriguez) and they used the overall visible minority population to be consistent with their earlier report.

For future reports, my main recommendations:

  • for women, foreign-born and Indigenous MPs, use the authoritative parlinfo biographical information which would avoid mis-categorization of Indigenous as visible minority MPs;
  • use existing analysis rather than re-inventing the wheel. Erin Tolley, Kai Chan and I all came up with the 47 number (Erin and I compared notes to ensure that neither of us missed anything, Kai did his work independently; and,
  • use the population of visible minorities who are also Canadian citizens as the baseline, not the total visible minority population.

Their numbers for foreign-born, women and Indigenous MPs are correct, taken from the parl.gc.ca site (however the graphics are not – 40 versus the correct figure of 41 foreign-born, 81 versus 88 women, 9 versus 11 Indigenous peoples).

Source: 2017 Democracy 360

Filed under Government, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Byelection results: Tories hold Calgary seats, Liberals keep Ottawa, Montreal, Markham: Increase in diversity

2017/04/05 Leave a comment

These results further increase diversity: four women elected, all replacing men, one visible minority elected, replacing a non-visible minority man.

Overall totals: 92 (up from 88) women or 27 percent, 48 visible minorities (up from 47) or 14 percent.

Source: Byelection results: Tories hold Calgary seats, Liberals keep Ottawa, Montreal, Markham – Politics – CBC News

Filed under gender, Government, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

John Ivison: Uber is unlovable, but the federal Liberals were wrong to bash them with a tax

2017/04/01 Leave a comment

I don’t understand the logic behind Uber being exempt from the HST. The HST is paid by taxis, Uber’s closest competitor, and innovation should not mean an exemption from paying for government services. Uber drivers access medicare and other public services and thus should not be undermining funding for these same services.

Paying HST would not change the fundamentals behind technological disruption, just ensure a more level playing field.

Personally, I was insulted by Uber’s request that I email my MP in support of their position. Instead, I emailed her stating my opposition to Uber’s position:

Travis Kalanick, Uber’s co-founder, has spoken about his desire to eventually move to self-driving cars for Uber vehicles.

Children born in 2017 might never need to learn to drive. As a discussion paper authored by the University of California’s Adam Stocker and Sura Shaheen pointed out recently, automated vehicles and shared mobility applications will have become accepted technology by 2030 and may come to dominate ground transportation by 2050, revolutionizing the car industry in the same way that mobile phones have transformed the telecom industry. This will take millions and millions of cars off the road.

Instead of penalizing Uber drivers and customers, a more sensible way of levelling the playing field with the taxi industry would have been to remove the exceptional circumstance under which all drivers are obliged to pay sales tax if they earn less than $30,000.

If the Liberal government is as keen to innovate as it claims to be, it should reverse the direction of public policy and encourage private transportation companies like Uber and its competitor, Lyft.

Uber has some maturing to do when it comes to the way it treats its employees, its customers and its competitors. But its dynamic pricing, ride-sharing technology is here to stay and it will change global transportation systems for the better. Ottawa should be onside.

Source: John Ivison: Uber is unlovable, but the federal Liberals were wrong to bash them with a tax | National Post

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

Trudeau government’s vacant appointments backlog up 80%

2017/03/30 Leave a comment

Good follow-up story and valid concern regarding the large number of vacancies.

But nice to see that PCO is now tracking more systematically the diversity of appointments and improving representation (of the more than 100 appointments to date, 62 per cent women, 15 per cent visible minorities, 10 per cent Indigenous Canadians):

Five months after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government assured Canadians that its new system would soon fix the backlog of appointments that need to be filled, the problem has gotten much worse.

An analysis by CBC News reveals that one in three governor in council positions — ranging from directors of government agencies to members of tribunals that hear appeals of employment insurance or pension disputes — is currently vacant or occupied by an appointee whose term is past its expiry date.

When CBC first looked at the question in October 2016, 19.6 per cent of the governor in council positions were vacant or past their expiry date.

That number is currently at 35 per cent, although it will drop slightly next week when several appointments to the Immigration and Refugee Board made by cabinet earlier this month take effect.

The backlog in October of more than 300 appointments has now swelled to 572. Of the 515 positions, 354 are vacant. Another 161 are occupied by an appointee, often one named by the previous Conservative government, whose appointment is past its expiry date. However, they are allowed to remain until they are replaced or renewed.

The positions range from lucrative full-time jobs with six-figure salaries to part-time positions that pay per diems and expenses.

There are also 57 vacancies for federally appointed judges, down slightly from the 61 vacancies in October 2016 that prompted concerns about growing backlogs in criminal trials.

In several cases, positions are being filled on a temporary basis because the government was not able to fill them before the incumbent’s term was set to expire. Among them are half of the officers of Parliament — the conflict of interest and ethics commissioner, the commissioner of lobbying and the official languages commissioner, while the chief electoral officer’s position is listed as vacant.

Former prime minister Stephen Harper’s government went on an appointment spree in the weeks leading up to the 2015 election, filling not only most of the positions that were vacant but also making 49 “future appointments” of individuals whose terms weren’t due to be renewed until well after the election.

In October, the government said that the initial backlog was caused in part by the decision to overhaul the appointments process and bring in a more open and balanced merit-based system.

It said that system was up and running, Canadians were applying for the positions and vacancies were being filled.

Five months later, the government said it has received more than 11,000 applications for vacant appointments and more than 100 selection processes are currently underway.

“The more rigorous approach to conducting selection processes represents a significant volume of work,” said Raymond Rivet, spokesman for the Privy Council Office.

Rivet said that since the government launched its new appointments process it has made more than 100 appointments.

“Of this number, 62 per cent have been women, 15 per cent visible minorities, 10 per cent Indigenous Canadians and 50 per cent identify as fully or functionally bilingual.”

However, Conservative MP Tony Clement, former president of the Treasury Board, said the growing backlog of vacant appointments is affecting service to Canadians.

“This clearly a case where these appointments, which are necessary for the proper functioning of government — there could be issues involving people getting their appropriate EI, for instance, or their appropriate pension — are not being processed because of the lack of these appointments.”

Clement blamed the backlog on Trudeau’s director of appointments, Mary Ng, who announced Feb. 15 that she was taking a leave from her job to seek the Liberal nomination in the Toronto-area riding of Markham-Thornhill. The riding became vacant after Trudeau appointed former immigration minister John McCallum as Canada’s ambassador to China.

“It’s very disappointing,” said Clement. “The person in charge of this process is now the Liberal candidate in Markham, and obviously she was spending too much time campaigning for herself and not enough time making recommendations to the prime minister on appointments.”

Source: Trudeau government’s vacant appointments backlog up 80% – Politics – CBC News

Filed under gender, Government, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Judge shortage causing unnecessary legal trauma: MacKay

2017/03/29 Leave a comment

While MacKay is right to criticize the government for its delay in appointing judges, his assertion that under the Conservative government ‘s, “We appointed a judiciary that represented “the face of Canada,” a diverse bench predicated and built on inclusion of all races, creeds, and genders in the legal community across Canada” is false as shown in my 2016 analysis: Diversity among federal and provincial judges – Policy Options).

In contrast, appointments to date of the current government show a marked increase: 57.4 percent women, 6.4 percent for each of visible minorities and Indigenous peoples.

The federal government has a fundamental responsibility to appoint a sufficient complement of judges such that our courts can function properly. Its failure in that regard creates a constitutional crisis that goes to the very rule of law that underpins our justice system.

A lack of judicial appointments in the context of increasing pressure to conduct timely trials equals a systemic miscarriage of justice. With caseloads where they are, the system is at its breaking point.

Add to this difficult dynamic the recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling in the R v Jordan decision, which mandates criminal trials must be heard within 18 months for the so-called lower courts, and 30 months for the Superior ones. Absent compelling circumstances, “delinquent” prosecution equals administrative dismissal.

Due to this artificial prescription dozens of cases have been tossed, including murder and sex assault cases. No trial. No verdict. Worse still, the victims and their families are left without recourse or remediation and no one is accountable. Not fully appreciated as yet, this jarring situation stands to worsen due to the arbitrary deadline, which provides no consideration for the seriousness of the offence.

Against this backdrop we note inertia from the federal government on the appointment of judges to hear these languishing cases. Canadians face an alarming scenario of serious violent charges being vacated due to the acute shortage of judges. “Justice delayed is justice denied” is a maxim never more appropriately invoked than now.

As minister of justice (2013-15) I oversaw the appointment of more than 230 judges; prior to that my government prioritized hundreds more. We appointed a judiciary that represented “the face of Canada,” a diverse bench predicated and built on inclusion of all races, creeds, and genders in the legal community across Canada.

Vacancies on the federally appointed bench is at an all-time high. Sixty-two empty seats of the 840 federally appointed judges, against 14 (the lowest in decades) when my government left office. In June 2015, we appointed a record 22 women: over 60 per cent of the judges appointed on that occasion. We appointed more judges on one day (43) than the current government has in 16 months in office.

Source: Judge shortage causing unnecessary legal trauma: MacKay | Toronto Star

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

Liberals urged to scrap 19th century rule that requires laws be printed in books

2017/03/21 Leave a comment

Although I, like most people, never consult these hard copies, I think it these are important to have as an official and archival record.

As for the specifications, these can and should be updated, but again any new specifications should be archival quality:

An obscure statute dating from Confederation has Parliament frozen in time, forcing the government to print every new law on old-fashioned paper.

Bureaucrats want to ditch those rules, end the costly printing and make digital versions the new standard — but the Liberal government has yet to decide whether to break with tradition.

At issue is the Publication of Statutes Act, conceived in the 19th century, which requires the Queen’s Printer to publish new laws passed by Parliament in an annual compendium that must be printed on quality paper.

The legislation has never been overhauled. Although Justice Canada publishes the laws online as well, the digital versions aren’t considered official.

Each year, the Queen’s Printer — now part of Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) — must print and distribute about 250 hardcover copies of the annual statutes, destined for a select group of judges, legal libraries and other locations.

The total cost is estimated at about $100,000, including $40,000 worth of printing and distribution through a private firm.

The format is meticulously spelled out in a regulation that helps keep printing costs high:

“The annual Statutes of Canada shall be printed on Number 1 Opaque Litho Book according to Canadian Government Specifications Board Standard 9-GP-29, Grade 2, Type 1, (except moisture content) or equivalent in white colour, English finish, and the basic weight shall be 100 pounds per 1,000 sheets 25 inches by 38 inches.”

The detailed specifications continue for three more paragraphs.

Deputy minister makes the case

Last May, a senior official at PSPC pressed the new minister, Judy Foote, to fix the problem, according to a briefing note obtained by CBC News.

“The requirement to print the Annual Statutes predates modern electronic communications (some provisions have not been amended since the 19th century) and does not foster the timely and efficient access to federal legislation for Canadians,” deputy minister Marie Lemay said.

Lemay called for the repeal of the regulation, and amendments to the Publication of Statutes Act and other laws to haul Parliament into the digital era. The process would require formal notices, legal drafting and the backing of Parliament, and would take months.

But Foote’s spokesperson said rookie members of Parliament need to be updated on the issue before the government decides whether to scrap the printing requirement.

Regulations governing the printing of Statutes of Canada

A regulation spells out in minute detail just how the annual Statutes of Canada are to appear in book form. (CBC)

“As the Annual Statutes contain important information for elected members and many MPs are in their first term, Minister Foote, in consultation with the deputy minister, has determined that the department will formally consult with MPs and senators before making any changes to the delivery format,” press secretary Jessica Turner said in an email.

But Lemay had specifically cautioned against delay in her briefing note last spring.

“It is important to proceed … as soon as possible,” she wrote. “On January 1, 2016, Justice Canada changed the layout of its laws and regulations. They are now incompatible with the format of the Annual Statutes as required.”

“Consequently, it will be impossible to print the 2016 Statutes.”

Source: Liberals urged to scrap 19th century rule that requires laws be printed in books – Politics – CBC News

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

Statscan can’t afford for data access to play favourites

2017/03/13 Leave a comment

Former Chief Statistician Wayne Smith’s critique of Shared Services Canada may have some merit as this example illustrates:

There were some curious and intriguing details behind the headlines of Statistics Canada’s monthly employment report, as there always are. It’s a serious shame – and a serious problem – that almost no one could see them.

Again.

The national statistical agency’s website was out of commission since early Friday morning, before the 8:30 a.m. ET release of the February labour force survey. As of late afternoon, Statscan’s website remained dark; the details of one of the most important economic indicators of its monthly calendar were invisible to the Canadian public all day.

(By the way, the report showed that the Canadian economy added an estimated 15,000 net new jobs in February, a bit better than economists had expected, and the unemployment rate dropped to 6.6 per cent, matching an eight-year low.)

You might recall that something like this happened before, about eight months ago, when Statscan’s systems were down for more than seven hours on another jobs-report Friday. Not to mention the many, many occasions that Statscan’s website has fizzled out for much briefer periods shortly after the release of major economic indicators, during moments of peak traffic scrambling for the fresh data.

At the time of this writing, we don’t know what the problem was with Friday’s system failure. Neither Statscan nor Shared Services Canada, the agency that oversees e-mail, data and network services across the vast breadth of the federal public service, got back to us with an explanation. Certainly past snafus have been placed at the feet of Shared Services, the $1.9-billion brainchild of the previous Conservative government that was supposed to streamline Ottawa’s complex tangle of information technology, but has instead been blamed for everything from AWOL paycheques to RCMP systems failures.

The previous head of Statscan, Wayne Smith, resigned last September over Shared Services’ handling of Statscan’s information systems, which he said had not only become “disruptive, ineffective, slow and unaffordable,” but compromised the independence and confidentiality of the statistical agency’s data.

Now, I’m not here to point fingers. But the point is that these Statscan failures, while maybe not the same risk to public safety as the RCMP’s problems, are more than just a nuisance to the economists and journalists who wallow in these economic numbers.

The system problems, when they arise, create inequitable distribution of information that is relied on, and more to the point traded on, by financial markets. That’s a serious problem.

In the case of Friday’s jobs data, instead of every market participant being able to see the same data at the same time on the same website, each was left to his or her own devices (literally and figuratively). The lucky ones had access to Bloomberg data and news terminals, the expensive yet indispensable toys of professional trading operations, where at least the basic highlights of the report would have been fairly quickly disseminated. Others could have turned to media reports from the smattering of news organizations that attended Statscan’s pre-release lockup (in which reporters were given the release in advance but kept sequestered in a room, unable to communicate the information until the moment of the release time).

But if you were in need of the deeper statistical details below the surface of these quick-hit reports, good luck. Even the research departments of the big banks were scrambling, relying on friendly contacts at Statscan to e-mail to them whatever data they could.

All of which not only delayed the dissemination of this key economic data to the public and to financial markets, but also resulted in some very uneven distribution – in terms of both the timeliness and the amount of information that reached different sets of ears and eyes with an interest in the data.

And the employment data are very significant indeed to the bond and currency markets, especially now. It has become increasingly evident that the direction the Bank of Canada will take on interest rates hinges substantially on the evolution of the labour market. In its rate decision earlier this month, the central bank pointed specifically to “subdued growth in wages and hours” as key evidence of “persistent economic slack” in Canada.

And indeed, the February jobs report showed that despite the improvements in hiring and the unemployment rate, growth in wages and hours worked remained disappointing. Knowledge of this spoke volumes to any bond or currency trader placing bets on the timing of future Bank of Canada rate moves. And some traders had access to this information long before others.

That’s simply unacceptable.

As long as these technology problems persist, they undermine the integrity of an independent, impartial national statistics provider. Access to critical data can’t play favourites, even if it’s by accident.

Source: Statscan can’t afford for data access to play favourites – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →