1. Authority and Objectives (Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements (Unaudited))

The department of Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) was established effective June 20, 1996, under the Department of Public Works and Government Services Act. This legislation specifies that PWGSC shall provide common, central and shared services to other government departments and agencies, thereby enabling them to provide programs and services to Canadians. These services are grouped into the following key areas:

• Real Property provides accommodation to federal departments and agencies. It acquires, manages, operates, maintains, builds, repairs and disposes of federal real property in addition to providing professional advice on real property matters to other federal real property custodians;
• Acquisitions offers client departments and agencies a broad base of procurement solutions, such as specialized contracts, standing offers, supply arrangements and electronic marketplaces as well as specialized services such as the management of seized property;
• Information Technology provides a wide range of informatics and telecommunications services to federal departments and agencies, such as providing brokering, developing and/or managing voice and data networks, data centres, distributed computing, applications, Secure Channel and information management;
• Receiver General and Public Service Compensation manages the operations of the federal treasury, including payment issue and revenue collection for all government departments, provides payroll, benefits and pension plan administration services for the Public Service of Canada and prepares the Public Accounts of Canada;
• Consulting, Information and Shared Services provides services aimed at enhancing activities related to communication programs to the public, and provides government consulting services to public sector management. They also deliver corporate administrative services for small departments and agencies, as well as industrial security services for the safeguarding of controlled goods and classified government information and assets;
• Greening Government Operations leads government departments in the greening of their operations by establishing government-wide priorities and accountabilities, and sets targets, timelines and reporting requirements;
• Business Integration determines customer departments' strategic business needs by gathering information on customers' upcoming requirements and ensuring horizontal communications with business lines within the department as well as upward to customers to align their service delivery expectations with PWGSC's evolving service delivery capacity. This program activity was abolished effective as of the fiscal year 2008-2009;
• Audit Services Canada provides auditing services to federal departments and agencies as well as to other governments and international organizations;
• The Translation Bureau helps the government serve Canadians and communicate with them in the official language of their choice by standardizing terminology within the public service and providing translation, revision, interpretation, terminology and technolinguistic services for Parliament, the judiciary, and federal entities.