New Brunswick Internal Services Agency keeps missing targets

A provincial government agency set up to make internal operations more efficient has consistently failed to meet many of the targets it set for itself.

The New Brunswick Internal Services Agency was established in 2010 to centralize many human resources, payroll, IT, and accounts payable functions that were being duplicated across government departments.

But while the vast majority of civil servants say they’re satisfied with the agency, it has failed repeatedly to achieve some seemingly simple goals, such as answering phones quickly or paying urgent invoices within days.

"Government needs to centralize more back-office services," says Kevin Lacey of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, "but we need that agency to hit the targets it sets for itself, so we’re saving money and delivering the services to taxpayers that they deserve."

The poor results are contained in quarterly reports by the NBISA obtained by CBC News through a Right to Information request.

The reports measure the agency’s success or failure at hitting its own targets month by month. They cover 30 months from January 2012 to June 2014.

The philosophy behind the NBISA was that it would simplify government operations, freeing up time and money for employees to focus on the core parts of their jobs.

"The philosophy behind putting services in one place is a good one," Lacey says.

The provincial government says it spent $12 million setting up the NBISA in 2010 and says it has saved the government $43 million so far.

In some cases, however, slow response times by the agency, including from the information technology help desk, have actually made it harder for departments to help citizens.

"We are dealing with urgent child protection and adult protection matters and NBISA IT seems to either not be able to or not want to provide us the necessary support," an employee at the Department of Social Development wrote in a survey.

"There also seems to be an excessive amount of NBISA bureaucracy, forms and processes that just become overwhelming and very confusing … There is no one to contact to try and clarify issues. We just end up going around and around without solutions."

Civil service responses

Those comments, and many others, come from two 2013 satisfaction surveys of civil servants, also obtained by CBC News.

"When we send a request via email it takes days, weeks, and even months before IT calls us back," another civil servant wrote.

"Sometimes the issue is related to clients and it is urgent."

Despite many negative comments like that, other respondents praised the NBISA.

"The services I have required has been provided promptly, competently and courteously," one wrote.

"I am very satisfied with NBISA!" exclaimed another. "Thank you!"

Overall, 89 per cent of civil servants said they were satisfied or very satisfied in the most recent survey in the fall of 2013.

But Lacey says those numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt.

"You’re having government workers grade government workers, so it’s not surprising you’d see strong satisfaction ratings," he says.

"The important thing is: are they achieving the goals they’ve set?"

Agency misses key indicators

In many cases, it hasn’t, falling short of the targets — Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs — that it set for itself when it began operating.

The agency’s mandate, according to a 2012 report, includes "to streamline processes in order to provide services in a more efficient and effective manner," but the quarterly reports show it hasn’t managed that in many areas.

One goal was to approve payment of 80 per cent of urgent invoices within five days of the invoice date.

From January 2012 to February 2013, the NBISA fell far short of that target month after month, never paying more than 31 per cent of the invoices within that time limit.

In March 2013, the agency actually changed its target to make it easier to hit, shifting the deadline from the date the invoice was issued to the date the NBISA received it.

The score immediately improved to 86 per cent the following month, April 2013. But it promptly fell back below the 80-per-cent target in May and the agency has never succeeded in hitting it again.

Another target the NBISA couldn’t hit was to have 65 per cent of IT help desk calls resolved by the person who answered the phone, without having to pass it on to another employee.

After hovering around the 50-per-cent range for a year and a half, NBISA gave up and abandoned that target in July 2013.

In other areas, the agency has hit its targets month after month: it aims to forward 90 per cent of payment documents to individual departments within 15 days of receipt and has beat that target in all except four months between January 2012 and June 2014.

But there are plenty of targets NBISA has never been able to achieve, including one to have fewer than five per cent of civil servants give up and abandon their phone calls to the agency. It achieved that just once, in December 2012, among the 30 months covered by the reports.

In July 2013, the agency added a new target to its reports: to resolve "high-priority" IT incidents within one day in 90 per cent of cases. It didn’t achieve that goal once between July 2013 and June 2014, the last month covered by the reports.

Government Services Minister Ed Doherty says there could be more back-office functions added to the NBISA in the future.

"The people of this province can count on our organization to continue to excel as the government’s shared services agency," Doherty said in his department’s most recent annual report.

The reports says the NBISA had a $2 million surplus in 2013-14 and was 4.4 per cent under budget.