Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The accountability framework is intended to be a framework that provides both accountability for community governments to their residents as well as provide information for the department to provide accountability to the Assembly and all the residents of the Territories. What we have done is worked with our partners at the Association of Communities and the Local Government Administrators to identify key indicators of success or potential challenge that community governments may face. It’s framed around four key areas: governance, financial management, planning and safe communities. There are indicators within each of those four areas. In each indicator there is a checklist, and an internal process for the department to engage with communities to monitor progress in each of those indicator areas.
As an example, financial management there is quarterly reporting that is identified as one of the indicators and, through the checklist, the department will work with the community to ensure that quarterly reporting is submitted and monitor progress with communities in those areas to see if financial position is improving. If there are any areas where there may be challenges in submitting reporting where the department can engage with the community to improve reporting and ensure that funding continues to flow in accordance with their funding agreements in that area.
We are just finalizing the checklists and the internal processes for that framework right now and anticipate having a document out to communities within the next month so that communities will be able to work with us in implementing the checklists.
We are also looking at a communications framework and a large implementation workshop with our stakeholders in the fall so that we’re all on the same page with the framework and its
implementation. We’ll be able to use this as an annual reporting tool on how communities are doing and how the department is engaging with communities, and whether we’re making appropriate measures in each of the areas of the accountability framework.