Wernick: Can angst about productivity lead to serious public-service reforms?

2024/06/29 Leave a comment

Quite a good list along with good advice. The degree to which a Conservative government will not only have the courage to engage in public service reforms but equally important the intelligence and sophistication to ensure effective and sound reforms remains in question. And yes, of course, avoid across the board cuts and focus on programs that are lesser priorities or of questionable value:

…Borrowing the language of the productivity economists, the agenda that flows from a serious discussion of public-sector productivity would include:

  • The quality of the labour input – and whether there is enough investment and effort put into training and enhancing skills;
  • Management acumen – and the effort and investment put into developing the capabilities of middle and senior leadership;
  • Substitution of capital for labour – and the effort and investment put into continuous upgrading of technologies used for external and internal services;
  • Process efficiency – and the scope for gains in time and quality that are still to be harvested by pushing farther on end-to-end digital and harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to assist humans;
  • Stripping out layers of middle management but equipping those who remain with the training and tools to do their jobs;
  • Shedding assets and right-sizing the physical footprint: spoiler alert: this will encounter stiff political resistance from MPs and mayors;
  • Enhancing the quality and timeliness of information for decision-making;
  • Streamlining the heavy burden of internal controls and reporting that has accreted over the years;
  • Reviewing the oversight system of incentives and disincentives to intelligent risk-taking that shapes behaviours;
  • Hacking away at barriers to faster hiring, redeployment and termination of staff;
  • Reviewing which functions can be outsourced and which should remain in-house, while making sure there will be adequate training in effectively managing external contractors.

These happen to be many of the issues that a serious attempt at public-sector reform would want to tackle.

One key difference between a serious productivity-centred approach and the simple across-the-board austerity that governments tend to use is that it could draw attention to the high cost of neglecting the internal government-to-government functions such as finance, human resources, information management, procurement, comptrollership and oversight.

These are functions that in past periods of fiscal retrenchment have taken a heavy share of cuts because they are glibly labelled as “overhead,” with unfortunate consequences.

The growth in the number of people employed by the public sector, especially at the federal level, has drawn a lot of attention. There are better and worse ways to think about bringing the number down. Hoping for the best from random attrition isn’t a good one.

The best approach, in my view, would be to recognize that those numbers are attached to specific programs, services, functions, occupations and locations.

Simply ordering an arbitrary across-the-board cut to operating budgets may achieve short-term fiscal results but will be laden with unintended consequences, sowing dragons’ teeth and causing damage to the longer-term capabilities and effectiveness of the public sector.

If the courage is there, the 2026 budget that follows the next federal election is the next window of opportunity for a thorough program review along the lines of the ones in 1995 and 2012.

Reshape the programs and the impacts on the public service would follow, but the impacts would be intended and proactively managed. There are many ways such a review could be designed.

Setting the table for this program review should be a serious exercise to delve into public-sector productivity that is honest about the longer-term goal of reducing staff numbers. Pretending that there won’t be job cuts in the next decade isn’t being honest with public servants or Canadians.

A bolder way to approach the inevitable downsizing would be to say clearly that we want the public service to be smaller, flatter and more agile.

The core idea could be to borrow the constructs from climate policy of setting targets that guide decision-making and investment, and incent technological innovation.

An ambitious version of this would be “20 by 30” – the government could set a goal to reduce the size of the federal public service by 20 per cent by 2030.

Using this target, it could then move on to seriously attack the issues of productivity and effectiveness, embrace the challenges and opportunities of AI and focus on strengthening the longer-term capabilities we need in our public sector.

Source: Can angst about productivity lead to serious public-service reforms?

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

David Mulroney: The next PM must remind Canada’s public servants who really runs the show 

2024/06/27 Leave a comment

From former Harper era DM responsible for the Afghanistan Task Force and Ambassador to China. A mix of foreign policy advice and commentary on the public service as a whole. Should, as likely, the Conservatives win the election, the public service will face a considerable challenge, just as it did under Harper:

…Untangling this mess will require a combination of culture change and restructuring. We can no longer entrust our international affairs to ideologically rigid and determinedly non-accountable public servants. People need to be reminded that the price of fearless advice is loyal implementation.

We also need to recover the principle that foreign aid is an element of foreign policy, not the other way around.

Thinking about foreign aid should also include consideration of our own economic interests, opportunities for safeguarding Canadian health and welfare, and implications for Canada’s defence and security.

It’s also entirely reasonable to expect that our foreign aid will win us friends rather than lose them, something worth considering the next time we seek a non-permanent seat on the Security Council.

Repairing the damage will involve rebuilding capacity in the public service in general and in the foreign service in particular, something that will require vastly improved recruitment, personnel management, and training.

A new government should also commence replenishing the now almost empty pool of senior public servants with the experience in international affairs necessary to run the department whose business that is.

Above all, we need to recover some traditionally Canadian humility and respect for others. The objective of international assistance is not to transform a foreign country into a simulacrum of ultra-progressive Canada. We need to listen, to learn, and to help build local capacity, allowing our partners in the developing world to be responsible for their own futures.

Source: David Mulroney: The next PM must remind Canada’s public servants who really runs the show 

Filed under foreign policy, Government Tagged with

Yakabuski: The federal public service is broken. Is it too late to fix it?

2024/05/27 Leave a comment

Good long if dispiriting read with no easy or quick fixes:

…Canada is hardly the only parliamentary democracy to witness the degradation of its public service and concentration of power in the prime minister’s office, with a resultant decline in the quality and effectiveness of public policy. Britain’s Commission on the Centre of Government recently released its own report on deleterious impact of this phenomenon. “The centre [of government] in recent years has become far too dominant yet far too ineffective. It has scooped out initiative and all but emasculated Whitehall departments, which alternately try to second-guess what the flip-flop centre thinks and are micromanaged by it,” the commission’s deputy chairman, historian Sir Anthony Seldon, wrote in The Sunday Times. (Whitehall is British shorthand for the public service.)

More than ever, in our darkening age of political polarization, we need a neutral and non-partisan public service to guide major policy decisions. And we need competent public servants to implement them without fear or favour. The Trudeau Liberals have done themselves and Canadians a disservice by failing to recognize that a policy-capable and operationally efficient public service is any government’s best asset. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who speaks disparagingly of “gatekeepers” of all sorts, has given no indication he understands that either.

What future does that suggest for a country that faces chronic (and related) budget and productivity deficits and desperately needs to develop sustainable, affordable and equitable policies to address them both? We cannot expect them to come out of the PMO. Its dominance is partly what got us into this mess.

Source: The federal public service is broken. Is it too late to fix it?

Filed under Government Tagged with , , ,

The Liberals strike a blow for government secrecy

2024/05/25 Leave a comment

Sigh, but so endemic of all governments in undermining ATIP:

…A system predicated on the notion that everything but the most classified government documents and data ought to be public has become a tool for Canadians governments to do what they instinctively do best: hoard information.

Let’s be blunt about why they do this: to keep information out of the hands of citizens, because an informed citizenry is an empowered citizenry. Governments aren’t so much jealously squirreling away information as they are sucking the lifeblood out of the democratic system.

Mr. Trudeau came to power vowing to set a sunny example by making information open by default to all Canadians. Then he discovered what every new prime minister discovers: that the default preference in Canada’s halls of power is to keep voters in the dark.

He could still restore his reputation on this issue. He should allow the independent review of the system and restore the Commissioner’s funding. It’s not too late for the Prime Minister to live up to what are still very good ideals.

Source: The Liberals strike a blow for government secrecy

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

Patrice Dutil: Parks Canada chooses identity politics over giving Sir John A. Macdonald his due

2024/05/23 Leave a comment

Valid critique. Parks Canada used to have a balanced approach in its interpretative displays that invariably provoked controversy from some groups for not totally accepting their narrative from my experience with the Canadian Historical Recognition Program.

Just as Canadian Heritage had trouble adjusting to the Harper government, seems like Parks Canada will be due for a reckoning should the Conservatives, as is likely, form the next government:

Parks Canada launched its new characterization of Sir John A. Macdonald over the Victoria Day long weekend when it reopened Bellevue House in Kingston, Ontario after six long years of restoration. The spectacle, steeped in identity politics, has rightly been criticized for portraying our founding prime minister as among Canada’s worst-ever villains. 

For fans of Canadian architecture and home design and for friends of history, this was an important event. Bellevue House is a gem in the Canadian urban landscape. It was built in 1840 for a prosperous Kingston merchant in an improbable Italian Villa style that features a square central tower and two wings deployed on either side. Think of it as a proud Canada goose standing and opening its wings, inviting visitors inside. It is as welcoming today as it was when I first visited it as part of a school field trip in grade 7, well over 50 years ago.

Macdonald rented the place for about a year in 1848-1849. Back in those days, it was located in the suburbs of Kingston and he had picked it as a place of rest for his wife Isabella who had given birth to their first child John Jr. It was a big house—far too big for a small family—and it was expensive. Sadly, it turned out to be the place of terrible tragedy for the young couple, as their son died there before he was barely a year old. 

In Macdonald’s long and impressive life, Bellevue House is nothing but an asterisk. His stay was short, no big decisions were hatched there, he never owned it, and he did not even write about it. Two other places in Canada are far more important: the Macdonald-Mowat House on St. George Street in Toronto, which has been beautifully restored by the University of Toronto, and Earnscliffe, Macdonald’s grand home overlooking the Ottawa River in Ottawa, which has long been owned by the British government (it serves as the private residence of the British High Commissioner). 

Ottawa bought Bellevue House in 1964 in preparation for Canada’s Centennial. It was opened as a historic park three years later. Because of its association with Canada’s first prime minister, a connection between exquisite architecture and politics was cemented. 

The Trudeau government had choices to make when it closed the house for long-overdue repairs in 2017 (it had suffered neglect and its visiting hours had been reduced by the Harper government). It could have sold it for redevelopment. It could have negotiated an arrangement with Kingston so as to offer much-needed museum space to a beautiful city that has done everything to show it no longer wants any association with its most famous resident. 

It could have approached nearby Queen’s University to make the place useful all year round to students (instead it will be mothballed for eight months each year). It could have made it a museum dedicated to Indigenous Peoples or to Canada’s multiculturalism. Why not a museum dedicated to Canada’s workers? Instead, it decided to keep Bellevue House fixated on Macdonald. The website for the national historical site now opens with telling lines. From the second word, the link is made between Macdonald and the First Nations: 

Hello, Shé:kon, Aaniin. At Bellevue House National Historic Site, many voices present the complex legacy of Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. Come for the experience, engage with the stories, and join the conversation about Canadian history.

It continues:

Don’t miss this opportunity to experience the history of Sir John A. Macdonald in the 1840’s setting, while engaging in conversations about the complex and lasting legacies of Canada’s first prime minister.

There is no hint of official bilingualism. Nothing about nation-building, about the achievement of institutionalizing Confederation, or about the hardships of politically uniting a difficult country. Not a word about the economic difficulties that marked Macdonald’s time, or about the massive emigration from Canada in those years. Nothing about the hardships of women in the 19th century, or about the children who were lucky to survive past age 10 and who were typically sent to work from that point onwards. 

Instead, the re-opening of the historic Bellevue House provides yet another embarrassing display of national flagellation, triggered by the adoption of the Trudeau government’s Framework for History and Commemoration (2019), a short-signed guideline not designed to enlighten but instead to demonize Canada’s past and those who (mostly volunteered) to preserve it. 

The opening ceremonies were clear: the mission of the reborn national site is not to celebrate Kingston’s most important (by far) citizen, a man who led a national party to six electoral majorities and who was joyously celebrated in his own lifetime even by his adversaries, but to trot out the usual tropes: he was a racist, a drunk, a man who hated Indigenous peoples to the point of starving them or forcing them to go to school. A man who probably did not like women or immigrants either. Couched in terms of a “timely conversation” the Parks Canada staff’s apparently closed-door consultations with local Indigenous groups recrafted the focus to be Macdonald-Bellevue. 

Not surprisingly, there is a display about residential schools. Academic Channon Oyeniran gave introductory remarks at the reopening ceremony and talked about how the event was a “testament” to the “rewriting of this history.” She was being honest. No known historian of Macdonald, Kingston, or Victorian Upper Canada was even invited.

Dan Maracle, the chief of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte, was quoted as saying that Bellevue “Now does a better job of encompassing all of Macdonald’s legacy,” urging Canadians “to learn more about the country’s Indigenous Peoples and their culture.” He continued: “If you learn about the history of the country, then that might actually create a desire to do better in the future.” One has to ask: what would Chief Maracle do without Macdonald the villain?

The reality is that Bellevue House is a fake, as it has always been. Its architecture was borrowed from a place far away and its association with John and Isabella Macdonald was tenuous at best. There are no Macdonald artifacts on display (except, maybe, a crib) because the family was house-poor and had little in the way of furniture—Macdonald was 34 years old, barely earning a living as a lawyer, with no money to buy the expensive items that are now on display and presented as totems of privilege. 

To add insult to injury, Bellevue House will now be used to heave all the ills of the Victorian era on Macdonald’s shoulders. Ignoring the fact that he was the product of democracy, today the government of Canada, which he helped create, continues to ransack the history of the country and goes out of its way to ensure Macdonald gets a kicking. 

The debacle at Bellevue House shows just how Prime Minister Trudeau continues to lead the march of the historical boodle brigade. His first step was to jettison Sir Hector Langevin, Macdonald’s favourite minister (a stalwart Quebec federalist who was as loyal and he was hard-working as minister of public works). The prime minister then did nothing to denounce the vandalism of Macdonald statues on his watch. Instead, he continuously disparages the politics and policies of his predecessors (Liberals included). 

Among his final gestures will be this fiasco at Bellevue House. For this government cannot miss an opportunity, however small, to kneecap its first prime minister’s reputation. On the other hand, there will be plenty of opportunities to boycott Bellevue House.

Source: Patrice Dutil: Parks Canada chooses identity politics over giving Sir John A. Macdonald his due

Filed under Aboriginal, Government Tagged with , , ,

May: Building a culture of public service on hybrid work, Speer: It’s time for public servants to return to the office

2024/05/20 Leave a comment

Some good comments by those interviewed:

….Spicer, who teaches values and ethics, expects the government will face clashes between “individual values and organizational values.”

“There hasn’t been a lot of weight put behind ethics … and we now have a lot of younger folks coming in who don’t have the same kind of understanding of what it means to be a public servant, what it means to act purely within the public interest,” he says.

Spicer says many have a weaker connection to the notion of public service. Some still have the “spark” and see it as a calling. Others, however, see it as little more than a secure and steady job with benefits. Then there are advocates who want to advance a cause, such as climate change or sustainability.

The last group is more likely to quit if they don’t see progress, if their advice isn’t taken or if a change in government takes policy in a different direction or undoes policies, Spicer says.

New recruits are also more culturally diverse. Many have experience in the private sector, other levels of government or are transitioning between sectors. They tend to be professionals, bring expertise from their respective fields and often identify more closely with their profession’s code of conduct than with traditional public service norms.

The era of social media and gig employment

Spicer says they grew up on social media and juggling different jobs. Many see no reason why they can’t voice their opinions on social media or pursue a side hustle while working in government – both of which were traditionally frowned upon and are still controversial.

Public servants claim to be more productive since they began working from home, but a consensus that government needs fixing has emerged. It is too big, slow and risk-averse to deliver its basic services, let alone get ready for the world’s crises. On top of that, trust in government is dropping.

Turnbull says the political timeline “is already so much faster than the public service timeline” and working from home slows that down. The “values-transmission question” is urgent, especially with so many new public servants, she argues.

Fox says the government is committed to a hybrid work model, but departments must be more deliberate about creating a workplace culture that reflects “who we are.”

“We’ve got to have more emphasis on our environment and our learning within so people feel that they’re part of something larger and they understand the responsibilities that come with that.”

Linda Duxbury, a professor of management at Carleton University and expert on work-life balance and remote work, counters that both the unions and the government are misguided in the battle over hybrid work.

She argues there is no one-size-fits-all solution and that people need to be where the jobs can be done. A meat inspector must go to a processing plant and a customs officer must go to the border, but many other public service jobs can be done from anywhere.

However, she added that public servants’ complaints about time and money spent commuting and on lunches and child care are not the employer’s problem. These gripes also don’t fly with Canadians.

“Your job is to serve the public. So, are you serving them? Are you serving yourself?” she asks.

Duxbury says both the government and unions need to “stop with the stupid rhetoric” and start designing jobs to get the best work done. “There is not a simple solution here, so stop talking as if there is.”

Source: Building a culture of public service on hybrid work

And from Sean Speer on the politics and perceptions:

It’s time for Canada’s public servants to return to the office

On last week’s Roundtable podcast, Rudyard Griffiths and I were critical of the public sector unions’ over-the-top reaction to the federal government’s new policy that public servants must be in the office three days per week beginning in September. 

Our weekly exchange generated a bigger reaction than normal. Most of the response was positive. But some were critical of our comments, including those who support remote work in general and those who believed we were wrong to single out public sector workers in particular. 

I thought it might be useful to elaborate on our objections to the union reaction to Ottawa’s back-to-work plan. 

Although we generally think that the negative effects of remote work are underestimated and that all things being equal, workers benefit, individually and collectively, from being in physical proximity with their colleagues, we believe that it’s reasonable to have asymmetric expectations of public sector workers. 

That is to say, while our personal belief is that people should generally be back in the office, we recognize that in the private sector those decisions will be made by employers based on their understanding of the interests of their respective companies. 

Government workers, by contrast, should, in our view, be thought about differently. As taxpayers, we have a collective interest in their workplace arrangements.

There are three chief reasons why we think public servants should be back in the office.

First, we’ve discovered through the We Charity scandal, the ArriveCan scandal, and the details of public servants earning millions of dollars as third-party contractors that there’s a “crisis of culture” in the federal government. One proof-point: The federal public service has grown by more than 40 percent since the Trudeau government took office and yet its service standards and state capacity seem to have deteriorated. Getting back into the office is a crucial step to restoring a more performance-driven culture.

Second, the unionization rate is almost five times higher in the public sector which means that there are inherent limits on the employer’s ability to terminate unproductive or underperforming staff. This is important because we know that public-sector productivity is already generally lower than the private sector’s. Working-from-home can enable public sector workers to lower their productivity even further and yet the government has little to no recourse to address it. Getting back into the office should be understood as a key mechanism for accountability in an employer-employee environment in which traditional forms of accountability are weak or essentially non-existent.

Third, as we discussed on the podcast, there’s something inherently unfair about public sector workers who already benefit, on average, from higher wages, more benefits, and greater job security relative to their private sector peers to also have more flexible workplace arrangements. But there’s also a risk that, in an era of labour scarcity, an asymmetry between the public and private sectors could create perverse incentives for where people want to work. A growing concentration of scarce talent in the public sector due its long list of advantages could come at the expense of Canada’s long-run dynamism and productivity. 

That’s because, whatever the strengths of the public sector, it’s not generally viewed as a source of productivity. Many in fact would argue that Ottawa is actually a drag on productivity—which is to say, the deadweight loss of financing and staffing the government typically subtracts from the more productive deployment of these resources in the broader economy. Therefore, as we face a combination of slowing labour growth and ongoing weak productivity, we cannot afford for the government’s workplace arrangements to distort the labour market. 

The upshot: Federal public servants—it’s time to return to the office. 

Source: https://thehub.ca/2024-05-18/the-weekly-wrap-being-young-doesnt-make-right/

Filed under Government Tagged with , , , , , ,

MacDougall: Memo to the CBC and the public service — prepare to change

2024/05/18 Leave a comment

Fair warning…:

Dear staff at the CBC, Radio-Canada and federal public service:

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your salad days are over. If the polls are correct, Justin Trudeau is destined for the glue factory, with Pierre Poilievre coming in to be your new lord and master.

If you’re feeling some existential dread, that’s good. It means you’re sentient. It means you’re alert to the threat and open to taking advice on how to cope with it. For it’s going to require a shift in attitude.

As a believer in both public broadcasting and a strong public service, I want you to succeed. The country needs you to succeed. After all, the corollary to “Canada is broken” is “Canada needs fixing.” And those fixes will require more than a few strategically promoted YouTube videos. They will require long-term planning and sustained execution, and decisions properly communicated to Canadians. That’s where you can help.

So, what to do (besides reach for the Xanax)?

First, to the CBC and Radio-Canada: I know you will dispute the characterization of the past nine years as “salad days.” It’s tough out there for any media organization, including the CBC. The radio listenership is still strong, but you need a microscope to spot The National’s audience. What Peter Mansbridge bequeathed has been squandered. The picture is rosier in la belle province but not by much.

Let’s be honest: current CEO Catherine Tait has made you look ridiculous. There was the bonus stuff. And all the happy-clappy talk of content, digital and marketing triangles is the buzzword bingo of a media executive who DOESN’T already have a cool billion-plus dollars parked in the budget. It’s the talk of someone struggling to release Meta and X/Twitter’s chokehold, not someone who can quite literally afford to rise above it.

The members of Heritage Minister Pascal St-Onge’s new advisory committee on public broadcasting won’t see it this way, but the days of telling Canadian stories that “inform, enlighten and entertain” are over, at least non-hard-news wise. Canada’s “content” is now but a dribble in the face of the global content hose, and Canadian viewers are voting with their eyeballs. You won’t reverse that trend.

Stories in the form of news — particularly local news — are different. Those stories still need to be told, even if there’s little click money in it. Your job as a public broadcaster should be to water the news deserts springing up all over the country and provide the accountability journalism that no longer sells when forced to compete against sexier content on platforms run by technologists who don’t care about the scrutiny of public officials. This same function should be delivered in Ottawa and the provincial capitals, too. Your mission under a Poilievre government should be to hold a mirror up to power and society, without — and this is the key — advocating for any particular outcome.

Now, to the public service.

Let’s start with the bad: cuts are coming. You can’t increase by nearly 40 per cent in nine years without expecting a trim. The public won’t care about cuts, as you have it better than most. The simplest thing you can do to demonstrate good will is turn up to work. Literally. The pandemic is over. It’s time to come back to your cubicles and look your new bosses in the eyes. For one thing, they’ll be less likely to sack you if you’re one of those actually in the office.

It won’t all be bad news. For one, those consultants the Liberals have hired to do the “real” policy thinking are going to get it in the neck. More to the point, the political wing of the government quite literally cannot do anything without you. This isn’t an invitation to oppose or frustrate, by the way. It’s a reminder that while you advise, the elected officials are the ones who decide what you’ll then execute. Stay on the right side of those roles and responsibilities and it might all just be OK.

Good luck / bonne chance!

Andrew MacDougall is a London-based communications consultant and ex-director of communications to former prime minister Stephen Harper.  

Source: MacDougall: Memo to the CBC and the public service — prepare to change

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

May: Office Blues (government back to office)

2024/05/13 Leave a comment

Unlikely to garner much sympathy (public servants rarely do!) but out of step with overall trend of office workers returning to the office. Not sure how many will actually “demote out” of being an executive. But appreciate the adjustment challenge:

The more than 9,000 executives who normally keep their heads down publicly are raising alarms.

APEX is getting lots of reaction from its members. Executives are now required back in the office four days a week. Some accept the shift as part of the job, but most are disappointed and surprised at the lack of consultation.

Some say they are thinking of leaving executive roles and “demoting out.” There is also a concern that the four-day requirement will discourage people from applying for promotions.

Many feel they don’t have the tools and support to smoothly manage the transition – like they don’t have the space, desks or the office configurations for their teams to be productive.

They also question this decision when the government is committed to reducing half of its office space portfolio over the decade.

Executives feel they have faced many challenges managing teams at a distance while scrambling to deliver programs during the pandemic. This is seen as another one piled onto an already taxing workload. The “straw that broke the camel’s back,” said one.

APEX says stress is high among executives, mental-health claims are rising, and this decision won’t help.

“These issues are real and concerning,” said APEX CEO Carl Trottier. “APEX has started consulting the executive community to better understand their concerns and will advocate tirelessly on their behalf to support them as they are faced with implementation.”

Source: May: Office Blues (government back to office)

Filed under Government Tagged with , , ,

Clark: Results? That’s not Ottawa’s business

2024/05/10 Leave a comment

Unfortunately, outputs trump outcomes, the latter being harder to measure yet being more meaningful:

…In Mr. Trudeau’s early days in power, he called in former British prime minister Tony Blair’s results guru Sir Michael Barber, the author of a book called Deliverology 101, in what was widely seen as a faddish attempt to teach the old bureaucracy new tricks.

A lot of what Sir Michael emphasized was actually pretty straightforward stuff, and it is pretty easy to see why Mr. Trudeau’s government abandoned it.

Sir Michael wanted the government to clearly identify what the success of an initiative would be – not the announcement, but the outcome – and tell people. He suggested the government measure progress, with data. And to change things when they weren’t going as planned.

The zeal for all that drifted away. It’s politically risky. Measuring progress with data – or audits, for that matter – asks questions you might not want answered. Acknowledging mistakes means – heaven forbid – acknowledging mistakes. None of that makes good marketing.

Source: Results? That’s not Ottawa’s business

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

While other countries add services, Canada adds public servants

2024/05/08 Leave a comment

Great header. One important point missing to deliver digital successfully, existing policies and procedures will need significant change. Tech cannot solve all the problems if the policies are too complex to understand and manage:

To change course, we must commit to:

  • Make digital skills a requirement for advancement in government. How will we progress if our leaders lack the skills, experience, and confidence necessary to own successful service delivery?
  • Deliver useful, simple wins quickly. Large projects are far more likely to fail than small ones. Let’s prove we can deliver value fast to restore confidence. The rapid delivery of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit proved that we can achieve wins when we must. 
  • Create a single government interface. Design services around citizen needs rather than around department responsibilities. Thirty-one countries have figured this out.
  • Change both citizen and government behavior.  All Canadians will have to relearn how they interact with their government using the new tools we build. The rewards will be significant: In Estonia, one simple rule—the government may not ask for a piece of information twice—slashed bureaucracy throughout the public sector.
  • Spending, schedules, and performance must be transparent. We’re clearly spending too much on transformation, and not getting enough in return. Yet nobody has a good handle on costs. From now on, every initiative must start with a clear definition of success, and then make simple metrics public throughout the delivery process. 
  • Let leaders do the hard work. There should be no responsibility without authority. If we task someone with making hard—even unpopular, changes—we need to give them the power, resources, and flexibility necessary to deliver citizen-centric services. It’s the only way we’ll attract serious digital talent to public service.
  • Create and re-use standard modules. Create software “building blocks” that make building services faster, easier, and more secure—and then insist that every department uses them. Freeze the budgets of departments who refuse.

In his 1993 resignation address, the then-prime minister Brian Mulroney said, “whether one agrees with our solutions or not, none will accuse us of having chosen to evade our responsibilities by side-stepping the most controversial issues of our time.” 

We have been side-stepping the biggest shift in government of our lifetimes. Digital power will define the best countries of the coming century. If we want to remain among them, we must become a digital-first nation.

Source: While other countries add services, Canada adds public servants

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →