Internal Audit of Immigration Pilot Programs: Lack of guiding principles

2022/08/25 Leave a comment

Always worth reading IRCC audit and evaluation reports. This audit covered three pilots, Start-Up Visa Program (2013-2018), Atlantic Immigration Pilot (2017-2021) and Caregivers Pilots (the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots) (2019-2024).

Since then, a number of other pilots have been added: Rural and Northern Immigration, Agri-Food, Home Care Provider, and arguably, Municipal Nominee Program.

Most striking observation: “there was no clearly defined guiding principles for pilot programs to better guide development, oversight, management, evaluation and transition of pilot programs.”

Conclusion:

Overall, the audit found that there was no clearly defined guiding principles for pilot programs to better guide development, oversight, management, evaluation and transition of pilot programs.

Due to the uniqueness of the objectives of each pilot program, pilots were managed independently, and existing departmental structures and processes were leveraged to support their development, implementation, and transition or termination. Although there were adequate fraud and program integrity risk management processes in place, there was no overarching guidance to create a formal risk management framework for pilot programs. The Department heavily relied upon the evaluation function to assess and report on the early performance results of pilot programs to support early decision-making regarding changes to a pilot program or the transition to a permanent program. However, there were limitations in assessing economic establishment and retention as the respective data is not available until years after the pilots have ended. Monitoring and reporting did not include Benefits Realization to inform further investment decisions.

As demands on IRCC continue to grow, and there is more potential to use pilot programs, clearly defined guiding principles for the management and evaluation of the pilot programs will support the holistic management and oversight of the Department’s pilot program portfolio and the broader achievement of departmental objectives. This will also provide direction and guidance for the development, implementation of individual pilot programs with consideration of leading practices and lessons learned. 

Management has accepted the audit findings and developed an action plan to address the recommendations.

Source: Internal Audit of Immigration Pilot Programs

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Audit of Employment Equity Representation in Recruitment

2021/01/29 Leave a comment

PDF Version

Significant and useful, in that it breaks down the various steps in staffing and how different groups are affected at the organizational screening and assessment stages.

Like all research, this begs further work to assess the particular factors that resulted in visible minority and Indigenous candidates being rejected at those stages.

Notable that Black candidate respresentation declined more than other visible minority groups, again suggesting the need for some qualitative analysis of the reasons and rationales for them being selected out:

This audit was undertaken as part of the Public Service Commission (PSC)’s oversight mandate to assess the integrity of the public service staffing system. It is part of a series of initiatives that looks at the performance of the staffing system with respect to the representation of employment equity groups.

Achieving priorities related to diversity and inclusion in the federal public service will ensure that Canadians benefit from a public service workforce that is representative of Canada’s diversity. To date, progress towards a representative federal public service is being made. Of the 4 employment equity groups, 3 are represented at or above workforce availability; persons with disabilities are currently underrepresented in the federal government. These results show that more work and a sustained focus on diversity are required.

This audit focused on advertised recruitment processes as one of the key drivers to improving the representation of employment equity groups in the federal public service. The audit had 2 objectives:

  1. to determine whether the 4 employment equity groups remain proportionately represented throughout recruitment processes
  2. to identify factors that may influence employment equity group representation

This audit looked at 15 285 applications to 181 externally advertised appointment processes from 30 departments and agencies.

We examined employment equity group representation at 5 key stages of the external advertised appointment process (Figure 2 in this report provides more detail on each of these stages):

5 key stages of the external advertised appointment process: job application, automated screening, Organizational screening, Assessment, Appointment

Our focus was to explore whether employment equity groups experienced changes in representation at each stage of the appointment process, and to examine these stages for factors that may have influenced their representation.

Main findings

We found that employment equity groups did not remain proportionately represented throughout the recruitment process.

Our audit results showed that:

  • women were the only group to experience an overall increase in representation from job application to the appointment stage
  • Indigenous candidates experienced a reduction in representation at the assessment stage
  • persons with disabilities experienced the largest drop in representation of any of the employment equity groups, with decreases in representation at the assessment and appointment stages
  • visible minority groups experienced reductions in representation at the organizational screening and assessment stages
  • of the visible minority sub-groups examined in our audit, Black candidates experienced a larger drop in representation than other members of visible minorities, both at the organizational screening and assessment stages

Our ability to identify factors that may influence employment equity representation in recruitment was limited to the information available in the staffing files. Some factors were identified to partially explain the drop in representation of members of visible minorities at the organizational screening stage. However, limited information in staffing files did not provide conclusive evidence of other factors that may be associated with lower success rates of employment equity groups at later stages of the recruitment process. More research will be required to determine potential barriers in externally advertised appointment processes and to develop concrete solutions.

This audit report makes 3 recommendations intended to address the lower success experienced by some employment equity groups in external advertised recruitment processes. The development and implementation of concrete corrective measures will require collaboration between multiple stakeholders including deputy heads, the PSC, other central agencies and employment equity groups.

The audit makes clear that despite efforts across departments and agencies to advance diversity, work remains to achieve inclusive hiring processes in the public service. The PSC will need to further support organizations by providing systems, tools and guidance for implementing a barrier-free appointment process. Most importantly, deputy heads are responsible for reviewing their staffing framework and practices to ensure barrier-free appointment processes for all employment equity groups, including visible minority sub-groups.

Source: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-service-commission/services/publications/audit-of-employment-equity-representation-in-recruitment.html#2_0

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Report Slams Facebook For ‘Vexing And Heartbreaking Decisions’ On Free Speech

2020/07/10 Leave a comment

Of note. Major fail as combination of ideology and business model have led Facebook to where it is today:

Facebook’s decisions to put free speech ahead of other values represent “significant setbacks for civil rights,” according to an independent audit of the social network’s progress in curbing discrimination.

The auditors gave a damning assessment of what they called “vexing and heartbreaking decisions” by Facebook. Among them: Keeping up posts by President Trump that “clearly violated” the company’s policies on hate and violent speech and voter suppression; exempting politicians from third-party fact-checking; and being “far too reluctant to adopt strong rules to limit [voting] misinformation and voter suppression.”

The report reflects two years of investigation by Laura W. Murphy, a former American Civil Liberties Union executive, and the civil rights law firm Relman Colfax. They were hired by Facebook following widespread accusations that it promotes discrimination by, for example, letting advertisers target users based on race. The auditors examined policies and practices ranging from how the company handles hate speech to its work to stop election interference.

“What has become increasingly clear is that we have a long way to go,” Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, wrote in a blog postintroducing the auditors’ report.

“While we won’t make every change they call for, we will put more of their proposals into practice,” she said.

Sandberg said Facebook would create a new role for a senior vice president dedicated to making sure civil rights considerations informed the company’s products, policies and procedures.

The audit echoed complaints that advocacy groups have made for years. Leaders of those groups expressed skepticism over whether Facebook would make meaningful change now.

“The recommendations coming out of the audit are as good as the action that Facebook ends up taking,” Rashad Robinson, president of the nonprofit Color of Change, told NPR. “Otherwise, it is a road map without a vehicle and without the resources to move, and that is not useful for any of us.”

Vanita Gupta, head of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which along with Color of Change was instrumental in getting Facebook to make the audit public, said advocates would continue to put pressure on the company.

“It is a work in progress clearly, and this report in some ways is a start and not a finish for the civil rights community,” Gupta said. “We’re going to continue to push really hard using multiple tactics to be able to get done what we need to to preserve our democracy and protect our communities.”

The audit comes as hundreds of brands have pledged not to advertise on Facebook this month to protest its laissez-faire approach to harmful posts. Some of the boycott organizers, which include Color of Change, the Anti-Defamation League and the NAACP, held a call with Facebook leaders on Tuesday and hung up disheartened.

“They showed up to the meeting expecting an ‘A’ for attendance,” Robinson said of CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the other Facebook executives in a press conference after the meeting.

Advertising accounted for more than 98% of the company’s nearly $70 billion in revenue last year. The boycott campaign’s stated goal is “to force Mark Zuckerberg to address the effect that Facebook has had on our society.”

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt told NPR the roster of brands that have paused advertising has passed 1,000, including household names such as Hershey, Ford and Levi’s.

“[Facebook executives] haven’t addressed the concerns of their advertisers. They haven’t addressed the concerns of the civil rights community. They haven’t addressed the concerns of consumer advocates,” Greenblatt said. “If they fail to do so, we will press and we will push. This effort will amplify, this campaign will expand, and more organizations will join.”

The audit included further recommendations for how Facebook could build “a long-term civil rights accountability structure,” including hiring more members of the civil rights team and making a civil rights executive a part of decisions over whether to remove content.

The auditors said Facebook had made progress in curbing discrimination — for example, by barring advertisers from targeting housing, employment and credit ads based on age, gender or ZIP code and expanding policies against voter suppression and census interference.

But they warned that the company’s decisions to prioritize free speech above all else — particularly speech by politicians — risked “obscur[ing]” that progress, especially as the presidential election approaches. They called on Facebook to enforce its policies and hold politicians to the same standards as other users.

“We have grave concerns that the combination of the company’s decision to exempt politicians from fact-checking and the precedents set by its recent decisions on President Trump’s posts, leaves the door open for the platform to be used by other politicians to interfere with voting,” they wrote.

“If politicians are free to mislead people about official voting methods … and are allowed to use not-so-subtle dog whistles with impunity to incite violence against groups advocating for racial justice, this does not bode well for the hostile voting environment that can be facilitated by Facebook in the United States.”

Source: Report Slams Facebook For ‘Vexing And Heartbreaking Decisions’ On Free Speech

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