General assessment
Update
INAC is currently seeking feedback on transfer payment policies and tools, including the General Assessment. To learn more about how you can participate, visit our engagement page. Feedback received through this engagement will contribute to a review of these policies and tools.
The General Assessment supports the management of funding agreements that have been negotiated between the Department and funding recipients.
Completed by Departmental staff, and then shared and discussed with recipients, the General Assessment provides an annual snapshot of the funding recipient's past performance. It also identifies strengths and emerging risks that may have an impact on how the Department manages its transfer payments to recipients.
The General Assessment Workbook is used to assess the following risk factors: governance, planning, financial management, program management and other considerations. Information about recipients is compared to a series of benchmarks that describe different risk levels and the recipient is assigned a risk level according to the following categories: "low", "medium" or "high".
The General Assessment Workbook tool is used to complete the General Assessment for all funding recipients, including new applicants, to support an equitable and consistent approach to managing funding agreements. This ensures that there is more transparency and accountability for both the recipient and the department.
The General Assessment supports increased flexibility by assessing the capacity of recipients to access a wider range of funding approaches, including multi-year funding agreements. It also allows for longer-term planning by identifying areas for improvement that the recipient can then discuss with the Department to develop solutions together.
Targeting specific areas for improvement in this way also allows the Department to identify areas where capacity development efforts can be made to support a recipient's own efforts to achieve greater autonomy in managing agreements.
Depending on the results of this General Assessment, reporting requirements may be adjusted for a recipient. This would allow the Department to work more closely with the recipient with higher risk profiles. For example, a recipient with a lower risk profile may be required to submit fewer reports than a recipient with a higher risk profile.
The results of the General Assessment will potentially affect the duration of funding agreements, the frequency and type of monitoring activities (and related reporting requirements), the flexibility of the funding arrangement and a recipient's eligibility for certain funding approaches.
The General Assessment is an evolving tool used by the Department to arrive at measuring funding agreement management risks. It is one of the elements of the approach to implementing the Treasury Board Secretariat's Policy on Transfer Payments (PTP).