Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

LAY SUMMARY The COVID-19 global pandemic triggered shifts in worker values, presenting employers with a unique opportunity to revisit their offerings in ways that optimize both employee experiences and workplace well-being. These offerings typically include traditional compensation elements and non-financial, or intangible, rewards. Analyses of the 2022 Public Service Employee Survey examined how three sub-populations of civilian Department of National Defence (DND) employees (i.e., persons with disabilities, leaders, and young employees) experienced intangible rewards (e.g., support for flexible work arrangements, a tolerable workload), as well as the links between their experiences of these rewards and their workplace well-being. The results of this study suggest that, in addition to blanket strategies, targeted workplace interventions may be necessary to improve the workplace well-being of sub-populations of civilian DND employees who differ in their experiences of intangible rewards and in how these experiences affect their workplace well-being.

As staffing shortages and ongoing cost-containment measures continue to challenge organizations, the use of assistive personnel (AP) for patient care activities increases. Emphasis on safe and effective care delivery remains crucial when RNs delegate certain tasks and aspects of patient care. The principles of delegation according to American Nurses Association and the National Council of State Boards of Nursing include the responsibility and accountability of the registered nurse (RN) for patient care outcomes. Authority for delegation of clinical tasks in the chronic hemodialysis setting and home dialysis therapies varies greatly by state. The responsibility remains with the RN to oversee complex tasks despite the staff skill mix. While specific information from several states, although limited, was interpreted by this team as delegation, it remains the responsibility of each RN to know their individual state Nurse Practice Acts. This article provides an updated review of the states' current available positions on delegation of clinical tasks in hemodialysis with the addition of information on dialysis technicians or licensed practical nurses/licensed vocational nurses in home therapy when available.

In this study, we assess the external vulnerability of the Nigerian economy by documenting three alternatives (zero, partial and full) oil price pass-through to inflation within a New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) framework. The results show that under a zero-oil price pass-through, the choice of inflation measure is immaterial, as macroeconomic responses to the shock are comparable under alternative Taylor rule specifications. The shock precipitates stagflation, transmitted via the income and exchange rate channels; and introduces an extra layer of vulnerability associated with higher external risk premium. Both core and oil inflation targeting monetary rules maximize welfare under a zero-oil price passthrough, while oil inflation targeting is shown to be welfare superior under partial or full oil price pass-through. Credibility consideration renders core inflation targeting the feasible optimal path for the central bank.

Government websites and online services are often built with limited input from the people they serve. This approach limits their ability to respond to ever changing needs and contexts. This case study describes a government digital team built from the ground‐up to embrace ethnographic methods to make government services more resilient.The case study begins by tracing the organisation's origins and relationship to other research‐driven parts of its government. Then it shows how the organisation's structure evolved as more projects included ethnography. It describes various approaches to locating skilled researchers within bureaucratic confines, as well as what responsibilities researchers took on as the organisation grew. It then summarises researchers' experiences with matrixed, functional and hybrid organisation schemes.The case study concludes explaining how embracing ethnographic approaches (and values) increased not only online service, but also organisational resilience. Teams who embraced ethnography had deeper and more thoughtful responses to the pandemic, and inclusivity challenges in the organisation. Lessons learned for other organisations attempting to scale an ethnographic research practice, and seize its benefits for resilience.

Deliberative processes are a well-established part of health technology assessment (HTA) programs in a number of high- and middle-income countries, and serve to combine complex sets of evidence, perspectives, and values to support open, transparent, and accountable decision making. Nevertheless, there is little documentation and research to inform the development of effective and efficient deliberative processes, and to evaluate their quality. This article summarizes the 2020 HTAi Global Policy Forum (GPF) discussion on deliberative processes in HTA.Through a combination of small and large group discussion and successive rounds of polling, the GPF members reached strong agreement on three core principles for deliberative processes in HTA: transparency, inclusivity, and impartiality. In addition, discussions revealed other important principles, such as respect, reviewability, consistency, and reasonableness, that may supplement the core set. A number of associated supporting actions for each of the principles are also described in order to make each principle realizable in a given HTA setting. The relative importance of the principles and actions are context-sensitive and must be considered in light of the political, legislative, and operational factors that may influence the functioning of any particular HTA environment within which the deliberative process is situated. The paper ends with suggested concrete next steps that HTA agencies, researchers, and stakeholders might take to move the field forward. The proposed principles and actions, and the next steps, provide a springboard for further research and better documentation of important aspects of deliberation that have historically been infrequently studied.

Small bug-fix release fixing a few regressions: Fix <code>astype</code> when converting to string with Multi geometries (#1145) or when converting a dataframe without geometries (#1144). Fix <code>GeoSeries.fillna</code> to accept <code>np.nan</code> again (#1149).

Abstract Environmental risk due to water pollution is an ongoing every day problem. Municipal wastewater systems are one of the largest pollution sources to surface waters. Other major sources include residential and industrial discharges, and agricultural runoff, dumped in to rivers directly or by seepage from contaminated groundwater. Threats from chemicals may come from sources such as pesticide use and waste disposal. Air pollution and land pollution also affect water quality.Statistical methodologies and probabilistic models play major roles in assessing environmental water pollution risk, since risk is a “probabilistic measure for degree of harm associated with pollutant levels”. The analyses presented in this article are designed to assess the risk of surface water pollution from bacterial and chemical sources. The probabilistic approach in the analysis is designed to test the significance of pollution measuring parameters in the probability distribution model. This article gives illustrations of two statistical techniques that can assess the risk of surface water pollution from bacterial and chemical sources, as applied to a sample from Tigris river water after it had passed through the Baghdad metropolitan area. The first is an adaptation of existing methods to lognormal data, while the second is an application of intervention analysis with time series data.

Alternative service delivery (ASD) is a Canadian phenomenon that spread, surfaced important issues and made a wider impact. ASD refers to the many and varied organizational forms and delivery mechanisms governments use to achieve their objectives. It is anchored in a spectrum of options that mirrors the diversity of the nation, its governments and its public institutions. Innovations sustain the capacity to serve the public interest and to leverage efficiency, accountability and renewal. They embrace a strategy of collaboration across sectors and boundaries to overcome impediments to change and to transform service delivery. Countless spin-offs cascade throughout the Canadian public sector. Many governments benchmark the international scene and adapt innovations to their settings. Respect for situation and reciprocal learning facilitate the transfer of good practice. Lessons learned from ASD experiences across Canada and in countries like Tanzania, Latvia and New Zealand improve the prospects of `getting service delivery right'.