Lobbying Compliance Manager - Features and Benefits
- Automatic Detection of Reportable Information
- Synthesizing Information Reportable to the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada
- Individual Accountability
- Customization
- Shared List of Reusable Office Holders (Contacts)
- Printing
- Searching
- Technical Support
Automatic Detection of Reportable Information
The individuals in your organization only need to enter in the compliance manager the lobbying activities, such as Advocacy Initiatives and Communications, in which they engage. The compliance manager will automatically detect newly entered information that needs to be reported to the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada. For example, if an individual communicates with a Government Department with whom your organization has never previously communicated, the compliance manager will automatically detect this so that it can be reported to the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada at the end of the reporting period.
Automatic detection will detect the following changes that need to be reported to the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada:
- New Advocacy Initiatives your organization advocates for- New Government Institutions with whom your organization had contacts
- New Subject Matters on which your organization had contacts
- New Communication Techniques used by your organization in its lobbying activities
- New Individuals within your organization that engage in lobbying activities
- All communications with Designated Public Office Holders
Synthesizing Information Reportable to the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada
All the information entered into the compliance manager that needs to be reported to the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada is presented in a synthesized report which contains only the reportable information.
Using this report, the officer responsible for filing the information required under the Act can quickly and easily identify what needs to be reported. The information provided in the report must be reported to the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada using their public web site http://www.ocl-cal.gc.ca/.
The compliance manager promotes accountability in three important ways:
1) Each member of your organization that engages into lobbying activities that are subject to reporting requirements will have a user account in the compliance manager. Each member of your organization will be responsible for entering information on their lobbying activities in the compliance manager. Any information entered that must be reported will be detected by the compliance manager. See Automatic Detection of Reportable Information above.
2) The compliance manager automatically tracks which member of your organization entered what information and when it was entered. Any subsequent changes to the information entered are also tracked. It is thus possible to determine which user is responsible for a particular piece of information in the compliance manager.
3) The officer responsible for filing can rapidly verify which users have entered communications during a reporting period and which users have submitted a Nil Report (i.e. an indication they had nothing to report for that reporting period). Thus the officer responsible for filing can ensure that individuals within your organization are fulfilling their responsibilities.
The compliance manager is fully customizable to meet your specific needs. There are two ways that you can customize the compliance manager to meet your organization’s specific needs:
1) You can add, modify, or remove any value that appears in lists that require users to make a selection. You have complete control over the contents of those lists.
2) For each type of record in the compliance manager (Advocacy Initiatives, Communications, Public Office Holders), it is possible to add custom information fields that are required by you. For example, it is possible to
- Add a date field to the Public Office Holder records to enter their date of birth.- Add a text field to the Public Office Holder records to enter their email.
- Add a text field to the Advocacy Initiative records to enter the member in your organization responsible for that initiative.
Shared List of Reusable Office Holders (Contacts)
An Office Holder or contact with whom your organization has communications needs to be entered into the compliance manager only once. All users will be able to select that Office Holder in the communications they enter, without having to re-enter the Office Holder’s contact information and details.
Each screen within the compliance manager can easily be printed in a printer friendly view.
An advanced search feature is provided for each type of record in the system (Advocacy Initiatives, Communications, Public Office Holders). Users can specify search criteria for any of the information fields that make up a type of record.
Users of the system can send questions to the A.I.M.S. technical support team directly from the compliance manager using a button on the main toolbar.