Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) is implementing I-Talent, a secure, internal-facing, Web-based electronic system, in response to its inability to quickly view and measure holistically the talent, skills, roles and expertise that exist across the organization at any point in time.
The Chief Information Office (CIO) and the Human Resources Branch (HRB) are working together to develop I-Talent, designed to collect information directly from individual employees when they complete their own profiles in the system. The information collected in the profiles will be voluntarily provided by participating employees and contain information such as, but not limited to, work contact information, classification, skills, education, and work experience. Employees will be able to self-administer their personal information, including the ability to control what access other individuals have to that information.
I-Talent will only be accessible from the Intranet and reside on ISED's cloud environment. Individuals will be able to sign into I-Talent with their network credentials (username and password). I-Talent aims to facilitate ISED's ability to mobilize people to address shifting priorities. It will serve as a central and dynamic talent repository containing valuable and searchable information about the talent, skills, roles and expertise that exists or that is lacking across the department. Hiring managers will be able to easily find and connect directly with employees based on their advertised skills, professional history, and interests for employment opportunities.
To participate, employees will need to opt-into I-Talent by creating a profile about themselves, which hiring managers may then query, to identify suitable employees within ISED who are capable of fulfilling staffing requirements, either by way of acting positions, temporary assignments or deployments, subject to the employment statuses of the applicable employees.
Certain information collected will also be used to inform the design of ISED's talent development strategies, through the identification of gaps in skills and competencies that may be required to fill specific roles. For instance, developmental goals indicated by employees will allow ISED to identify commonalities in the workforce in order to enhance capacities for shared learning based on desired learning goals.
I-Talent will be launched as a pilot, with a small group of users, for several months, to assess the usability and value of the application. Subject to the success of the pilot period, the HRB will decide if it should further invest in the platform by deploying it on a broad basis across the department. Privacy considerations will be monitored, assessed and mitigated in an evergreen manner, with this PIA being updated as enhancements are made to the platform.