Talent Cloud Results Report

Perhaps the single most common question we get asked about Talent Cloud is some version of, “Is this going to replace the Public Service Commission’s GC Jobs platform? Has anyone thought about that?”

Here are the responses. No, it’s highly unlikely that Talent Cloud will become the replacement for GC Jobs. And yes, people have thought about it.

The Public Service Commission has been on a multi-year journey to consider the replacement for the GC Jobs platform. It’s a significant undertaking that requires diligence. The choice of platform replacement will impact the talent engine for the entire Government of Canada, and that means that the risks to Canadians could be substantial if the choice isn’t made correctly. The Public Service Commission team has been involved in extensive planning since 2016 to identify the requirements of a new platform, and has faced numerous considerations in its deliberations.

The Public Service Commission, on the advice of an analysis by a third party reviewer, has opted to take the procurement path for an external system purchase, rather than a government-built solution.

For reference, Talent Cloud has never been commissioned by any Government of Canada authority to provide a costing and timeline analysis of what it would take to scale the Talent Cloud platform GC-wide, with the features list the Public Service Commission requires. Similarly, the team has never been commissioned to scope options for a transition plan for ownership and operation of the Talent Cloud platform. When the third party analysis was done for the Public Service Commission, Talent Cloud was not reviewed by the third party team making the assessment; their researchers never met with our team, nor did they receive a demo of the product or materials provided by Talent Cloud on the platform’s build trajectory and early results. No live A/B staffing test of Talent Cloud versus potential external vendors has been conducted against measured objectives.

The question of whether or not Talent Cloud could (with the right resources) be used more widely as a staffing vehicle for the Government of Canada remains a thought experiment. It’s the team’s belief that with sufficient resources, operational structure, and support, the Talent Cloud platform could continue to scale to become a fully fledged recruitment and mobility solution for the Government of Canada.