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

2015/07/13 1 Comment

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)

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Niqab welcome in federal public service: Clement

2015/03/12 Leave a comment

That’s interesting. I am not so sure that in fact a niqab or burqa would be welcome in the federal government workplace but Clement’s comments are a welcome change from that of some of his colleagues.

Contrary to his assertion that hijabs and niqabs are frequently worn in the public service, the number of hijabs I believe is relatively small and I am not aware of any niqab-wearing federal employees. But if any reader knows of any cases, please advise.

Muslim women can’t wear a niqab at a citizenship ceremony but they are perfectly free to wear them working for Canada’s public service, says Treasury Board President Tony Clement.

In an interview with iPolitics, Clement said what counts for him as the head of the federal public service is how well someone gets the job done – not what they are wearing.

“If you are in your place of work or privately in your home or in your private life, what you wear is of no concern to the state,” Clement explained. “But the state does have a concern on citizenship and citizenship is a public demonstration of loyalty and allegiance to Canada and its values and its principles and that’s where the niqab is inappropriate.”

Clement said to his knowledge hijabs and niqabs “are frequently worn” in the public service.

“I’m sure we have employees in the public sector who wear a niqab – I’m sure we do.”

“If you’re carrying on your job and doing your job well then I don’t think we have a problem with that.

The one exception, he said, might be if a hijab or a niqab posed an operational or safety problem.

“I can’t talk about bona fide occupational requirement – if there is an occupational requirement that requires something that might be different.”

Niqab welcome in federal public service: Clement

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Brunt of public service cuts outside of Ottawa, report finds

2015/02/28 Leave a comment

Not surprising, the people making the decisions are in Ottawa-Gatineau. One of the factors contributing to the dramatic fall in citizenship processing in 2012 was cutbacks to CIC’s regional network:

“The bottom line is that, proportionately, there have been more cuts in the regions than in the NCR,” said Mostafa Askari, assistant parliamentary budget officer.

The report found about two-thirds of the job cuts were outside the National Capital Region, where the head offices of most departments and agencies are located.

Overall, the number of jobs in the federal public service has fallen by 7.5 per cent – 6.5 per cent in the National Capital Region – since the 2012 restraint budget.

At that time, the government said 70 per cent of the reductions would come from operational and “back office” efficiencies and wouldn’t even be noticed by most Canadians. The regions, where most of the front-line employees work providing programs and services to Canadians, were to be largely unaffected.

The bulk of the job cuts were supposed to come in the Ottawa area, where the size of the public service has mushroomed over the past decade. The government estimated that 12,000 bureaucrats would be laid off and the remaining 7,000 cuts would be through its five per cent yearly attrition rate.

The PBO offered no explanation as to why a larger portion of the public service has shifted to the national capital or whether this indicated a shift in the nature of work. The public service has changed considerably, becoming more “professional” in hiring new employees and facing an unprecedented generational turnover as baby boomers retire.

The public service has come under fire for being too Ottawa-focused, isolated and out of touch with Canadians. A big focus of the modernization of the public service now underway is to consult and collaborate more when making decisions.

Brunt of public service cuts outside of Ottawa, report finds | Ottawa Citizen.

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Federal government to extend sick-leave changes to executives

2015/02/24 Leave a comment

I was “lucky” that my cancer happened under the old rules:

Unlike unionized employees, executives can get an extra 130 days of paid sick days once in their careers – at the discretion of deputy ministers – which they don’t have to repay. They can use it all at once for a prolonged illness or draw upon it as needed for a recurring illness or during recovery. It’s expected this special leave would disappear under the Conservatives’ plan.

Many executives have banked more unused sick leave than other workers as a cushion in the face of prolonged illness. That stockpile would disappear too.

The government has paid 100 per cent of the executives’ premiums for disability insurance since 1990, while unionized employees contribute 15 per cent of their premium costs. It’s unclear what would happen to that perk.

Executives – along with diplomats and scientists – use the least amount of sick leave in the public service, although they claim more than their counterparts in the private sector. They typically take off less than half the number of sick-leave days of other public servants, who average about 11.5 days a year.

The Association of Professional Executives of the Public Service of Canada (APEX) said the latest five-year trend showed 75 per cent of executives took less than five days annually; 54 per cent took less than one or two days and 30 per cent took no sick leave at all.

Still, APEX, which has tracked the health and work of executives with studies for more than 15 years, found executives are taking more sick days than ever. They averaged 3.5 days in 1997; 3.3 days in 2002 – then 4.3 days in 2007 and 5.4 days in 2012.

Again, these changes will impact those struck with catastrophic illnesses, not those who are abusing the system. And as the stats indicate, little evidence that executives are in fact abusing sick leave and related provisions.

Federal government to extend sick-leave changes to executives | Ottawa Citizen.

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Women reach top in PS but lack clout male counterparts had, study shows

2015/02/24 Leave a comment

Interesting study contrasting the number and impact (disclosure I was interviewed for the study):

It’s one of the many paradoxes uncovered by Carleton University researchers Marika Morris and Pauline Rankin in an interim report on a study of female leadership in the public service where women now dominate, holding more than 55 per cent of all jobs and 45 per cent of the executive positions below deputy ministers.

The study is part of the Women in the Public Service Project, run by the Washington-based Wilson Centre, aimed at getting women into 50 per cent of the world’s public service jobs by 2050.

Canada stands out with a public service that already exceeds the 50 per cent female target. The study is examining the impact women are having on shaping the public service and finding ways to measure it. The report is a springboard for such a debate at Carleton on Tuesday.

“With women accounting for 45 per cent of the executive rank, we no longer ask how to get more women in the public service but what difference it makes having them there,” said Morris.

…But that’s also when public servants started losing their monopoly grip on policy and as the sole, trusted advisers to ministers.

“So just as women are entering senior levels, it is harder now than ever to have an impact,” said Morris.

Women who took executive jobs over the past decade arrived just as developing big policy ideas took a back seat to economic restraint. Accountability, spending and job cuts, and avoiding risks were the order of the day.

It’s also a time when the trust between politicians and bureaucrats is low.

“I heard a lot about changes in the past 10 years, less trust and diminished policy-making role, so now that more women … have made their entry into management, they have less responsibility to actually create policy and programs than public servants had in the past,” said Morris.

She said women also moved into the senior jobs with a management style at odds with the hierarchy and traditional lines of accountability. Morris said many executives — both men and women — interviewed felt they “made a difference” and that often the biggest impact they had came from being “collaborative” leaders.

Women reach top in PS but lack clout male counterparts had, study shows | Ottawa Citizen.

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Public service still shrinking, but signs show hiring picking up

2014/11/06 Leave a comment

PS_Hiring_2013-14Understandably, latest report focus on hiring after recent rounds of downsizing:

In its latest annual report, the Public Service Commission revealed signs the bureaucracy is coming out of a major downsizing and gearing up to hire. More jobs were advertised, more people applied and more were hired, moved and promoted within the bureaucracy than the year before.

“What we are now seeing in the data – and we started to see it turn around last year – is that the demand by departments for new hires is starting to go up. So we do anticipate that we will turn the corner on this and start to hire new graduates into permanent jobs in the coming year,” PSC president Anne-Marie Robinson recently told the Senate finance committee.

In fact, the commission has been active getting the message out that once the downsizing is completed, the government will recruit new talent.

Robinson said the public service is “changing” as it emerges smaller and leaner from the 2012 federal budget cuts, which reduced the number of employees by 10 per cent from March 2011.

But last year also saw the first increase in hiring and staffing, both of which had fallen every year for four years. Overall, hiring and staffing jumped 11.7 per cent over the previous year – a far cry from the hiring spree in the years before the Conservatives froze operating budgets and put the brakes on spending.

Relative little on employment equity, which awaits the more comprehensive Treasury Board report, but the above graph highlights the main trends for visible minorities and Aboriginal peoples.

For visible minorities, applicants are greater than labour market availability (LMA), appointments less. The report, unless I missed it, did not have any up-to-date figures on actual representation within the public service.

Public service still shrinking, but signs show hiring picking up | Ottawa Citizen.

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The perils of the career politician – Donald Savoie

2014/10/07 Leave a comment

Donald Savoie on the implications of having more career politicians with minimal outside experience:

Career politicians also bring a narrow skill set to their governance. They excel at partisan politics and at surviving the gruelling 24-hour news cycle. But they lack the ability to test policy prescriptions against experiences gained outside politics. If commitments aren’t met, career politicians can always blame others the bureaucracy is an easy target, often bypassing their parliaments or legislative assemblies in the process, since traditional and social media have become the stage where the blame game is played out. This explains why career politicians have redefined the doctrine of ministerial responsibility, always so fundamental to our system of government. Supposedly responsible politicians now routinely blame others when things go wrong.

The proliferation of career politicians goes a long way toward explaining the public’s increasing cynicism about our political and administrative institutions. It also explains why those who have achieved distinction in other sectors tend to shun politics, leaving governance to a much narrowed political class. This, at a time when many Canadians are crying out for less partisan posturing, or are giving up on voting.

What is the solution? We could start by returning parties to the rank and file, by making it easier for non-career politicians to enter the political arena, by decentralizing power so that one does not have to sit in the prime minister’s or premier’s chair to make a substantial contribution. We also need to retool our public services by peeling away constraints to good management, and by rediscovering the importance of evidence-based policy advice.

I would say it depends partially on the individual. Some career politicians, like Minister Kenney, do have a breadth of perspective, others, the Polievres of the world do not.

The perils of the career politician – The Globe and Mail.

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Clement wants to cut public servants’ sick days to five | Ottawa Citizen

2014/09/13 Leave a comment

Nice euphemism “most transformative:”

Bureaucrats offered Clement various options on how to overhaul the plan and the proposal he selected was considered the “most transformative.” It also shows how willing the government is to wage a major battle with unions in the run-up to the 2015 election.

The creation of a short-term disability plan is not part of negotiations as such. But the number of sick days and ability to roll over unused days is enshrined in contracts and must be re-negotiated.

The fate of banked sick leave was a big question hanging over this round of bargaining. Public servants can’t cash in their unused sick leave when they retire and many leave with weeks or months in their banks.

The government had commissioned an actuarial valuation of the $5.2 billion in banked leave, which determined bureaucrats would only use about $1.4 billion worth of the unused leave. That $1.4 billion, recorded as a liability on the government’s books, will disappear if banked sick leave is abolished.

Many hoped Clement would allow some, if not all, to be carried over so employees could dip into their credits for extra leave if they needed more than the new five-day threshold. Canada Post did this when it revamped its sick leave.

Banked sick leave provides flexibility in case of longer illness or catastrophic illness such as cancer (which helped me tremendously).

While there was abuse, and thus some need to tighten up, it does seem Canada Post found a way to do so while preserving some flexibility.

Clement wants to cut public servants’ sick days to five | Ottawa Citizen.

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Fixing the public service: Groom stronger, specialized managers, says Hugh Segal | Ottawa Citizen

2014/09/04 Leave a comment

Always worth listening to Hugh Segal, given his long and distinguished career and of course his current role as co-chair of the PM’s blue-chip advisory committee on the public service.

His thoughts help address some of the systemic issues:

Segal said the committee will have to grapple with these changes but he broadly supports getting rid of management layers, scrapping more rules and reorganizing work to give public servants more flexibility and authority to do their jobs. It will demand stronger managers and more training for them.

He said the existing snare of rules, structures and processes limit managers’ power and “discretion” in influencing or making change. He said they need more discretion to open up and speed up decision-making. Also, he said the managers’ talents will vary by department with, for example, Canada Border Services Agency needing very different skills than Canadian Heritage.

Segal isn’t wed to the longstanding notion that managers are generic and can be moved from department to department.

He argued the second-in-command in the navy wouldn’t have got there without specific training, credentials and expertise, but the same isn’t expected of civilian public servants as they climb the ranks of the bureaucracy. The government needs to offer employees specific career paths with opportunities to get specialized certifications or designations.

Segal said the government must get a better handle on the work of some 7,000 executives and whether they are really doing executive work.

At the same time, he said deputy ministers should be skilled and knowledgeable about their portfolios when appointed to the job. He argued deputy ministers should stay put in their jobs for four or five years before being rotated into the next senior post.

Fixing the public service: Groom stronger, specialized managers, says Hugh Segal | Ottawa Citizen.

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Five ways to renew the public service

2014/08/23 Leave a comment

Good piece by David McLaughlin on what needs to be fixed:

Here’s a five-point checklist for the new Clerk:

First, stop the churn in deputy minister turnover. Fewer and fewer deputies stay in their respective departments for more than a couple of years now. Environment Canada is on its fifth deputy minister in eight years. This erodes corporate memory and expertise at the top, severs the link between responsibility and accountability in a department, and makes deputy ministers more amenable to short-term priorities and thinking.

Second, build back the research capacity for independent, evidence-based decision-making. Access to good, reliable data and information is at the core of sound policy and decisions. Governments are the ultimate knowledge-based institutions. So, why do we insist they operate without it?

Third, think out loud with smart, committed Canadians. Fear of failure is endemic to large bureaucracies, but fear of facing others in case one is challenged over politics is a recipe for idea ossification and policy stasis.

Fourth, build up the Canada School of Government from a management incubator to an idea accelerator. Use it to engage bright and controversial thinkers to challenge and test the public service’s own thinking.

Fifth, heed the maxim I once heard from a Clerk: It is unavoidable that governments get caught up in the short-term, but it is unforgivable that they ignore the long-term. Only governments have the mandate and capacity to think about what the future might bring. Seize that role and share what was learned with us all.

Think of it this way: Good policy is good politics.

Five ways to renew the public service – The Globe and Mail.

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