How to create an adaptive culture in the public service

2023/03/07 Leave a comment

Perhaps I am getting too removed from the day-to-day realities of the public service but I find the various calls for reform are all too similar without any realistic means of implementation, whether by sophisticated academics or equally sophisticated former clerks and other senior officials.

In the case of the latter, a more reflective examination of how they tried to effect change and the roadblocks they faced would be more useful and practical than calls for change in specific areas:

Public service institutions have long been challenged to deliver a wide array of programs for governments and the public, and they continue to deliver programs and services as technology and public expectations evolve. However, what is driving change and creating anxiety in public services is the frequency and complexity of emerging new policy issues, as well as structural concerns such as competency gaps and the ability to address future issues.

This is not news to those in public management: cabinets and ministers are attuned to the policy agenda and drive policy as best they can with available resources. Climate change and environmental sustainability, working digitally, migration and immigration and an aging population are issues that have risen to the fore of an already heavy public service agenda.

For the public service to cope with these demands requires change in activities, new decision processes and institutional arrangements, and, most fundamentally, adapting its culture. By this we mean improving leadership, responsiveness and innovative capacity in working horizontally such as through a willingness to share information and responsibilities. This will be essential for consistent and productive transformation.

Multiple perspectives highlight the shifts in the way public services will have to adapt which will have implications on technology, approaches to employment and the characteristics of jobs and how public organizations maintain coherence. Four points must be stressed about the role of public services.

1. The changes in the environment will result in structural shifts in how public organizations work. Public service leaders must be skilled at anticipating shifts and conceptualizing innovative institutional arrangements, including adopting new technology, and managing the transition. Structural changes driven by technology also need capable people who can adapt and learn alongside new technology in order to be effective. This also includes rethinking several outdated administrative policies that do not reflect the evolving work environment.

2. A key driver to effective public services is a motivated and capable workforce. This means that sustainable change cannot take hold without engaged, passionate public servants who look beyond the daily grind of tending files and communicating with other public servants. Being engaged not only means contributing to the strategic direction of government and better public policymaking, but also creating and re-creating organizations to meet new needs of their policy environments. It also means attracting, developing and leading the right talent for new challenges.

3. Relying on large consulting houses to carry out policy and organizational change signals a lack of trust in the public service. One explanation could be that decision makers do not believe the public service can think innovatively. The effect is a decline in internal capability and leadership competence due to years of neglect in effective internal recruitment strategies and training. Focusing on improving service rather than perpetuating a transactional culture would go a long way to repair current dysfunctions.

4. There is always a constituency for systematic change in public institutions and we believe that is true of the Canadian public service. Public servants at all levels want to be more responsive to governments and public needs but are frustrated by the lack of support and recognition from senior leaders on ways to innovate and to improve systems and processes. On the other hand, senior leaders want to build an engaged public service, but may be focusing on the wrong things such as compliance and oversight measures.

The pandemic brought about creative ways of generating ideas and delivering public services but there are questions about leaders embracing these changes for the future. The question is how to understand change, generate reform, produce a sustainable and adaptive culture and to prepare for the future.

Lost opportunities, new possibilities

Governments have initiated high-level periodic institution-wide review efforts focused on diverse areas of public sector management. This included human resources in 2019, ongoing changes to procurement practices, changes to government accountability with the Gomery Commission in 2006 or public service operational practices and results delivery beginning in 2007. These reviews were carried out internally or independently, but rarely convinced decision-makers to institute recommended changes. In addition, the reviews did not take the other reviews and functions into account, often recommending changes that were contradictory.

Embedded regularized spending reviews could be used to drive public service reform, but these were abandoned in 2012 in Canada. The United Kingdom, Australia and Netherlands conduct regular reviews of fixed elements of spending focusing on making room for policy priorities while improving efficiencies in existing program areas. It is apparent that the federal government has initiated spending reviews but it is unclear if and how these will be linked in a coherent way to public service reform efforts. Other countries are beginning to think about linking spending reviews and reform to ensure policy and spending coherence.

Reform is multi-level and multi-faceted          

Embracing change requires adopting a dynamic approach. Multi-level reform means accepting that the public service is highly decentralized and operates in diverse areas of responsibility. Organizational structures and operating environments vary widely, and departments and agencies will know best how to respond to them. What gets in the way of relevant reforms are highly centralized systems and a lack of management autonomy to achieve expected results.

The public service depends on several important systems to work properly. Human resources involve recruitment, skills development and competency training and retention. Information and technology management is driven by digitalization, worker’s autonomy and mobility, data storage and sharing. Policy development and advice must acknowledge and balance strategic, administrative and operational elements. There needs to be effective procurement of goods and services along with sound financial management, oversight and monitoring.

Finally, there is the machinery of government and performance indicators that track results and assesses risks for their achievement. All of these must be simultaneously considered in any transformation.

Previous reform attempts, however, have tended to focus on defined problems associated with one or two of these systems. They did not recognize the complexity of how public organizations work, how these systems intersect with others, or the unique operational challenges of departments and agencies.

Reform cannot be a one-size-fits all solution. Significant discretion, in exchange for regular reporting, must be given to deputy ministers and their management teams to support administrative and management reform. As highlighted long ago in the Glassco Commission (1963) and Lambert Commission (1979), “letting the managers manage” involves providing space to public servants to improve services and implement policy without creating unnecessary administrative burden and excessive control by central agencies.

Leaders must be given room to imagine and propose changes to various systems that can be considered by the center of government in a timely way. This does not suggest a patchwork of changes without coherence, but rather a dialogue that gauges how these changes could be adapted to support the achievement of outcomes, and seriously monitors what sort of progress is being made in a tailored way.

This means looking at what has worked elsewhere and innovating with other executives in the public service to find support when there appears to be no workable solution. The central agencies must be willing to ensure tailored coherence for departments rather than uniformity and perpetuating a compliance culture.

Collaboration and coordination are critical

For change to work in such a multi-level embedded system to work effectively, additional conditions must be met. First, there must be engagement and support between ministers and the public service leadership. There also has to be a greater emphasis placed on learning, rather than managing, from the center of government. Central agenciesshould take on the role of enablers and coordinators rather than assuming primary leadership over such change.

There should be clear roles and responsibilities for executives so they can use their discretion to implement appropriate systems and processes in concert with others to ensure coherence. Administrative tools such as the Management Accountability Framework, Policy on Results, Directive on Performance Management and Policy on Service and Digital should provide stronger forward-looking emphasis and support on organizational learning in a coordinated way. Reporting on these must also be joined up to demonstrate outcomes.

These changes require a shift in sensibilities, capabilities, readiness to contribute, senior management commitment and the motivation to drive organizational change. It also needs external input from academics, think tanks and other communities – and not high-priced secretive and ungrounded consulting contracts – to work in partnership. The public service no longer has the luxury to operate as an island.

An adaptive public service for the 21st century

Other countries are using the pandemic as an opportunity to advance reforms. A key criticism of public services is their lack of nimbleness. They are comprised of organizations operating not only in silos but also as rule-bound sub-systems working within centralized, homogenous processes. Although rules and hierarchy are essential for ensuring some level of administrative and management coherence, particularly for democratic governance, they must be balanced with the need for innovation and creativity when change is rapid and often unpredictable.

Our systems must accept that change is constant, and that reform will be ongoing rather than periodic. It also means learning from past mistakes. The public service needs scope to learn and manage, connecting responsibilities more directly to their authorities and resources, joining up otherwise independent reporting, and better monitoring progress. Better monitoring and reporting would ensure that departments are better held to account for their valuable work.

Source: How to create an adaptive culture in the public service

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Critical considerations for the future of the public service

2023/02/20 Leave a comment

Hard to argue with the principles enunciated but perhaps even harder to think that this would result in meaningful change (which is hard given ministerial and bureaucratic roles and perspectives). The track record of previous reform efforts is not encouraging…:

In a December 2022 column in Policy Options, “Canada needs a royal commission to fix problems with the federal public service,” Kathryn May conveyed Donald Savoie’s reluctant call for a royal commission to explore the state of the Canadian public service and its future direction. Many different reasons were highlighted. The public service is overloaded, relying on slow and outdated processes. There has been rapid growth after COVID and yet – despite an arguably quick pivot to implement government policies – it has been slow to handle the demand for essential services. It also seems incapable of responding in a timely manner to access-to-information requests despite politicians’ trumpeting of “open government.”

We could also add that there are long-held concerns about top public servants being too responsive to the government of the day, along with central agencies micro-managing and contributing to the centralization of power in the Prime Minister’s Office. There have been concerns about declining or insufficient skills or resources, and over-reliance on consultants and human resource practices that have led to a risk-averse culture.

These issues are concerning and deserve attention, but a royal commission would not be a productive way to resolve them. Instead, implementing a review process that’s designed correctly from the beginning is important. That means striking a balance between the political side and the department leadership, regional representatives and public servants, aided by some external perspective. Perhaps most importantly, the first phase needs to be taking stock of the changes that have occurred since the pandemic especially, and understanding the motivations for change while assessing gaps in capabilities and opportunities for reform.

Why the lack of enthusiasm for a comprehensive review?

There have been more than 20 federal reviews and reform efforts since 1867, each with their own attributes. Phil Charko and Stephen Van Dinehave identified several initiatives since the 1980s. Recent initiatives such as Blueprint 2020 and Beyond2020, were not, in fact, “blueprints,” but invitations to “experiment” in a “bottom-up” way, with no systematic reporting about how the contours and capabilities of the public service and its organizations were evolving.

Likewise, former prime minister Stephen Harper’s embedded strategic and operational reviews (2010-15) were efforts to reduce costs and rethink specific lines of business internally, not efforts to reimagine the overall management of the public service. In short, there has been neither stock-taking nor a rethink of the direction of the public service overall.

One could conclude that political and public service leaders have been disinterested or unaware of the need for reform, but some former Privy Council clerks (for example, Paul Tellier and Michael Wernick) have been among those issuing calls for reform – sometimes after they left the public service. There are also calls for reform coming from academics or civil society that are difficult to ignore.

A more generous interpretation is that political and public service leaders are too focused on immediate policy priorities with few resources to call for a wide-ranging assessment. Or, like Savoie, they may experience the issues and see the need for reform but have reservations about the merits of relying on a royal commission. Indeed, they have not considered alternatives other than centrally driven, closely held senior-led approaches.

The fact is that the public service is aware of its challenges. Countless internal and external reports have provided direction for needed reforms and when given political and financial support, they can be innovative and accomplish a great deal (look to Citizens First as an example).

Most issues and frustrations are not new, but the call for sustained action and continuous reflection is more urgent than ever. However, even if largely self-managed by the public service and its leaders, concerted reform requires the interest and support of prime ministers, as well as responding to recommendations in a timely way.

Why not a royal commission?

Royal commissions vary in size and scope, are usually convened outside government and are given a mandate and budget. Commissioners are appointed, reflecting their scope, who then refine and operationalize their mandates and appoint staff, commission research, receive submissions, and hold hearings. Sometimes public servants are seconded to assist, and often scholars and experts are asked to provide advice and undertake research. The entity works apart from the public service and can take on a life of its own. It is more of a topical treatment than a cure.

Moreover, though often quoted, royal commissions seldom show tangible results in actual public service reforms or behavioural change. They are excellent for spotting or tapping into talent, developing new advisory networks, consolidating knowledge and identifying new approaches and generating new ideas.

However, given the changing political environment and working in a social-media environment, governments have not been willing to convene royal commissions. Instead, public inquiries have been the preferred approach – and only if there has been a serious failure or scandal such as the Gomery Inquiry or the Phoenix pay system.

Aside from the mechanics of how to better deliver on its responsibilities, what has not taken place since the 1960 Glassco Commission is an analysis of the organization and delivery changes in public responsibilities. This seems important in the wake of the pandemic.

An understanding of how programs and the public service have evolved, an appraisal of recent practices, new ideas about future directions and removing barriers for transformation is needed. Given the pace of change and the institutional limitations, royal commissions, blue-ribbon panels and task forces are unlikely to be accepted nor perceived as useful internally if they are regarded as one-time initiatives. Likewise, a top-down internal approach modeled on PS2000 (1989) or LaRelève (1997) will not generate the legitimacy and commitment from public servants.

What are some considerations for ongoing review?

Several key elements are critical for reviewing how the public service has evolved and what needs to happen next. The design must acknowledge the realities of working in and around public services, how change takes place and what is required to anchor it over time. These include:

1. Institutional complexity. The federal public service is extremely large, with more than 80 departments and agencies employing approximately 320,000 people in 2020 – a number that is expected to increase to more than 400,000 by 2025. An overly centralized approach is likely to be met with resistance, if not outright rejection. The public service is disparate, disaggregated and decentralized. The process must anticipate the differences in mandates, responsibilities, structures and cultures, and at what level changes or reforms are needed.

2. Engaging the diversity of public-service talent. Public servants from various areas must be engaged and must participate. Different competencies will be needed to understand change and reform efforts while taking advantage of central versus regional perspectives.

3. Tapping into external perspectives. Practitioners leading the initiative may need to heed various external perspectives. For example, including the beneficiaries of programs and services could help to understand the changing nature of relationships with vulnerable communities, the shifting boundaries between public and private, and the interconnectedness of jurisdictions and responsibilities. Current efforts to address public health reforms is a good example.

4. Anticipating how reform actually takes place. Few believe that top-down reforms or “fixes” will have much impact on behaviours. Change and innovation stem from meeting governmental priorities as expressed by ministers through mandate letters or other directives. These should determine how departments and agencies organize themselves if accompanied with appropriate financial and political support, and related accountabilities.

5. Effective reform is ongoing. This is about developing an approach to reform that requires introducing new operational repertoires dependent on data for evidence-based decision-making. Instead of one-time exercises, ongoing reviews must be built into routines with a learning focus that feeds departmental plans.

6. The need for political attention, monitoring and reporting. No approach will be effective if efforts are not properly monitored so that public servants can visualize real-time shifts by leaders and the implications for their place in these changes.

In short, forward-looking decisions must be undertaken that balance the perspectives of politicians and staffers, public service leaders, regional bodies, rank-and-file public servants, and concerned and affected citizens. The way forward is to move away from subjective and sporadic reform efforts to a routine system that generates institutional learning based on ongoing evidence. This will take significant commitment to create but may generate the momentum needed that previous reform efforts could not sustain. For the present, however, an initial analysis of changes occurring, understanding motivations for change, assessing gaps in capabilities, identifying opportunities for reform and future needs should be undertaken – and be done quickly with clear steps throughout.

Source: Critical considerations for the future of the public service

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