CIPO Business Strategy 2012-2017 (Page 6 of 13)

CIPO Business Strategy 2012-2017 (PDF: 5.8 MB; 27 pages)

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Part IV

Enabling Pillars


Highly Skilled Workforce

A key enabler of any organization's business strategy is the strength of its employees. As an organization where a large percentage of our employees are experts in their field, CIPO has an excellent foundation on which to support creativity, enhance innovation and contribute to Canada's economic success. To maintain this foundation and solidify a reputation as a respected and desirable place in which to build a career, CIPO must attract, retain and develop a skilled and motivated workforce that will contribute to the success of the organization and become the public service leaders of tomorrow.

We will achieve this by designing and implementing strategies and programs that enable effective recruitment, as well as developing and retaining people with the necessary skills and aptitude to meet our current and future organizational needs. As a first step, this will require us to identify and develop the skills and competencies that are most critical in supporting and delivering on our strategic objectives and meeting customer needs.

In order to maintain and build on our capacity, we will tailor our training and development programs to support identified key competencies. We will also expand opportunities for our employees to gain experience, pursue meaningful career paths, and develop their ability to effectively and efficiently manage and lead our change initiatives. We will continue to encourage and support personal and professional development initiatives, such as integrated talent management, that are aimed at developing CIPO's future leaders.

Recognizing our peoples' value and contributions will also be at the forefront of our efforts to ensure that our employees view CIPO as a great place to pursue a career. We will introduce a refreshed awards and recognition program, as well as initiatives designed to engage our employees at every level so they fully understand the importance of their contribution to the innovation cycle. We will also be served in this regard by aligning employees' performance goals with the Business Strategy so they can clearly appreciate their valuable roles in achieving CIPO's mission and vision.

Goal: To promote a workforce that understands the innovation benefits of IP and contributes to the economic success of Canada.

Objectives:

  • Attract and retain the most qualified people.
  • Foster an environment where employees connect with and are guided by CIPO's values, mission and vision.
  • Ensure that employees are proud to work at CIPO and feel it is a great place to work.
  • Remain a learning-based organization.
  • Increase accountability at all levels by aligning individual performance goals with the Business Strategy.

Commitments:

  • Identify, build and maintain business and technical competencies.
  • Facilitate retention through employee engagement and recognition activities and programs.
  • Put in place a more effective recruitment strategy.
  • Build future leaders through an integrated talent management framework, learning roadmaps and leadership program.
 

How We Will Define Success

CIPO will benefit from a highly skilled workforce that understands the innovation benefits of IP. We will have the right people, in the right jobs, at the right time. Employees' performance and learning goals will be aligned to CIPO's mission and direction. CIPO will recognize, develop, and value its employees and future leaders.


Responsive IT Infrastructure

The current state of CIPO's IT systems prevents us from fulfilling our vision and mandate in an effective manner. For instance, search and notification capabilities do not provide innovators with sufficient technical IP information and fail to support incremental innovation. Similarly, the systems do not allow for easy extraction of data required to perform business analytics that would support research and fact-based policy making, and inform business investment decisions. The lack of system flexibility also constrains CIPO's ability to implement regulatory changes as well as international agreements in a timely manner.

Dated IT systems also constrain CIPO from operating efficiently, and have affected its capacity to meet modern-day demands and business needs of its customers. The cost of maintaining multiple systems that cannot be integrated poses a serious financial and operational risk for the organization.

CIPO will put in place a modernization strategy to build an efficient and responsive IT environment to support innovation and help maintain a dynamic regulatory framework to respond to business IP needs.

Goal: To maintain responsive information technology (IT) systems that support CIPO's ability to encourage innovation and respond to the IP community's business needs.

Objectives:

  • Improve the accessibility and searchability of databases to facilitate the leveraging of IP information.
  • Respond to client needs by improving the functionality of systems for both external clients and employees.
  • Meet regulatory requirement systems changes in a timely manner and in support of a modern IP framework.
  • Achieve operational cost and process efficiencies.
  • Modernize the CIPO IT portfolio through the on-time, on-budget and on-scope delivery of projects.

Commitments:

  • Implement a series of incremental improvements, following a component-based approach for modernizing CIPO's IT environment (including documentation management, business intelligence, and client relationship management).
  • Adopt commercial off-the-shelf solutions to streamline and consolidate technology and platforms, while promoting reuse across CIPO. Manage the implementation and scope of individual initiatives with a focus on reducing risk and complexity.
  • Ensure all projects in the Strategy contribute to improving CIPO's ability to effectively deliver on its mission and mandate; balance projects having strong business benefits and return on investment with those that are necessary to support better business decisions and practices.

How We Will Define Success

CIPO will have in place a responsive IT infrastructure built on a reusable, component-based architecture that supports CIPO's ability to encourage innovation, and responds to the needs of the IP community. Individual projects designed to enable CIPO to provide effective and efficient services, as well as enhanced accessibility to the innovative knowledge contained in its databases, will be delivered on time, on budget, and on scope. The IT function will enable CIPO to ensure that operational imperatives are addressed as they arise and operational systems maintain a high level of performance.


Operational Excellence

For any service organization, operational excellence is about empowered employees who are committed to continually improving business processes to better meet the needs of their customers. As a Special Operating Agency of government, CIPO has always paid close attention to prudent management and fulfilling its obligations to customers.

As with any business today, we need to continue to harvest opportunities to provide greater value to our customers — the innovators — by delivering quality IP rights in a timely and cost-efficient manner. CIPO will therefore undertake a comprehensive exercise to become a truly process-based organization focused on improving cost efficiency and creating a smoother, uninterrupted flow of work that more efficiently meets the needs of our customers with respect to timeliness, quality and cost-effectiveness.

Goal: To provide quality IP rights in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Objectives:

  • Ensure efficient and cost-effective delivery of CIPO services.
  • Cultivate a process-based organization that thrives on continuous improvement and adding value to customers.
  • Improve quality and timeliness.
  • Ensure employees have the tools, knowledge and performance information to manage the processes for which they are accountable.

Commitments:

  • Use public and private sector best practices such as Lean, ISO, Hoshin Planning, and ABC/ABM to improve performance throughout the organization.
  • Deepen our understanding of our current state with respect to timeliness, quality and unit costs and identify and adopt improvements targets for each of them.
  • Develop and implement processes and expertise within CIPO so that continuous improvement becomes self-sustaining.
  • Further enhance our performance management and accountability mechanisms to ensure that employees are enabled to set direction, measure results, take ownership of performance and further satisfy external and internal customers.

How We Will Define Success

CIPO will have implemented a strong performance measurement system that supports agency-wide improvements to quality, timeliness and cost efficiency and timely and meaningful reports, metrics, and data that supports strategic and operational decision-making. CIPO will have in place a common approach to continuous process improvement. This will enable management to drive effective change and focus on improving value for customers and Canadians.


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