Performance Reporting

Goal 2: Organizational Excellence

This goal is achieved by ensuring that the Environmental Assessment Office supports organizational development to optimize its ability to provide efficient and effective delivery of environmental assessment. It also entails ensuring effective and efficient communication with all parties involved in environmental assessments.

Objective 1: Support Organizational development to optimize ability to deliver environmental assessment

This objective focuses on creating a healthy, performance-focused environment with proactive leadership and continuous improvement.

Key Strategies:

• Update and implement a Human Resource Management Plan that includes strategies for fair workforce adjustment, staff training, development and succession;
• Implement performance management process;
• Support efficient utilization of public funds through shared services delivery; and
• Staff training on fulfilling government legal obligations towards First Nations.

6. Employee Performance and Development Plans

All permanent staff have Employee Performance and Development Plans in place. All staff (including auxiliary and temporary appointments) will have Employee Performance and Development Plans in 2004/05. Staff training is a mandatory element of Employee Performance and Development Plans.

Strategies for Organizational Development

For the 2003/04 period, the Environmental Assessment Office provided a one day workshop for staff on the Provincial Consultation Policy and another workshop in the fall of 2003 to update new developments in First Nations consultation. In addition, a comprehensive orientation manual on First Nations involvement in environmental assessment was completed and made available to staff.

The Environmental Assessment Office followed government's policies and guidelines strategy for succession planning and staff development is achieved by a matrix management model and specific development opportunities are offered through temporary assignments at the Environmental Assessment Office.

Provincial policies respecting workforce adjustment were applied.

Objective 2: Communicate Effectively with all Stakeholders

The Environmental Assessment Office has established an electronic Project Information Centre (ePIC) to facilitate access to general information about the environmental assessment process, as well as specific information on individual project assessments. The principal means of accessing ePIC is through the Environmental Assessment Office website. The Public Consultation Policy Regulation identifies documentation related to each project environmental assessment that is normally made available to the public through the website. Information on ePIC is updated on an ongoing basis. Internal project reports are available within the Environmental Assessment Office to monitor the timing of information that is launched on the website. The Environmental Assessment Office is committed to improving the access and ease of use of the website since this is the primary mechanism for access to information. The ePIC is essential for providing efficient and effective environmental assessment, and for ensuring open government and accountable decision-making.

Key Strategies:

• Facilitate access to information about project reviews and the environmental assessment process; and
• Improve web-based access to key review documents.

7. Switch to Electronic Documentation

In April 2002, the Environmental Assessment Office moved its server to a new host ministry. As a result, the website visit statistics for 2002/03 were calculated differently than in previous years. The Environmental Assessment Office's new host server does not provide website traffic statistics in terms of visits (a visit is defined as a collection of requests that represents all the pages and graphics seen by a particular visitor at one time) that are comparable to data collected in previous years. The implementation of ePIC in January 2003 required a further change to the way website traffic is calculated. New baseline data was collected starting in January 2003, to reflect the new approach to statistical reporting.

Website visitors are based on the number of unique addresses that accessed the Environmental Assessment Office's website each month. Website hits are based on the total number of Environmental Assessment Office website pages and graphics viewed by visitors. A visitor can access multiple pages and graphics during one visit and incur multiple hits.

The number of visitors decreased initially following the introduction of ePIC in early 2003. This may have been due to early difficulties in navigating the website with the changes or may have been due to other factors. Website users knew the Environmental Assessment Office's new legislation was coming into force in late 2002 and this could have been another reason why the number of visitors increased during this time and then decreased once the information was placed on the website. Number of visitors began increasing in the summer of 2003 so levels during the first quarter of 2004 have increased and are now comparable to levels observed for most of 2002.

The number of website hits has more than doubled from an average of 2,888,693 for the period 2000/01 to 2002/03 to 6,132,031 during 2003/04. The sharp rise during this later stage indicates users are actively using the new features on ePIC. In the last survey of participants conducted in March 2003, 80 per cent of respondents rated the accessibility of information on project reviews as high or very high.

The Environmental Assessment Office monitors the effectiveness of ePIC and develops system updates and enhancements as necessary. In 2003, a review participant contact management module was developed to allow more efficient access to our participant data base. As well, an internet mapping application was completed that will allow users to search for projects geographically.

The ePIC Performance, Tracking and Reports module is an enhancement to the existing ePIC application developed in early 2004. These reports enable internal reporting on:

• The status of projects at various stages of review;
• Organizational performance in terms of progress towards legislated and procedurally defined environmental assessment review milestones; and
• Project assignments to staff.

8. Participants' perceptions of accessibility of project review information

The findings of the Environmental Assessment Office Client Satisfaction Survey (2004) conducted from April 19, 2004 to May 6, 2004 are being reviewed to identify areas for improvement that will be reported in the 2004/05 Service Plan Report.

Deregulation

The Government of British Columbia is committed to reducing unnecessary red tape and regulation by one-third within three years. The Environmental Assessment Office set a target of 33 per cent for fiscal year 2004/05. Legislative and policy changes made in fiscal year 2002/03 resulted in a 56 per cent reduction in the regulatory burden associated with the environmental assessment process in British Columbia. This exceeds the Environmental Assessment Office's target by 23 per cent. This level of reduction will be maintained throughout 2005/06. The new Act provides for a streamlined review process and allows more procedural flexibility to accommodate project specific circumstances.