1.2.7. Drivers for Change In the first year after its creation, the CDO consulted broadly within ESDC and examined industry trends and challenges faced across Government of Canada (GC). Numerous challenges were identified by multiple stakeholders, and the following themes emerged: • The collection, storage and analysis of data is widely dispersed across multiple branches, program areas and regions within the department. This has many consequences: o Employees face barriers to accessing information they need to perform analysis that will benefit Canadians and the department o Privacy controls and transparency of use of data for citizens is inconsistent across data holding and business lines o Data from different program areas cannot be linked to accurately and efficiently support necessary, authorized policy insights requested by government o Performance reporting, forecasting and workload management are limited and inconsistent across programs. There are inadequate performance measures that focus on outcomes. • Program and project authorities take a tactical “program/project first, enterprise second” view toward data priorities resulting in little or no advancement toward strategic enterprise outcomes. • Enterprise infrastructure to support advanced and emerging data analytics, for example modern data visualization practices, forecasting, machine learning and artificial intelligence does not exist at the enterprise level and cannot be consistently or effectively implemented in small program/project silos. • ESDC has a very large investment portfolio with Statistics Canada that is scattered among many divisions and branches. Data collected from surveys, research and partners is difficult to integrate with program data to derive insights into how the program is responding to intended outcomes, or unintended consequences. • In some areas where data is accessible and usable, low data literacy is limiting data value. • Executives, accustomed to managing human and financial resources, lack the understanding, tools and skills needed to manage data as a resource with comparable skill. • To get work done, employees often extract data from secure systems into network assets such as Excel work sheets to manipulate data. Executives often do not have clear line of sight into who has access to what data, and for what purpose. As a result of these and other challenges, ESDC is facing missed opportunities to generate strategic insights, to pursue opportunities, to reduce risks and to realize greater efficiencies. The department is also challenged to advance its commitment to open up more of its data holdings to the public and Canada’s research community. Resources are limited and must be invested with probity and efficiency. ESDC must maximize opportunities and investments in data while reducing the burden on its own resources and on Canadian taxpayers.