Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Justice. It's no secret, I think, at this point that I am definitely a supporter of integrated service delivery, and I know that we've heard it mentioned time and again in this House. I want to better understand what the goal is of this Cabinet, during this Assembly, for integrated service delivery and what timelines we can expect to see. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister of Justice.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The idea of having a full-government approach to integrated service delivery and rolling this out across the GNWT is a big aspiration, and it takes a lot of work. It's an entire culture shift. It's not something that can be done overnight, although I wish I could snap my fingers and have it done. I share the Member's passion on this, so perhaps I can talk a bit about what's been done and some potential timelines.
In January, the territorial director for integrated service delivery engaged with over 100 GNWT staff to provide information on the fundamentals of integrated service delivery to start getting information out there. As well, the Territorial Senior Management Committee, which is comprised of senior managers from the various departments, are advocates for integrated service delivery within their departments. Most recently, a visioning exercise was completed with the management committee on February 2nd and 3rd to focus on change management and readiness and resulted in a solid understanding by all members of the committee of what the conceptual framework could look like for integrated service delivery. By April of this year, the department will have the conceptual framework finalized, and this work is critical to developing a real work plan, where we can actually start rolling things out. Working groups will be formalized based on the framework, and they are going to be likely linked to specific actions, to carry out specific actions. These working groups will develop the key milestones and timelines related to each of the actions.
One example is integrated case management. There are other places in the territory where they are doing some interesting things to integrate service delivery, for example in the Tlicho region, so perhaps there could be a demonstration site there, as an example. We have not had those discussions yet, but I am just throwing that out there. It's also the development of standards of practice and training. There is a lot of work that needs to happen, but I can assure the Member that I am fully committed. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I appreciate that it's a big aspiration and will require an entire culture shift, but I think that there are some pieces that we can start working on right now. I appreciate the Minister laying out some of the ones that they are working on. The City of Yellowknife drafted a homelessness plan, and it indicated a need for coordinated access to front-line services, so I am wondering: how is the Department of Justice creating government-wide coordinated access through common intake and access points to better serve NWT residents? That is so that people are not running from department to department to department to put together the pieces that they need, not only to survive but thrive.
As to the city's initiative, the territorial director of integrated service delivery has committed to joining any of those discussions and participating and contributing and learning. What we are looking at is seeing how we can perhaps co-locate services and collaborate in other ways immediately instead of waiting for this giant shift to take place, so that work is happening right now. There are some examples. There are things like the child- and youth-care counsellors; obviously, integrated case management; family preservation workers; the territorial-based support teams in ECE. There are a bunch of things that are happening, but we are not waiting for the final plan. We are trying to do what we can now, understanding that there is a need.
I am really happy to hear that because I know it's a huge undertaking, but I think it's a really important undertaking for us to make as many steps forward as we can on. I am wondering if the GNWT departments will be signing an integrated service delivery MoU between social envelope departments and relevant stakeholders and if that is part of the plan of the working group and the framework that they are putting together in April.
The departments have already signed an MoU. All of the social envelope departments, the deputy ministers have signed an MoU committed to carrying this forward, and partnerships with communities and community organizations are essential. Going forward, I am not sure how they are going to formalize those or what is needed, but they are essential. We will be working with them, MoU or not.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. The Minister touched on my next question a little bit, and that is in regard to privacy. I appreciate that this next question might be a little bit difficult to answer right now, but I am wondering if the GNWT intends to create an integrated information management system to better support NWT residents and prevent re-collection of relevant personal information, support networks, and support history. One of the things that I think could be really positive of that is people might be falling through the cracks at the same point a lot of times as they work through their crisis with GNWT systems. Without being able to kind of track the care that somebody is receiving, we might not be seeing important kind of consistencies in care and consistencies of where people end up falling through the cracks. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
It would be great to have "one system to rule them all" and not have to worry about trying to mesh different systems together, but the fact is that it's difficult. We know that from systems that we currently have that do not talk to each other, and so we really need to know a lot more about what we are going to do. We really need a solid plan before we invest in something like that. At this point, there is not a plan to create this system, but we really do need to put in the work to make sure that we do not just spend a whole bunch of money for nothing. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.
