Open Government Implementation Plan: Canadian Food Inspection Agency

4.1 The CFIA’s mission, mandate, and vision

In fulfilling its mission, the CFIA is dedicated to safeguarding food, animal, and plant health, which enhances the health and well-being of Canada’s people, environment, and economy.

The CFIA develops and delivers inspection and other services in order to:

• protect Canadians from preventable health risks;
• implement food-safety measures;
• manage risks and emergencies regarding food, animals, and plants; and
• promote food safety and systems to maintain the safety and security of Canada’s agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries, and forestry sectors.

The CFIA bases its activities on science, effective risk management, commitment to service and efficiency, and collaboration with domestic and international organizations that share its objectives.

The Agency’s vision is to excel as a science-based regulator, trusted and respected by Canadians and the international community.

4.2 The CFIA’s population and area distribution

The CFIA is Canada’s largest science-based regulatory agency. It has approximately 6,750 employees working across Canada in the National Capital Region (NCR) and in four operational areas—Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario, and Western.

Figure 1 - Text version

As of March 31 2015

Atlantic: 12.3%

• 2 laboratories
• 1 area headquarter

Quebec: 17.1%

• 1 laboratories
• 1 area headquarter

Ontario: 21.1%

• 3 laboratoires
• 1 quartier général de secteur

NCR: 23.8%

Western: 25.8%

• 1 laboratory in Manitoba
• 1 laboratory in Saskatchewan
• 1 laboratory and 1 area headquarter in Alberta
• 1 laboratories in British Colombia

4.3 The CFIA’s information and technology environment

The CFIA recognizes the growing importance of well-managed information and technology. As key enablers, information and technology support the design and delivery of transparent, efficient, and innovative policies, programs, and services. To ensure the reliability and sustainability of these enablers, the Agency must continually balance three main factors that affect any IMIT transformation:

• the external technology/cyber-security environment;
• the Government of Canada’s approach to government-wide transformation, led by key players such as Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) and Shared Services Canada (SSC); and
• the CFIA’s own Agency Transformation efforts.

To address this need for balance, the Agency recently invested in updating its end-user hardware and desktop environment, re-platforming and managing its critical applications, revitalizing its architecture program, and modernizing its database environment. These investments have been made in collaboration with and in preparation for initiatives led by our partners at SSC and TBS. The Agency must continue to align itself with these initiatives, such as email transformation, data centre consolidation, and electronic records management system centralization, since these initiatives are fundamentally changing the way IMIT is supported and delivered within the Government of Canada.

The expectations of all stakeholders for increased access to data and information require the Agency to continue to integrate strong information management practices, and to make strategic investments in information technology. These activities form the cornerstone of Open Government and will allow the Agency to maximize the release of information and data of business value to support transparency, accountability, and engagement, while ensuring effective management of resources and respecting privacy, confidentiality, and security.

4.4 CFIA contributions to Open Government

Spurred by the Open Government initiative, by recommendations stemming from the independent investigation into the listeriosis outbreak, and by senior-level commitment to increased openness, the CFIA has worked hard to advance an ambitious transparency agenda.

The CFIA began implementing this transparency agenda in 2011. To date, the Agency has nearly completed two phases of transparency implementation:

• Phase 1 included food recalls, allergy alerts, specific enforcement data, animal disease reporting, as well as proactive disclosure postings and the release of guidance documents (GDR) on the CFIA website; and
• Phase 2 introduced new elements such as annual recall trends/statistics and monthly aquatic animal disease reporting.

4.5 The CFIA’s Open Government challenges and opportunities

As previously noted, the CFIA will contribute under the Action Plan on Open Government, which specifies 12 commitments.

The CFIA’s business context and organizational environment present both challenges and opportunities in terms of implementing this Open Government Implementation Plan. These challenges and opportunities include the following:

• Data/information identification: Developing a complete Agency dataset inventory will be required. Challenges include the volume of data/information and the diverse sources of data/information. This work will also allow the CFIA to assess whether the Agency is collecting the right data/information for the right purposes. As a result of broad engagement with internal business areas and stakeholders required to identify data/information, opportunities will exist for the CFIA to maximize the release of data/information, and to optimize its overall value and reusability.
• Culture shift: The CFIA will prepare for an “open by default” environment now and an “open by design” environment in the future. Fostering understanding across the Agency of the value of sharing data/information will allow for enhanced collaboration within the CFIA on delivering key programs and services.
• Process and infrastructure: The CFIA will need to adapt its business process requirements and IMIT infrastructure for open data/information to support data integrity and validation. The timelines for implementing any new inspection data elements or program changes should align with the development and implementation of new IMIT systems.
• Stakeholder consultation: The Agency has a longstanding tradition of consulting with stakeholders, which offers opportunities to obtain input and buy-in from industry. For this reason, the CFIA has publicly committed to working with industry and listening to their concerns before it makes any decisions on implementing additional transparency initiatives, including Open Government. These consultations will therefore need to be accounted for in the Agency’s action plan and will affect the timing of implementation for posting new types of information.
• Confidentiality: The Agency needs to maintain current safeguards and continually assess them to ensure the protection of confidential business information, as well as personal and other types of protected information.
• Clarity of information: To ensure that Canadians are able to understand the information that is published, the CFIA will need to provide this information in both official languages, in plain language, and with appropriate context. This will ensure that the safeguards address new and evolving risks in the external technology environment.

Regarding the Open Science commitment, the CFIA will contribute to developing and publishing a federal, interdepartmental Open Science Implementation Plan (OSIP), which will have its own specific activities and milestones. This plan will be developed by 12 science-based departments and agencies, including the CFIA, and nine additional Government of Canada entities. In addition, the CFIA will coordinate an OSIP project (and associated activities) to create guidance on releasing data that supports peer-reviewed scientific articles.

Some of the challenges facing the CFIA related to Open Science include the following:

• the Open Science Implementation Plan (OSIP) is being developed before the departmental Open Government Implementation Plans;
• the OSIP has slightly different timelines for deliverables and activities; and
• differences between the various departments in terms of IMIT and systems readiness may affect the ability to meet Open Science deadlines.

6.1 Roles and Responsibilities

The governance of the CFIA’s Open Government Implementation Plan is informed by the responsibilities identified for the Information Management Senior Official (IMSO) and Deputy Head (President) in Section 6, “Requirements,” Section 7, “Monitoring and Reporting Requirements,” and Section 8, “Consequences,” of the Directive on Open Government.

6.2 Roles and responsibilities – Committees and stakeholders

6.3 Communications and engagement

A proactive communications approach is recommended for the Open Government initiative.