Canada’s public service and the new global normal of change: Lynch

Former Clerk of the Privy Council Kevin Lynch on the role and challenges for the public service:

The public service plays a core role in our Westminster system of government. It is nonpartisan, it is permanent, serving governments past, present and future, of any political party, with equal loyalty and effectiveness, and its appointments are merit-based. It offers evidence-based policy advice to the government of the day, it administers the policies, programs and regulations approved by Parliament on a nonpartisan basis, and it provides the essential services of government. Given its roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities, a Westminster public service should not be mistaken for an administrative service, nor should it be confused with an American civil service, which is institutionally designed to be partisan and non-permanent at all senior levels.

These same global trends are impacting Canadian public services, both federally and provincially. Demographics—our public services are aging, and recruiting, training and retaining the next generation of public servants, and developing its leaders are a key challenge. The competition for exceptional talent is intensifying, and the public service will be able to attract such talent only if the work environment within government offers the ability to make a difference, help shape policy options and choices, be innovative in service delivery, and do great science. Globalization—a public servant today needs a worldview not a parochial one, an understanding that something happening anywhere in the world can have impacts here in Canada. And technology—innovations in ICT, social media, cloud computing, data analytics and adaptive learning have enormous potential to reshape both the “back office” of government operations and the “citizen-facing” service delivery and interaction functions.

The public service is under stress, both responding to these demographic, globalization and technology pressures and dealing with a challenging governance environment. At a time when Canada faces many longer-term policy issues, there seems to be little demand for public service policy advice. At a time when the private sector is shifting to distributed leadership and entrepreneurship models and risk management, the governance model of the federal government is moving towards ever greater centralization and risk aversion. At a time when attracting and retaining superb talent to the federal public service is facing stiff competition from the private sector here and abroad, there is ambiguity from the government itself about the importance of government and governance to the economy and society in these transforming global times—hardly motivating to prospective public servants. As leading experts on the public service such as Donald Savoie have stressed, the apparent antipathy of the government today toward the public service may have deleterious long term impacts on the public service as an institution.

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/07/09/canadas-public-service-and-the-new-global-normal-of-change/ (paywall)