Spy agency workers complain about open-office workspace

Report says noise and other distractions spoil employees' focus

Employees at Canada’s secretive spy agency say their open-office workspace is too noisy and visually distracting to focus on their jobs.

“Auditory and visual distractions … from an open-office environment were a concern expressed by most survey respondents,” says an evaluation report from the Communications Security Establishment, or CSE.

Staff also expressed “dissatisfaction with kitchenette/work area separation and a few with lightning in key areas,” says the internal report. “Implicit in these findings is that distractions decrease productivity and efficiency.”

The October 2024 evaluation examined CSE’s Research Directorate, which develops cryptography, cyber security and artificial intelligence to support the agency’s spy missions.

A heavily redacted copy of the 118-page document, marked TOP SECRET, was obtained under the Access to Information Act. The record was delivered more than three months past the legal deadline – and only after a complaint to the Information Commissioner of Canada.

The evaluation included a survey of employees about job satisfaction, with “significant numbers” responding that they were unhappy about their physical workspace. The number who answered the survey is blacked out, as is the detailed response data.

The report noted that CSE has tried to mitigate office distractions with privacy barriers, a new glass wall and higher partitions between cubicles, largely to no avail.

“[C]oncern was expressed that the default setup is that of the open-office, and that working to change the space … is extremely burdensome, difficult to navigate and has been largely unsatisfactory.”

Office distractions are particularly hard on workers who “require solitary thought and focus on the creation of new ideas,” says the report. In addition, new employees and contractors not accustomed to open-office environments found the workplace distracting.

A copy of the released report is available here:

CSE Research Directorate Evaluation

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Most of the evaluation findings pertaining to other aspects of the Research Directorate’s work are almost completely redacted. But one section that’s only partially blacked out raises the alarm about “significant delays” in receiving funds approved by Parliament.

As an example, the report refers to the 2022 federal budget, which announced almost $900 million in new funding for CSE, spread over five years, to strengthen Canada’s cyber security. Some of the funds were earmarked for the Research Directorate, though the amount is blacked-out in the released version of the evaluation.

The first year of that extra funding destined for the directorate lapsed entirely, the money left unspent, because of the onerous process of formally applying for it through the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS), the government’s financial gatekeeper.

“[T]here were significant delays associated with the TBS submissions process related to the Budget 2022 proposal .. which was largely perceived by program management as a long and arduous process,” says the report. “As a result, the first year of funding lapsed.”

The federal government’s annual accounting of spending, the Public Accounts of Canada, shows that in 2022-23, CSE did lapse – that is, failed to spend – about $12 million that had been allocated to it by Parliament. The public accounts do not break down the Research Directorate’s share of the lapse.

The evaluation also highlighted delays at the Research Directorate in signing contracts for goods and services. As an example, the report cited one contract involving large language models (LLM), a sophisticated form of artificial intelligence, that took almost a year to award to an outside company.

The process, begun on March 13, 2023, involved 32 separate steps before the final signing of the deal on Mar. 7, 2024. Many of the steps involved repeated vetting by Public Services and Procurement Canada.

The agency declined to respond to questions about funding lapses and slow contracting, citing national security. But it said it helps employees “who are finding challenges with the open-concept space.”

“Everything from noise cancelling headphones, to changing desk locations or privacy booths is considered to help maintain a conducive work environment,” CSE said in a statement.

CSE has about 3,500 employees and an annual budget of more than $1 billion. The shadowy agency is responsible for capturing foreign electronic signals and analyzing them, and for protecting Canada’s infrastructure and networks from cyber attacks.

Earlier this month, the agency got its knuckles rapped in Parliament for improperly sharing information about Canadians with its international partners between 2020 and 2023. CSE did not provide details of the privacy breaches.