Mr. Chair, a lot of my concerns with HR are in the area of supporting and monitoring. Initially, when the Department of HR was created, the worked that was being done I assumed was going to be work that was going to provide monitoring and support to the small HR units that were in each department. But as it turns out, we've created a fairly substantial Human Resource division, as indicated in the Mains, of 167 employees, which is down from last year.
In some of my questioning that the Minister could be prepared for, I would like to talk about some of the self-service issues surrounding the self-service that is being employed by the government now and maybe paid for by HR but administered by some support services as well.
However, self-service doesn't seem to be a really good system that is effective. I know that it is one program that frustrates the people working for the GNWT. As a manager it's very difficult to keep track of employees. As an employee it's difficult to make sure that you're getting paid for the hours you've
worked. If you're a shift worker and something happened to run through a long weekend, I think you have to report that as either having been there or you don't get paid automatically, if you work through a holiday and stuff like that.
So self-service seems to be something, I suppose, that was initially designed to save the government money or save time or whatnot. The government had a really simple system. There’s one form you fill out and you send in to your manager. It's signed, and someone could actually keep track of what it is that you're doing, where you're going, whether or not you're on holidays or duty travel or whatnot. But the self-service system is apparently not very clear to a lot of people who are trying to serve themselves.
I'm curious about whether or not the Department of HR is involved in human resource plans of other departments, what types of plans are in place and what type of support this department provides to other departments: job description writing, evaluations, job descriptions, and so on and so forth.
I'm curious about the position of the department in relation to the Affirmative Action Policy with all the other departments. I’m curious about training: cross-cultural training for people working in predominantly aboriginal communities and what type of cross-cultural training is provided to them.
The final thing is that we're changing the financial information system again. I’m not sure if that’s directly related to HR, but the financial information system is another area. If it’s in this area, I’d be asking questions on that and the high cost of replacing that system, which I’m assuming is failing the government. That’s all I have for now. Thank you.