HALIFAX—The Nova Scotia government is falling short of achieving its goals for inclusion and diversity in its own ranks, according to the provincial auditor general.

Michael Pickup’s May 2019 report found that the Public Service Commission (PSC) — which is responsible for developing the province’s workforce and its human resource policies — didn’t follow a plan for putting its diversity and inclusion strategy into action and hasn’t evaluated whether the goals of the strategy were met.

Pickup told members of the public accounts committee Wednesday that the audit was important because there are 11,000 public servants in the province and Nova Scotians want to see themselves reflected in that group.

“This is not just inside baseball and internal to government,” Pickup said. “This is very much impacting and that is partially why we selected this audit.”

The auditor general looked at the government’s action on the Raising the Bar strategy, which was released in the spring of 2014. It set 32 “strategic actions” and a four-year timeline for all government departments.

In addition to the PSC, Pickup looked at the departments of justice, community services and agriculture. His report noted that PSC is responsible for “leading efforts to attract, retain, celebrate diversity and equity within the public service,” but departments are responsible for supporting government’s “overall direction.”

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Pickup told the committee on Wednesday that there “were certainly positive findings from our audit.”

But, he said, “I must stress that overall, much work remains to be done for government to achieve its commitment to more effectively promote diversity and inclusion across the public service.”

He said government has promoted diversity and inclusion since adopting the strategy five years ago but had several “critical shortcomings.” Pickup tested 16 of the strategic actions from the strategy and found that half of them had been implemented.

Despite having plans for implementation and evaluation outlined in the strategy — which was developed by an outside consultant at a cost of $34,000 — PSC didn’t follow those plans.

“The implementation plan outlined important details including who would lead the work, timelines for completion, as well as potential challenges when completing strategic actions and how these could be mitigated,” the auditor general’s report said.

“The evaluation plan identified potential measures and data that could be used to assess progress towards the goals of the strategy.”

But Pickup said none of the departments involved in the audit assessed whether their goals were being met or even identified or collected the necessary data for assessment.

“The need for improved data to assess diversity and inclusion in the Nova Scotia public sector was a consistent theme heard during the audit,” the report said.

“Adequate data is needed to identify areas where diversity and inclusion work should be focused, as well as determining if programs and initiatives are achieving their objectives.”

The audit also found that none of the departments were evaluating whether policies, like those on employment equity and respectful workplaces, were being followed or if they were effective.

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The employment equity policy says each government department must make sure all employees participate in a one-day training program, but many PSC employees had not completed it and the information about when they had to take it was inconsistent.

“We selected a sample of 25 Public Service Commission employees and found only 3 had completed the diversity and employment equity course and only 12 had completed respectful workplace training.

“We were told managers are responsible for ensuring all staff have done this training, but there is no documentation to demonstrate that this monitoring is done,” the report said.

It also said that while delivering training to more than 11,000 employees is undoubtedly “challenging,” there should be consistency in mandating it, if it’s considered mandatory.

Pickup made eight recommendations to the government and following Wednesday’s meeting he told reporters some are “key practical examples” that could be used to shape the province’s next diversity and inclusion strategy.

“(The province) had an implementation action plan as to how they were going to do this, but they didn’t use it,” he said, referring to the Raising the Bar strategy.

“That didn’t make a lot of sense. If you’re going to set out to do a strategy, make sure you implement it.”

“The other key thing is measuring what you’re achieving. If you’re going to do all of these items, you only really know if it’s working if you can really identify what it set out to do and then come back and evaluate it to say ‘Did it achieve what we wanted to do?’ ”

The PSC and the other departments that were audited accepted and agreed to the recommendations and set self-imposed timelines that range from September 2019 to September 2020.

In an emailed statement, spokesperson Brian Taylor said the PSC will release a new diversity and inclusion strategy in the fall that will include “a clear plan to measure, evaluate and regularly report on progress” toward goals.

“This aligns with the recommendations made by the Auditor General in his report,” Taylor said.

Correction - June 13, 2019: This article was edited from a previous version that misstated the acronym for Public Service Commission (PSC) as PCS.

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