Harper’s Accountability Act, ten years on: Flumian and Salgo

This lengthy commentary is well worth reading and is should provoke considerable and deeper discussion both within and outside government beyond the online comments.

Would be interesting to hear from some of the former public servants who worked on the Act for their take:

Still, our own view, bluntly, is that both the Act and the audit culture it sustains are fundamentally wrongheaded, and have contributed to a normative culture that is a roadblock to modernization. Far from fostering genuinely efficient stewardship of public resources, this culture over-manages minor risks in government, ignores far larger ones, and stifles appropriate risk-taking and innovation. If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is serious about its focus on delivering better outcomes for Canadians, it needs to shift to a system of accountability that is itself more focused on outcomes and less on micro constraints and the avoidance of blame.

To this day, the FedAA — which was actually part of a broader program of initiatives described as the “Federal Accountability Action Plan” — stands, we would argue, as the definitive legislative monument to risk-averse, blame-avoiding institutional rigidity in the government of Canada.

So, as the Act approaches its tenth anniversary, we may well ask: Accountability for what? Has government become more accountable as a result of the act? More to the point, has the FedAA and similarly-spirited initiatives contributed to better societal outcomes? Does it position the Canadian government to evolve nimbly to meet the challenges of governing in the digital age?

…A methodologically rigorous assessment of the impact of the FedAA — like one of the need for it — remains to be conducted. To date, much reported criticism draws on a broadly negative assessment by the public service textured by compelling personal anecdotes. A public service thumbs-down is neither definitive nor something that should be casually dismissed. Indeed, a systematic survey of public service experience would make a good starting point for a robust analysis. In the meantime, however, our principal basis for assessing the FedAA remains a parsing of what the legislation did and did not do.

Before assessing the individual elements of the legislation, let’s consider its overall thrust. Did this act about accountability have anything to say about being accountable for better outcomes? For working collaboratively on horizontal files? Did it give deputy ministers the responsibility and flexibility to improve the bottom line? Indeed, did it include any inducements to work pro-actively for improvements?

On the contrary, almost every provision was a further proscription, a more refined behavioural restraint, an intensification of scrutiny to smoke out unknown misdemeanours. And more to the point, the requirements of this regime could be satisfied in a purely negative way — that is, not by actually delivering something good, but by keeping your head down and avoiding blame.

As befits accountability legislation, the FedAA strengthened internal audit requirements in government departments and designated deputy heads as “accounting officers” for their organizations, meaning that they had to account in some way to Parliament for their managerial custodianship. Now, internal auditing is itself a laudable practice — one that that should actually be welcomed by a CEO as a tool for keeping tabs on the organization. However, the actual impact of internal audits on government departments is an area that merits closer study; the decision to conduct an audit by external committees may at least initially have reinforced a tendency to see the function as something to be managed rather than embraced.

As for the accounting officer function, this was evidently structured to minimize the risk of public servants becoming politically accountable to Parliament (itself a defensible goal). Partly for this reason, the responsibility is cast heavily in terms of demonstrating compliance with Treasury Board rules. But again, that is really not an outcome-oriented focus for deputy ministerial accountability, and it is highly unlikely that disregard for Treasury Board requirements was a significant problem in the deputy community. There is also the possibility that it reinforced a siloed focus on one’s own department.

…We need to replace what the FedAA has given us — more detailed rules and more costly and powerful people to oversee them; a chilling effect on public service and engagement with the outside world; and redoubled focus on departmental siloes and accountability conceived as compliance — with a system oversight and accountability that hones in on real risks across the system and that encourages collaboration, innovation and a focus on outcomes. Are public servants accountable for ticking boxes, or for helping the government of the day improve the lives of Canadians in meaningful ways?

If there is a real risk to the effective governance in Canada today, it is the risk that government will not meet these challenges, diminish in relevance, and be beaten at its own game by external providers of goods and services with no mandate to look out for the public interest.

Source: Harper’s Accountability Act, ten years on