CGE September 2012

JOHN LUTZ P3 potential

p.6

RICHARD DICERNI A deputy’s parting thoughts p.19

SEPTEMBER 2012 VOLUME 18 NUMBER 7

THE MAGAZINE FOR PUBLIC SECTOR DECISION MAKERS

INDEPENDENCE ARM’S LENGTH ARRANGEMENTS IN GOVERNMENT KEVIN PAGE,

PARLIAMENTARY BUDGET OFFICER

9

61399 70471 0

10-SEP

Display until October 10

07

$5.00

Publication Mail Registration Number: 41132537

www.canadiangovernmentexecutive.ca

CONCRETE MAKES ENERGY EFFICIENT HIGHWAYS. ALLOWING US TO BREATHE A LITTLE EASIER. Over a 50-year period, the construction, maintenance, and repair of a concrete highway uses one third the energy required for an asphalt highway.

Learn more at Rediscover Concrete, a series of seminars on concrete’s contribution to a more sustainable future. To find a seminar near you, visit cement.ca.

contents

September 2012 – VOLUME 18 – NUMBER 7

FEATURES 14

Strategic collaboration The key to Saskatchewan’s healthcare delivery

BY DAVID HOWLAND

18

Workplace health First steps for managers addressing mental health issues

BY CLAUDINE DUCHARME

19

Parting thoughts A deputy’s advice to Parliamentarians

BY RICHARD DICERNI

DEPARTMENTS 22

New professionals Collaboration is about shared values

BY TARIQ PIRACHA

23

Performance management Program evaluation: A new challenge

BY TOM WILEMAN

COVER

24

Procurement The spirit and integrity of competition

6

The next generation The potential of arm’s length organizations

BY DAVID ZUSSMAN

8

Sustaining good governance in the distributed age

Ontario’s Delegated Administrative Authorities

The Leader’s Bookshelf Recruiting a better business bureaucracy

BY HARVEY SCHACHTER

30

Opinion Privatizing profits and socializing losses

Protecting consumers

BY GILES GHERSON

12

26

Benign neglect or micro-management?

BY TODD CAIN

10

BY JOHN READ

BY ELIZABETH FRIESEN

28

Governing digitally The clash of old and new voices

Recycling B.C.

BY JEFFREY ROY

Public sector accountability meets private sector know-how

BY SANDY SIGMUND

16

Preserving independence

Online Extras

The Parliamentary Budget Office and the fight for information AN INTERVIEW WITH KEVIN PAGE

20

P3 initiatives Essential to solving the productivity gap

BY JOHN LUTZ

Online Extras

Missed an issue? Misplaced an article?

Visit www.netgov.ca for a full archive of past CGE issues, as well as online extras from our many contributors.

September 2012 // Canadian Government Executive / 3

Editor’s note Our mission is to contribute to excellence in public service management

Toby Fyfe

Editor-in-Chief editor@netgov.ca

Editorial Editor-in-Chief: Toby Fyfe

editor@netgov.ca

Associate Editor: Chris Thatcher

assoceditor@netgov.ca

Business development: Paul Crookall

paul@netgov.ca

Contributors: Todd Cain, Richard Dicerni, Claudine Ducharme, Elizabeth Friesen, Giles Gherson, David Howland, John Lutz, Tariq Piracha, Sandy Sigmund, Tom Wileman, John Read, Harvey Schachter, Jeffrey Roy, David Zussman Editorial Advisory Board

Vic Pakalnis, Queen’s University; Denise Amyot, Canada Science and Technology Museum Corporation; Carol Layton, OPS; Andrew Graham, Queen’s University; Jodi Leblanc sales

New entities

National Account Manager: Patricia Bush

905-727-4091 x336 trishb@netgov.ca

Vice President, Sales: Terri Pavelic

905-727-4091 x225 terrip@netgov.ca

Events Events manager: Sandra Service

sandras@netgov.ca

art & production Art Director: Elena Pankova

artwork@netgov.ca

Subscriptions and Address Changes Circulation Director: Denys Cruz

circulation@netgov.ca

General Inquiries

Aurora Office 24-4 Vata Court, Aurora, ON, L4G 4B6 Phone 905-727 4091 Fax 905-727-4428 Editorial

Ottawa Office 30 Lyttleton Gardens, Ottawa, K1L 5A6 Phone 613-858-6619 http://cge.itincanada.ca/ corporate Group Publisher: John Jones

publisher@netgov.ca

Publisher’s Mail Agreement: 41132537 ISSN 1203-7893 Canadian Government Executive magazine is published 10 times per year

by Navatar Press. All opinions expressed herein are those of the contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher or any person or organization associated with the magazine. Letters, submissions, comments and suggested topics are welcome, and should be sent to editor@netgov.ca Reprint Information:

Reproduction or photocopying is prohibited without the publisher’s prior written consent. High quality reprints of articles and additional copies of the magazine are available through circulation@netgov.ca Privacy Policy:

We do not sell our mailing list or share any confidential information on our subscribers.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund (CPF) for our publishing activities.

The term Alternative Service Delivery (ASD) is a uniquely Canadian one that arose in the 1990s out of the belief that governments could find better ways to do business than by core departments. The term encompassed a wide range of arm’s length arrangements including statutory and non-statutory agencies, partnerships with governments and sectors, and the use of private not-for-profit and for-profit entities.

This is not to say that the creation of arm’s length arrangements is new. The Canadian use of Crown Corporations dates way back, including the establishment of the CPR and the CBC. Today, the development of these entities is critical to the transformation plans of many Western governments. Some drivers are obvious: a desire to improve service delivery to meet citizen expectations and the need to save money. Others are less so: a belief that government should be smaller and no longer the main body responsible for many spheres of activity.

The variety of arm’s length arrangements has grown. For example, in the U.K. mutuals have been invented. Mutuals are made of public servants who get together to create these organizations that then bid competitively to do certain tasks.

Today’s economic and political climate makes the creation of these entities very tempting. But as there are so many different kinds, how can governments be sure to choose the right model? To begin with,

they need to be clear about what the outcomes are and what results are expected.

And, as Todd Cain notes in his article in this edition, they need to be clear about the multiple relationships that the new organization will face and need to manage.

These core questions will set the stage for determining exactly what form the entity should take, because if the wrong form is chosen then the policy purpose likely won’t be met effectively.

Accountability is another basic issue in the creation of arm’s length entities, one that is addressed by both Cain and David Zussman in this edition. The road is littered with examples of misspent public monies that demonstrate that no matter how “far out” from the core government an arm’s length organization is, appropriate reporting and oversight are required.

Similarly, the record shows that arm’s length entities too often have been associated with altering documents, falsifying records, and unacceptable human resources practices, some of which have led to public inquiries and police investigation.

In many ways, accountability is at the crux of the matter. If governments are to create these organizations, the leaders running them have to remember that they are there to serve a public purpose and that core public service values such as responsibility, probity, transparency and good management practices are expected and must apply.

Feature At arm’s length

David Zussman holds the Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management and is the Director of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa (dzussman@uottawa.ca).

Arm’s length agencies The next generation Own the Podium (OTP) is a relatively recent arm’s length agency created by the federal government to improve the outcomes of Canadian athletes at the summer and winter Olympic games. Their recent successes at the Olympic games demonstrate how an arm’s length agency can produce results that would not materialize under traditional government organizational arrangements.

During the mid 1990s Canada gained a reputation internationally for public sector innovation. As governments around the world adopted new management principles borrowed from the private sector in order to achieve efficiency and savings in their day-to-day operations, Canadian governments also developed new ways of providing government services to the public.

The international movement was labelled New Public Management (NPM) and one key element in the Illustrations by Julia Pankova transformation of government was However, the history of arm’s length the acknowledgement that government agencies has not been entirely positive. should not continue to have a monopoly The evidence suggests that many of the over the delivery of public services. promised savings have not yet been realAttracted by the prospect of less expenized, there has only been some integration sive government, governments in Canada of federal and provincial services, and exat all levels embarked on a number of ecutive compensation has grown considlimited innovations through the creation erably faster than salaries in the core pubof alternative service delivery (ASD) lic service without apparent management mechanisms like Special Operating Agenbenefits. cies (SOAs) and other variations of arm’s Moreover, recent problems with a numlength agencies. ber of provincial arm’s length organizaThe Program Review exercise that led to tions such as Ornge, eHealth, Alberta the 1995 cost-cutting federal budget took Health Services and the Ontario Gaming advantage of the targeted program reducand Lottery Commission have highlighttions given to departments to begin to deed how arm’s length agencies can become velop novel ways to deliver services or orgauncontrollable without sufficient managenize themselves along the NPM principles. ment oversight. The management probIt also unleashed some serious rethinking lems in some arm’s length organizations about the governance process in Canada inled Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty to cluding the integration of federal and propoint out in 2009 that “just because you vincial services to citizens. Good examples operate at arm’s length from the governof the federal government’s experimentament doesn’t mean you have the right to tion with arm’s length arrangements in the straight-arm taxpayers. You have a responmid ‘90s were the creation of an integrated sibility to be held accountable and our job food inspection agency, a national revenue is to make sure that happens.” agency, and a national parks agency.

6 / Canadian Government Executive // September 2012

History In general, there is a wide array of possible arrangements that are usually defined by the degree to which the organization can act independently of the government. Since the earliest days in the 1990s, the suitability of potential arm’s length arrangements was determined largely by whether they could be more responsive, more efficient and able to partner with the provinces to provide better services to citizens.

The first generation of Canadian arm’s length agencies represented a cautious approach. For example, at the federal level, Special Operating Agencies remained typically within the government’s administrative net and fell under the direction of a minister who remained accountable for the agency to Parliament.

In this context, they were intended to operate at a limited arm’s length from the hierarchal “spine” of central ministries. They were to carry out public tasks, were staffed by public servants, financed by general taxation, and were subject to public law.

Since the ‘90s there has been a steady increase in the number of the arm’s length agencies with the prospect of lowering costs by developing more efficient program delivery systems. At present, at the federal level, there are 289 agencies that work at arm’s length from the government and 17 of those are SOAs. These are impressive numbers since innovative public administration was never high on the political agenda of recent federal governments. While the numbers suggest that arm’s length agencies are an important innovation, the current ef-

At arm’s length Feature forts in Canada have been characterized by observers as “not systematic, intellectually coherent, or backed by strong support among political executives.” Instead the growth in the number of arm’s length agencies has depended on entrepreneurs in the bureaucracy who have seized the opportunity to be innovative when the occasion arose.

While the arm’s length agencies have not revolutionized public management in Canada, they are good examples of modern public administration. The established arm’s length agencies typically have a more explicit accountability regime than traditional organizational structures, are a good way to develop innovative human resources practices, bring decision-making closer to citizens, reduce political interference, and create better work environments since the organizations are usually small in size and more singular in purpose.

Opportunities Given the ongoing need to constrain public funding due to large annual operating deficits, the timing is good for the federal

and provincial governments to develop a second generation of arm’s length agencies. First, this could be accomplished by identifying organizations that might benefit from moving to a more independent governance model.

Second, by reviewing the governance structures of current arm’s length agencies to ensure that their current accountability practices support good governance principles. At a minimum, the oversight provisions for arm’s length agencies should be equivalent to those in place for government departments and to ensure unbroken lines of accountability between minister and the agency.

Third, developing a new arm’s length agency policy that reflects changes in governance practices and technological developments in Canada and creating a centre of excellence where best practices could be shared.

Finally, by engaging Parliamentarians in a conversation to determine those sectors where Canadians would like to experience higher levels of service than is current the case.

At this point, there are a number of compelling arguments to support moving forward with a new generation of arm’s length agencies for a number of reasons.

First, recent advances in communications technology and data management methods have created opportunities that are new and cost effective. Second, governance of public institutions has evolved over the past two decades to the point that the public and decision makers are more willing to include external stakeholders in the governance and management regimes of publicly funded institutions.

Ultimately, the question is whether there is value in modernizing arm’s length agencies by being more innovative or concluding that arm’s length agencies need a shorter line of sight between the minister and the program operations to guarantee risk-free program administration.

The Own the Podium example vividly demonstrates the potential of arm’s length organizations to achieve goals that do not easily fit into the traditional administrative government model. It is this kind of thinking that produces gold.

IMPROVED DECISION MAKING AND INTEGRATED BUSINESS MANAGEMENT THROUGH

PERFORMANCE ALIGNMENT

Enhancing linkages between business management content, supporting data, and performance technologies.

Most managers struggle with getting the right information at the right time to make key decisions around strategic direction, operational choices, and resource deployment.

Performance Alignment brings together in a comprehensive fashion the often disparate disciplines of planning and risk, project, and resource management. It strengthens data collection requirements and provides an intuitive means EXPERIENCE to investigate performance issues by applying technology Over 20 years solutions such as dashboards & scorecarding. of successful engagements

Since 1989, Intersol has perfected the art and science of organizational and stakeholder engagement. Through the use of advanced performance technologies, we have adapted our time-tested methods to be effective in an online environment.

To learn more about the Landmark-Intersol Performance Alignment approach, assessments, and workshops, contact Mike Haley at mhaley@intersol.ca or visit our website at www.intersol.ca/en/performancealignment

METHODS Practical design, delivery, and reporting

TECHNOLOGY Access to world class partners

http://intersol.ca/en/performancealignment

September 2012 // Canadian Government Executive / 7

Feature At arm’s length

Todd Cain is vice president of Crown and Organizational Governance for the Institute on Governance.

Sustaining good governance in the distributed age You’ve read the headlines – BC Ferries, Ornge, la Caisse de Depot, Newfoundland radiologists and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Competence, ethics and policy alignment have been persistent and often painful issues in the growing universe of public interest entities. And yet the growth continues.

Analysis by the Institute on Governance has demonstrated that as much as 86 percent of the money spent by the public sector is in organizations other than the traditional line department or ministry. Even at the federal level, depending on how you count transfer payments, over 55 percent of money flows to “nondepartments” to deliver public goods.

This trend is global, has a blend of demographic, political, economic and administrative drivers and in many ways reflects shifts long underway in the private sector. The mindset that build Henry Ford’s Rouge complex, with coal, rubber and ingots coming in one end and Model T’s out the other, couldn’t be more different from Apple, which has built the most valuable corporation in the world while physically manufacturing nothing itself.

The theoretical underpinning for this shift has been the plummeting transaction costs of doing business with outside firms rather than self-contained units of the same corporation.

The term “distributed governance,” used by the OECD among others, covers the variety of legal and organizational structures that governments around the world have turned to. Key to the concept is the bedrock idea that even highly independent entities rely at some level on political authority for their legitimacy, funding, legal powers, etc.

In describing and analyzing the modern public sector and its arm’s length arrangements, one can replace traditional government models of governance with a more robust Governance Continuum. In this 8 / Canadian Government Executive // September 2012

model, the solid dark blue line represents the formal, institutional relationships between a jurisdiction and a given agency, board or crown corporation. This would cover the form of legal entity, the delegated powers of the board or executive, foundational administrative arrangements and its core policy function.

The green lines on the Continuum represent the less formal relationships, such as letters of understanding/expectation, performance frameworks, budgeting, policy dialogues and other ongoing, institution to department or minister and person-to-person connections. The relationships are dynamic and distinct – a crown corporation would have different relationship with a minister than a regulatory agency, and both would have different relationships with the legislature.

Implicit in the depiction of Agency X on the Continuum is that it has a relationship with the public, or at least the sub-popula-

tion it works with. This recognizes a common source of friction, where a distributed agency has strong knowledge of the policy issues, public views and needs in its specialized area, while our legislatures, cabinets and ministers translate the broader public interest into their priorities.

While the Continuum shows how a distributed public sector should work, the reality is less idyllic. Ministries and ministers struggle to maintain focus on the plethora of relationships in their orbit. Distributed organizations try not to get caught up in the chaos happening in central government and protect their areas of independence.

Mutual indifference can last for years – until a major policy shift, budget compressions or an ethical crisis brings the relationship into sharp focus, often accompanied by a sharp correction. These dramatic shifts in relationships are rarely productive.

How do we keep the relationship between governments and their distributed entities from oscillating between benign neglect and micro-management?

Focus on mission The reason companies like Apple can be so successful while being so dependent on

The Governance Continuum Public Legislature Executive Minister Department Agency X Organizational Autonomy Institutional Control

1

At arm’s length Feature suppliers for their physical product is that they have built a network of firms with complementary missions in chip design, miniaturization, audio technology, packaging design, logistics, etc. Apple cares deeply about each of these components and services, but they aren’t its core mission.

Every public sector entity should have a clear public interest objective. That objective should have a clear link to the broader objectives of affiliated departments. There should be a regular dialogue on performance to mission. Furthermore, periodically, the mission should be questioned, both on its own merits and on its fit with the broader priorities of the ministry or government.

In the public sector, a deep, shared understanding of mission – of how each organization adds distinct public value – is critical to a coherent, efficient and effective public outcome.

Relationships, relationships Structural relationships are important but not sufficient for effective governance in the distributed age. Opportunities for

people to interact, share perspectives and build professional interpersonal and institutional relationships are key. These opportunities should be regular, attached to different aspects of the shared policy and administrative relationship and able to survive changes in players. Reality is such that an agency head who gets along well with a minister is going to be better positioned than one who butts heads. But no one relationship should be irreplaceable.

For all but the smallest agencies, a broad set of relationships across policy areas, operations, administration, legislative relations and deputy to CEO are required to understand the priorities, pressures, stakeholder interests, risks and even vocabulary. This is no small investment of time and effort, but one can be sure Apple spends heavily on managing its subsidiaries, partners and suppliers (and vice versa).

Transaction costs for dealing with outside firms are falling although they are a long way from zero.

Even with this depth of relationship, conflicts will arise but both parties will be better able to manage through.

Fools rush in When crises occur, there is tremendous political pressure for the minister to act dramatically. But once the minister acts publically, he or she owns the issue, the agency and very well the next similar case. The long-term relationship can be reframed and the very logic for the distributed organization undermined (e.g., independent decision making, administrative burden). Keep a paper bag handy and be ready to breathe deeply.

If the issue at hand is within the distributed organization’s mission and authorities, let the board or CEO answer for its actions.

If the issue is more structural, or based on the personal performance of a cabinet appointee, then some direct intervention may be warranted. The key to keep in mind is to understand the kind of relationship desired with the distributed organization after the crisis has passed, and position the minister and ministry accordingly.

Taken collectively, these three ideas describe a relationship of interdependence – where each party understands and respects their roles while working complementarily in the public interest.

September 2012 // Canadian Government Executive / 9

Feature At arm’s length

A modern approach to service delivery More than 15 years ago, the Ontario government implemented a model that transformed the delivery of public services for consumer protection and public safety. It is a proven and continuing success that could be emulated in other areas and jurisdictions.

Delegated Administrative Authorities, or DAAs – a groundbreaking notion when first introduced in 1996 – are self-financing, not-for-profit corporations with delegated responsibility for administering several regulatory programs in Ontario.

The DAA model gives these arm’slength corporations the day-to-day responsibility for regulating specific sectors in the marketplace, keeping them free from abuses, and informing and protecting consumers.

Who, for example, knows better than the Ontario Motor Vehicle Industry Council (OMVIC) how to protect consumers from unscrupulous car dealers and curbsiders who often prey on an unwary public? OMVIC is the DAA that regulates the province’s 8,800 motor vehicle dealers and salespersons and enforces registration requirements.

And who is in a better position than the Real Estate Council of Ontario (RECO) to provide guidance and expertise to homebuyers and sellers when they are facing one of the biggest financial transactions of their lives? RECO is the DAA that oversees the province’s real estate market and registers more than 62,000 real estate agents and brokers.

It’s important to note that while DAAs assume responsibility for all aspects of dayto-day decision making and regulatory service delivery, the Ontario government, through the Ministry of Consumer Services, has overall accountability and control of relevant enabling legislation and monitors and remains accountable for the overall performance of each authority.

When DAAs were first conceived, many

governments were seeking ways to reduce red tape and improve efficiencies.

Ontario introduced enabling legislation that allowed it to delegate powers and duties to a DAA to administer specific statutes. To test the model, it chose mature industries that already demonstrated a collaborative relationship with government and had a solid track record of addressing public concerns.

A team was built with government as lead on policy development and regulation, and the DAA as implementer and industry regulator. Over time, the model has expanded to different sectors in Ontario, as well as different jurisdictions in Canada. The British Columbia Safety Authority and the Real Estate Council of Alberta are two examples of how the DAA model has been adopted across the country.

The model has also been supported by several independent reviews. Most recently the Drummond Commission (the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services) recommended the expansion of DAAs as a way to decrease the size and cost of government.

As the model evolves, Ontario continues to refine its standards and protocols for managing its DAA relationships so that everyone benefits.

DAAs reduce the government’s footprint. Their employees are not public servants and they are self-financed: the regulatory services they provide are funded by fees paid by the industries they regulate.

Our existing DAAs improve regulatory outcomes. They have achieved significant gains, including increases in enforcement activities. For example, between 1996 and

10 / Canadian Government Executive // September 2012

Giles Gherson

is deputy minister of the Ontario Ministry of Consumer Services.

2010, real estate brokerage inspections in the province increased by 86 percent and travel agency/wholesaler inspections increased by 87 percent.

DAAs have also improved safety outcomes. For example, the Electrical Safety Authority has contributed to a reduction in the rate of electrocutions in Ontario.

DAAs assume all operational and statutory decision-making responsibility for licensing, education, complaints handling, inspection and enforcement. They are wellpositioned to make efficient risk-based decisions on how they allocate resources.

The Ministry of Consumer Services uses several accountability mechanisms, including administrative agreements, business plans and regular reports on performance to ensure that delegated duties are being carried out in the public interest.

The administrative agreement is at the centre of the governance structure between the ministry and the DAAs. Each agreement sets out accountabilities, expectations and administrative arrangements.

Both the ministry and the DAAs take the oversight function seriously and strive to improve relationships, which is fundamental in making the model work for the government, industry and the public.

Of all the stated benefits of a DAA model, perhaps the two most valuable are increased industry engagement and the resolution of consumer concerns. With the ministry’s mandate to help Ontario consumers make smart, safe choices in the marketplace, this is of vital importance.

Industry is heard when they participate on DAA boards and advisory committees.

And consumers are informed and protected and their inquiries or complaints about their purchases of products or services are addressed.

Our flexible model supports industry competitiveness while protecting the public interest through focused expertise. It can be tailored to meet the needs of a specific sector. It is more nimble and efficient than similar operations in government. It reduces regulatory red tape. It strengthens partnerships and understanding of industry without being beholden to it. And it ensures the alignment of interests, objectives and effective collaboration.

The Institute on Governance presents the

2012 Fleck Lecture on Modernizing Government Peter P t Wallace

Secretary of the Cabinet, head of the Ontario Public Service and Clerk of the Executive Council

“The ffuture off “Th the Ontario Public Service Service”

Tuesday, October 9, 2012 5-7pm Fl k Atrium, Fleck At i Rotman R t S School h l off Management M t 105 St. George Street, Toronto This event is free. Seating is limited.

For more information or to register, go to http://iog.ca

Feature At arm’s length

Recycling: The province of British Columbia in July attained the highest score nationally from Extended Producer Responsibility Canada (EPR) for measures making producers wholly responsible for recycling end-of-life product and packaging waste. EPR Canada ranked each jurisdiction by evaluating federal, provincial and territorial EPR policies and programs in place or pending as of the end of last year.

Sandy Sigmund is vice president, Development, and CMO for Encorp Pacific (Canada).

Public sector accountability meets private sector know-how

“B.C. is seriously committed to the principles of reducing the amount of waste we produce,” said Terry Lake, the province’s Minister of the Environment. “We’ve worked hard for years to create policies that put responsibility fully in the hands of producers and consumers and we assess our progress continually to take stock of how we are doing and what more we can do.”

The B.C. Recycling Regulation, a flexible, performance-based regulatory framework within which to operate, comes under the authority of the Environmental Management Act and shifts taxpayer funded responsibility for managing end-of-life products and packaging to producers and consumers.

Not-for-profit stewardship agencies, developed by industry to collect and recycle

12 / Canadian Government Executive // September 2012

products at end-of-life, implement industry-developed and government-approved plans. British Columbians divert close to 20,000 metric tonnes of electronics, two million litres of hazardous household waste, 40,000 tonnes of scrap tires and over one billion beverage containers from landfills each year. The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from these programs is equivalent to removing more than 73,000 cars from B.C.’s roads annually.

The Stewardship Agencies of BC (SABC) emerged as a voluntary council for stewardship agencies and programs. Each regulated product’s manufacturer, distributor or brand owner develops a product stewardship plan and implements a program to collect and recycle their products through SABC. “After more than 18 years in operation,

At arm’s length Feature we have demonstrated that the industry self-managed model meets or exceeds expectations of most stakeholders,” says Neil Hastie, president and CEO, Encorp (Pacific) Canada. He adds: “We recover 80 percent of all the beverage containers sold in B.C. and operate without any form of subsidy from any level of government.”

SABC members include: Encorp Pacific, Brewers Distributors, Electronic Products Recycling Association, Recycle My Cell, ElectroRecycle, LightRecycle, Switch The ‘Stat, Call2Recycle, BC Used Oil Association, Tire Stewardship BC, Product Care Association, Outdoor Power Equipment Institute of Canada and Post Consumer Pharmaceutical Stewardship Association.

Encorp Pacific, one of the largest stewardship agencies, was launched in 1994 to create a province-wide network of industry owned and operated beverage recycling depots; within four years 125 were established. The unique structure and flexibility of Encorp allows the agency to concentrate on managing collection and recycling programs while ensuring that stakeholder and consumer interests are addressed.

Today, Encorp has a network of 180 independently owned Return It depots, mobile collectors, and has contracted 33 partners in transportation and 17 in processing. The Electronic Products Recycling Association and the BC Dairy Council have contracted Encorp to manage their respective collection operations by utilizing Encorp’s existing Return It depots.

“Each year our network of owners invest in new locations and upgrades, all in keeping with our commitment to enhance the appeal and customer service for our citizens who are doing their part by returning containers for recycling,” Hastie says.

“Encorp combines private-sector efficiencies with a high degree of public-sector transparency and accountability. This transparency provides the public and all interested parties with information about its mission, key objectives, operational and financial performance as well as consumer awareness and educational programs.”

A driving force behind product stewardship is growth. Soon SABC, government and consumers are about to do the next big thing. Governing boards of the

13 stewardship agencies operating in B.C. are anticipating the addition of packaging and printed paper to the Recycling Regulation, moving responsibility for recycling these items from municipalities to industry. Industry, municipalities and stakeholders will decide the type of program that will fit their communities, but one model may have municipalities acting as a service provider and continue collecting through curbside recycling programs.

B.C. stewardship agencies have demonstrated the benefits of merging public sector accountability with private sector know how. And while we welcome the kudos from EPR Canada, we hope that the scorecard motivates all jurisdictions to our shared aspiration of fewer new landfill sites and the reduction of energy needed to produce new products from raw materials.

For more information about the SABC visit bcstewards.com.

Government careers are changing.

Your career ambitions shouldn’t.

Each year Knightsbridge helps thousands of public and private sector executives manage their careers – whether they are looking for new opportunities within their existing organizations, transitioning out of their position, or changing their career path entirely. Knightsbridge is Canada’s leading Career Management and Transition firm, with tailored programs dedicated to Executive Career Coaching and Transition and the expertise of more than 140 executive consultants and associates across Canada.

To learn more about how we can help with the next phase of your career, or help you manage your team through a period of transition, call 647-777-3176 or 800-667-6990.

Stronger people, Stronger organization.

k ni g h tsb ri d g e.ca

Y6021 Gov't Career Transition K Ad_pd_v2.indd 1

12-05-11 10:40 AM September 2012 // Canadian Government Executive / 13

Feature Management

David Howland is a senior policy analyst for the Health System Planning Unit in Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Health.

Strategic collaboration

A key to improved healthcare delivery Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Health is leading a new approach to strategic planning based on deep organizational engagement and collaborative decision-making.

Strategic planning has earned a bad reputation within many organizations, principally because it is perceived as a top down, non-value added process that often does not lead to transformational changes. Typically organizations try to accomplish too many strategic goals, and strategic plans are often developed but not as effectively executed as they could be.

There is often a gap between strategy and action in traditional planning approaches and employees can end up feeling disengaged from key strategic initiatives.

Hoshin Kanri Leaders within Saskatchewan’s healthcare system are overcoming these shortcomings through the adoption of hoshin kanri, a management process that helps senior leaders focus and align their organizations around a few key goals.

Hoshin kanri, part of an overall lean management approach, is based on a number of key premises. First, the insight and creative talents of all employees within an organization or system need to be effectively brought to bear on organizational problems and opportunities. Second, organizations will only achieve desired results if they focus on a small number of “breakthrough” initiatives at one time.

In any organization, there are too many things to accomplish, inadequate resources and multiple distractions. Third, planning

should involve and be done by those who are expected to implement the work. And fourth, implementation and results must be routinely and rigorously measured.

Participants within the Saskatchewan health system have completed one cycle of hoshin kanri, which has resulted in an unprecedented level of involvement from both health leaders as well as others within the system. Approximately 1,000 people were engaged in the development of the 2012-13 health system plan. Leaders affirmed a strategic focus on a quadruple aim of Better Health, Better Care, Better Value and Better Teams to improve health care for Saskatchewan residents.

A Provincial Leadership Team, consisting of 21 health system leaders (representing health regions, the Ministry of Health and health organizations as well as a physician representative), was engaged in the development and finalization of the plan for a total of seven days. Four of these days were dedicated at the beginning of the cycle to developing a draft plan and three days were dedicated at the end of the cycle to reviewing organizational feedback on the draft plan.

Catchball Each organization held, at a minimum, a series of four-day meetings with middle management to review and provide feedback on the draft plan. This stage of the process is referred to within hoshin kanri as “catchball,” meaning that the draft plan developed at the Provincial Leadership Team level was passed to each of the participating organizations for review, feedback and refinement.

Once this stage of the process was completed, feedback was then passed back to the Provincial Leadership Team, which met for three days to finalize the plan.

14 / Canadian Government Executive // September 2012

This important step helps ensure organizational alignment and system-wide agreement at a senior executive level.

Visibility walls Hoshin kanri not only increases engagement within an organization through the catchball process, but also increases the level of accountability expected for achieving results. Saskatchewan has established visibility walls at both a provincial and organizational level.

Visibility walls contain the outcomes and targets the health system is striving toward as well as key projects and measures to assess performance toward those outcomes and targets. Provincially, the visibility wall is reviewed on a quarterly basis; at an organizational level it is reviewed on a monthly basis.

As part of the hoshin kanri process, health system leaders are assigned “ownership” for results on certain outcomes, targets, projects and measures. During reviews each leader has to speak to their area of responsibility and explain whether projects and goals are on target. If projects are not on target, leaders are expected to explain what the barriers are and what will be done to get the project back on track.

Feedback within Saskatchewan to date has been overwhelmingly positive. The process is resource-intensive but that intensity results in increased employee engagement, organizational alignment, and the necessary focus for the achievement of results.

The Saskatchewan health system will begin the second cycle of hoshin kanri in September and leaders have a long-term goal of engaging all 42,000 provincial healthcare employees in the development of strategies and solutions to provincial healthcare problems.

Commonwealth Secretariat

Public Service Fit for the Future The Commonwealth Conference and Ministers’ Forum On Public Administration New Delhi, India October 24-26 Conference Theme: “A Public Service Fit for the Future” The three day conference will focus on challenges faced by public servants in today’s turbulent, unpredictable, and interconnected world. With the support of the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Government of India, this conference will have the participation of political leaders, senior public servants and leading academics. Organized in a highly interactive format, conference participants will have ample opportunity to share ideas, knowledge and experiences.

Ministerial Participation At the invitation of Mr. Kamalesh Sharma, Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Ministers responsible for Public Administration will take advantage of this Conference to consider collaborative strategies for advancing public service excellence. The results of their deliberations will be presented at the Closing Plenary of the Conference.

CAPAM`s 2012 International Innovations Awards Winners for this prestigious award will be selected by an international jury during the conference. Participants will hear the presentations of the finalists and be inspired by their tenacity in bringing their innovation to fruition.

CAPAM’s 2012 Gordon Draper Award CAPAM would like to congratulate Mr. Wayne Wouters, Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to Cabinet, who will be the recipient of the 2012 Gordon Draper Award. Selected by an International Panel, the award recognizes an individual who, in the estimation of his or her peers, has selflessly contributed to the advancement of public administration and management throughout his or her career.

Social Events No visit to New Delhi can be complete without experiencing the culture, sights and sounds of Incredible India. Our host is organizing learning journeys, cultural events and a visit to the Taj Mahal to spoil conference participants.

Please Join us for this exciting event Conference Website: http://events.capam.org Joanne Hughes: Jhughes@capam.org +1 613 947 9208

The Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management

Cover At arm’s length

Preserving independence The fight for financial information

Photo: Jake Wright, The Canadian Press

Kevin Page’s mandate as the first Parliamentary Budget Officer comes to an end in six months. During his tenure there has been much debate about the role of this new independent watchdog.

He discussed the nature of independence and the Parliamentary Budget Office with editor-in-chief Toby Fyfe.

Based on your experience, you have suggested we need to think of two types of independence when discussing arm’s length arrangements like the PBO. Can you elaborate?

One type of independence is how we do our work. We want our primary clients, Pariamentarians, to know that our work has not been tainted or politicized through the government, the bureaucracy or the Official Opposition. So when we cost wars or fighter planes, or provide fiscal projections, they know that this is our work and they hold us accountable for its quality. It’s really not much different from the kind of independence we want the Auditor General or the Bank of Canada to have. We want to know they are not being politically or even bureaucratically interfered with in delivering their core mandates.

The other aspect of independence is the link between the delivery of this mandate and the accountability for resources. In our case, we got out of the gates poorly because our legislation situated us within the Library of Parliament. There

was a lot of difficult discussion early on as to whether this would lessen our ability to deliver products, whether we would have to adopt the Library’s business model, whether we could have a website or whether we could control our human resources plan.

And that is important because administrative tools have an impact on our ability to deliver our goods, which I am responsible for. They can be levers which prevent you from delivering on your mandate. I think that link is broken in our case. So we’re hoping for legislative reform.

Recently you threatened to take the government to court for refusing to release information on departmental budget cuts. Did the government simply not wish to release this specific information?

16 / Canadian Government Executive // September 2012

It is related to independence. We work for all Parliamentarians, including members of the government, and they have fiduciary responsibilities around budget and appropriations bills. We want to make sure they have financial information when they vote on these authorities.

In Budget 2012, the major measure was a restraint package. It was significant, freezing operational and direct program spending for five years. Our view was that if it was a major measure, and since Parliamentarians will start approving appropriations department by department this year, then we needed to have data in front of them: what program activities are going to be implicated; what public servants are going to be affected; how are you going to maintain service levels? We cannot help Parliamentarians hold government to account if the government says, “We do not

At arm’s length Cover

The best way to undermine Parliament is to starve it of information. We pretend we give them volumes of documents, but if they’re not useful ... then we’re just pretending.

have a plan,” because without one they are not providing the baseline by which Parliamentarians can hold it accountable.

Is this ongoing struggle of PBO independence a matter of whether the legislation is weak or whether the government got cold feet after creating the office?

It’s been a mixed bag of experience over four years. There have been times when we did get information quickly like the G8G20 summit, when we were asked to provide a costing of security. And then there have been other types of inquiries where we have really struggled: we didn’t get much information on crime and limited and late information on the F-35.

If it’s in the interests of the government and accountability officers to give us information, it comes quickly. If it’s not in their interest, meaning it can be used in the accountability context to make their lives difficult, the information comes slowly if at all.

There are two issues. The first is, do our access-to-information provisions need to be strengthened and second, do we have a culture in place that supports openness?

On the culture side, I knew in the beginning it would take time to build the trust with this new institution. It’s going to take years, maybe two mandates of this office, to show people it does quality work, not political work. In terms of the access provisions, I think if you have a culture of openness, of open government, and a culture that respects Parliament and the traditions of the Westminster system, I think a lot of this goes away.

You’ve said that “one of the key principles underlying responsible parliamentary government is that the House of Commons holds the ‘power of the purse’.” One could argue that the ability of the House to scrutinize appropriations and supply has been dwindling for a long time: are you trying to turn back the clock?

I think we have to turn back the clock.

I think we have to ask ourselves, did we design a system to prevent Parliamentarians from doing their role? We constructed information documents that are mostly communication documents so they can’t hold us to account. As non-partisan public servants – and I was one for 25 years – we should have been providing information to Parliament when they asked for it and we did not do that. We basically took them out of the game.

So the question is: do we want to put them back in the game and what’s in it for the government, for Parliament, for Canadians, to have MPs given back this fiduciary responsibility? The best way to undermine Parliament is to starve it of information. We pretend we give them volumes of documents, but if they’re not useful, if they can’t be used in the accountability context, then we’re just pretending.

While you say the PBO’s role is to increase Parliament’s accountability, Donald Savoie would argue that extra-parliamentary organizations such as yours and agents of Parliament undermine it.

I can’t speak for the other agents of Parliament but I could never imagine a Parlia-

mentarian doing this kind of work. Whatever work we do, there are models and assumptions. For me, to think a finance critic is going to have access to resources that can do this kind of model-based work, I don’t understand that. So the question is asked: are we usurping the role of Parliament? They need financial information, and if they don’t get it from the public service they need to get it from somewhere else.

You were the first PBO and you set up the office. What would you do differently? Any regrets?

I wouldn’t say regrets per se. The experience has been difficult but positive.

Change is disruptive. We got letters from the Speaker in the first year saying, we don’t agree with your business model; I think they misinterpreted how we interpreted independence. That part has been a big struggle and if there had been a way where we could have said, here’s what a legislative budget office does, here’s why you need to be independent, here’s why you need to be completely transparent, if we could have had that discussion more when the Accountability Act was being discussed, say from experts from other countries or the OECD, I think it would have helped and smoothed the transition.

I don’t think this office will survive under the current legislation. This position is effectively chosen by the prime minister yet people see it as a watchdog; most people would say that doesn’t make sense, Parliament should play a role in the appointment of this person. I think the idea that we report through another office, that’s also a disconnect. We’ve had four and a half years, and now people can ask if they want to have this type of budget office.

September 2012 // Canadian Government Executive / 17

Feature Health

Claudine Ducharme is partner, Health and Benefits Consulting Services, for Morneau Shepell.

She is on a technical committee developing standards for psychological and health safety in the workplace for the Canadian Standards Association.

The cost of ignoring

mental health issues

Last spring, the Mental Health Commission of Canada launched the country’s first ever mental health strategy.

Called Changing Direction, Changing Lives: The Mental Health Strategy for Canada, it had 100 recommendations grouped into six strategic goals. One of those goals is promoting mental health, and in the workplace a key component of that involves training managers in how to deal with employees who have mentalhealth issues.

Consider that one in four Canadians suffers from depression, anxiety, substance abuse or other mental health disorders, but only six percent seek or receive treatment.

Also, one in five working Canadians experiences a stress-related illness each year, and over half of all illness days are due to mental illness. What’s more, the duration of absence for a physical disability increases two to three times when accompanied by depression, according to the Conference Board of Canada.

While mental health is a big concern in both the public and private sectors, there is less commitment and engagement from senior management in the public sector.

Clearly, organizations must look at the root causes of mental health in the workplace, and managers should get a handle on it. In fact, organizations might consider making their training mandatory to raise awareness about mental health in the workplace, to break the stigma of this subject among employees, and to promote a systematic approach to develop and sustain a psychologically healthy and safe workplace.

There is lots of data about this issue, and the public sector does not emerge unscathed. APEX (the Association of Professional Executives of the Public Service of Canada) has reported that executive health

changes in employee behaviour. Indeed, when a top performer stops performing, it usually means something is wrong. Here is a checklist of what may indicate a mentalhealth problem: • Missed deadlines; • Reduced productivity and quality of work; • Absent or late more frequently; • Reduced participation in social events; • Anxiety, lower concentration, forgetfulness; and • Complaints about aches and pains.

issues cost the government $100 million in lost productivity every year, representing 10 to 15 percent of executive payroll.

APEX conducts regular surveys and its 2007 survey, involving over 2,000 executives, presented some trends: • More sick days taken annually (3.4 days in 1997 and 4.3 days in 2007) • More executives with chronic health conditions treated and/or diagnosed each year (4% in 2002 and 7% in 2007) • More hours worked (81% worked over 40 hrs/week in 1997 and 95% in 2007).

The 2007 survey showed that 64% of executives said they thought of leaving their organization every month if not more frequently, 75% reported a high range of fatigue, 24% said they had been verbally harassed or tormented in the previous year, while only 12% said the organization supported them in improving their health.

The survey concluded that key areas for future exploration were “mental health, stress and burnout, reason for wanting to leave the organization, and work environment.” The 2007 survey also showed an increasing trend of more work group conflicts for executives, which is often a sure sign of a mental health issue.

Managers should be on the lookout for

18 / Canadian Government Executive // September 2012

Last May, Morneau Shepell ran a series of webcasts during Mental Health Week that focused on the 5Rs of workplace mental health – Resilience, Recognizing Risk, Recovery, Return to Work, and Removing the Stigma. Managers in the public sector, and senior management who write policies and procedures, can get a start on the mental health file by doing the following: • Get commitment by senior management confirmed in a policy statement; • Conduct a risk-assessment and risk evaluation, and employee-engagement surveys; • Prioritize risks by analyzing the data using qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods to get reliable data on rates of absenteeism and turnover, short-term and long-term disability, and costs, etc.; • Based on priorities, define objectives and targets for prevention and risk mitigation interventions and tactics; • Provide mental health training for those who have people reporting to them; and • Develop a model for mental-health management that includes three phases – pre-diagnosis, disability assistance and return to work.

When so many people are under-performing because of a mental health problem, managers must take action.

leadership FEaturE

PaRtinG thOuGhts OF a DePutY On July 30, one of the most senior federal deputy heads retired. ricard dicerni first joined the federal public service in 1973 and later served in the Ontario government as a deputy minister. He enjoyed a spell in the private sector before returning to the federal public service as deputy minister of Industry Canada. On June 19, he spoke for the last time as deputy minister to the Industry, Science and Technology Parliamentary Committee.

Last week, I announced that I would be retiring from the public service. Thank you for permitting me to bid you farewell. This will be my 27th and final parliamentary committee appearance. Over the course of my six years as deputy minister of Industry, I have testified in front of seven different committees and 132 different Parliamentarians. In this, my fi nal testimony, I would like to share with you some thoughts which fl ow from my experiences over these years. My comments will also draw from my 40-year career, which has mostly been spent in the public sector. I would like to leave you with four final thoughts:

Elected officials First, and I have said this privately many times, I have the utmost respect for elected officials. Canadians are fortunate that women and men like yourselves are prepared to make so many personal, family and financial sacrifices in order to put forth your views and values in the ultimate court of public opinion which is the House of Commons. The general public will never know the number of birthdays, hockey games, family trips that have been missed because you chose elected office. You make untold and unrecognized sacrifices. As a Canadian, I would like to express my thanks.

Deputy ministers Deputy ministers are a diverse lot. We come in all sizes and shapes, men and women, francophones and anglophones, maritimers and westerners. In doing our job, we provide advice on policy issues, we deliver programs, we administer legislative mandates, we provide stewardship to large organizations. There is, however, one characteristic that is common to all deputy ministers: we are serially monogamous in our loyalty to the government of the day.

We are not partisan yet we are respectful defenders of the government. We do so because that is also part of our job.

In that context, if over the years some of my answers to your questions, or for that matter answers in other fora from other deputies, have been found wanting or unclear, I would ask for your understanding. More often than not, the fl aws in the an-

swers probably reflect the challenges inherent in walking that fine line between being loyal to the minister and government we serve and being responsive to the needs of Parliamentarians.

Parliamentary proceedings Sometimes I have appeared in front of committees with the minister; sometimes without the minister. I would say that the appearances which fall in the latter category were a bit of a mixed blessing. On one hand, it gave me an opportunity to speak about and explain the activities and achievements of my department. And since I never give speeches or interviews, this was a good place to discuss the work of the men and women of Industry Canada. On the other hand, these circumstances created a mild sense of unease because it is an uneven playing field. The vocabulary available to public servants to respond to questions from parliamentarians is quite a bit narrower than the vocabulary available to the questioners. Moreover the range of emotions that we can demonstrate tends to be more restrained.

I have always been treated with the utmost respect in this committee. This unfortunately has not always been the case in other places with other individuals. In that regard, I would encourage you to continue for my successor this high degree of civility and mutual respect in your proceedings.

Industry Canada It’s a fine department and I am proud to have been able to provide stewardship to the women and men who call Industry Canada their workplace home. Over the past six years much has been accomplished: the S&T strategy, the auto restructuring assistance, the Knowledge Infrastructure Program, the auction of spectrum, to name a few. Much however remains to be done. Fortunately, the department is staffed with very competent, diligent and professional individuals who are up to the task. I would like to close my remarks by publicly thanking them for their support. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to be their deputy minister.

Thank you again for having granted me this privilege.

September 2012 // Canadian Government Executive / 19

Feature At arm’s length

John Lutz is president of IBM Canada.

P3 collaboration essential to solving the productivity gap It can happen, and it’s noteworthy when it does. Government, business and academia can work in concert to meet important economic and social needs, which is what is happening through a new, $210-million research and development network in Ontario.

Dr. Paul Young, University of Toronto; John Lutz; Dr. Amit Chakma, Western University; Brad Duguid, MEDI Minister; David Naylor, U of T; and Minister Gary Goodyear.

The new network combines federal and provincial government investment with researchers from a consortium of seven universities, led by the University of Toronto and Western University, and IBM to focus on solving the most pressing problems within our cities, healthcare, energy and water management systems.

The centre will help build home-grown software and engineering skills to accelerate the commercialization of Canadianled research and development and act as a catalyst to help Canada further excel in global markets.

Public-private sector collaboration initiatives like this are essential because Canada has been sliding down the global productivity rankings. According to the Conference Board of Canada, the Council of Canadian Academies, and several other respected organizations, Canada has been going the wrong way in this regard for most of the past two decades. An OECD report released in June 2012 identified “sluggish productivity growth as the main long-term challenge facing Canada’s economy.”

Canada has lagged behind the major economies of the world in raising productivity because of under-investment in research and development, as well as an under-investment in machinery and equipment, specifically, investment in information and communications technology

(ICT). As a result, Canadians born today are at risk of being the first ever with a lower standard of living than their parents.

The cause and effect is straightforward.

Lack of R&D chokes innovation, which stymies productivity because companies aren’t applying innovative processes and technologies. Faltering productivity, especially in today’s globally competitive world, results in less competitive companies and a less competitive marketplace.

Markets that aren’t competitive don’t thrive. We end up with higher unemployment, lower tax revenues, and an overall degradation in standard of living.

Of course there are complexities. For decades the relatively weak Canadian dollar hid slipping productivity and countries such as China, Brazil and other emerging economies weren’t yet major competitive threats. Without a pressing need, Canadian businesses in all sectors systematically under-invested in ICT. A cynic might argue that Canada, reliant on its resource-based economy, lacks the critical mass of domestic business to support a meaningful R&D culture.

However, the top private sector spenders on R&D in Canada continue to execute several important global mandates that have returned significant benefits to this country. These companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on R&D with-

20 / Canadian Government Executive // September 2012

in Canada, and generate billions of dollars worth of exports to the rest of the world.

Of course, attracting others to that kind of investment is a chicken-or-egg proposition. There are many strong examples of Canadian innovation at play, but to drive that, Canada needs more highly-educated, knowledge workers who are attracted to or stay in places where their innovation talents are most valued. Projects like this new research and development network will serve as magnets for the world’s best R&D talent. These kinds of investments create highly-skilled jobs and serve as innovation clusters with ancillary benefits beyond new employment and investment.

This kind of collaborative work is growing in global markets. There are several instances where other countries are collaborating across sectors to help drive improvements.

Examples are extensive around city systems – London, Stockholm, Madrid, New York, Singapore; in Ireland they have focused on Galway Bay to learn more about water systems; in Israel and Australia they are collaborating across R&D focus areas that they believe are key to their future.

Assembling the public-private sector partnerships required to address Canada’s challenges will facilitate new made-in-Canada commercial solutions and act as a catalyst to help Canada successfully address its innovation and productivity deficit.

In crafting innovation policy, everyone has a role to play. Governments are continuing to make strategic investments in skills, R&D and innovation, and business and industry are being asked to step up and help turn around Canada’s innovation and productivity performance. Every sector must continue to do its part. By working collaboratively, we can move Canada back up the league table of global competitiveness.

3RD ANNUAL

privacy, access & security CONGRESS 2012

OCTOBER 4-5, 2012

REGISTER NOW aT

T H E W E S T I N O T TA W A H O T E L OT TAWA | O N | C A N A D A

rebootconference.com/OTTAWAPS2012 1.250.388.6060

Produced in association with the Treasury Board Secretariat this annual Congress is a must attend for those working in the privacy, access to information, and security fields. This two-day forum draws an international audience focused on policy, programs, law, research and technologies aimed at the protection of access to information, privacy and security.

2012 CO NG R ESS TO pIC S: • Cyber Security • Open government • Identity Management

• Emerging Privacy and Access Issues • Cross Border Data Flows and Multinational Cloud Environments

• Privacy Breaches • BYOD • Social Media

www.rebootconference.com/OTTAWAPS2012 PS-OCT2012-FullPageAd-AUG.indd 1

12-08-13 4:45 PM

New Professionals

Tariq Piracha is a communication

strategist with Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada.

Collaboration is about shared values

With the Treasury Board Secretariat’s release of the Guideline for External Use of Web 2.0, it is likely more departments and agencies will be diving into Web 2.0 and social media.

The guideline has created quite the buzz both internally and externally about how the government of Canada is using these tools. As the government’s profile in this area increases, so will activity in the use of Web 2.0 tools.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Ottawa, a group of public servants is likely being trained on how to use a new collaborative tool. A lot of work will have gone into procuring it and expectations will be high that once employees start using it, productivity and outputs will improve. Sadly, once launched, its only users will be the mavericks, the early adopters.

Where’s everyone else and why aren’t they using this new tool? Training will have been put in place and made readily available in multiple formats. Lunch-and-learn sessions, one-on-one training, online instructions and videos will be at everyone’s fingertips, yet the take-up will still be slow.

The project lead will be left scratching his or her head, wondering why so few have are making use of the tool. After all, they’d planned a strong communications strategy for marketing the tool and provided ample opportunities for training.

While training on the technical aspects of new Web 2.0 tools is important, few talk about the real key to collaboration and digital engagement: a conversation about values.

Public servants require training to make use of the tools that are out there, but training is the easy part. Many of the vendors and even the free tools (like Twitter and Facebook) have materials readily available to help with training. The hard part is training people to learn how to work together. And you can’t just train one party; all participants need to learn how to work with one another. This is particularly difficult because what you are really asking is for people to adjust their values. That’s asking a lot and if participants don’t understand that aspect – that values matter – then it will be even more difficult to achieve the goal.

22 / Canadian Government Executive // September 2012

In October 2010, the government of Canada saw an entire day-long conference devoted to the study and practice of collaboration – the first free, self-organized conference to focus on the topic. The daylong “culture camp” attempted to profile the importance of collaborative culture in the workplace. There have since been three more conferences on the topic and it raises an issue that many departments and agencies risk misunderstanding: it is not just a question of which tool, but also what values can best facilitate collaboration.

A collaborative, inclusive process is important because through it we can find better outcomes. A collaborative mindset will regard a good idea as precisely that – a good idea – regardless of the role, responsibilities or hierarchal position of its originator. We’re talking about a mindset that inverts the adage “information is power” and instead values the power of sharing information. These are all values that are typically foreign to the existing paradigms in the public service.

Much like mediation between conflicting parties, participants in a collaborative process need to be on the same page about the behaviour that governs their interactions. If one or more participants do not believe in sharing information or in providing a safe space to explore ideas, mistrust between participants will cascade and the process will break down. This is why a conversation about values is important at the outset.

Getting employees to share the same collaborative values will be a lot of hard work. But once on the same page, issues like training simply become a task and not a roadblock. And that’s the same message being communicated by the Collaborative Culture conference series – it’s about culture, not just the tool.

Tom Wileman, a principal with the Office of the

Performance management

Auditor General of Canada (retired), led the 2009 government-wide audit of program evaluation.

He is a board member of the Performance and Planning Exchange (PPX).

Program evaluation: Meeting a new challenge Beginning on April 1, 2013, and over a five-year cycle, the evaluation function in large federal departments and agencies will face a significant challenge, namely to contribute to budget planning by assessing program effectiveness for all direct program spending and major statutory spending.

While this challenge originates in the 2009 Treasury Board Policy on Evaluation, it impacts deputy heads as much as accounting officers. The scenario is clear: as deputies implement review targets under strategic review and the Deficit Reduction Action Plan, they want the best available evidence to explain and defend program results. Hence a robust demand for program evaluation.

The extent to which this scenario will play out is unknown, because the budgeting process is subject to Cabinet and budget secrecy. However, studies of the budgeting process have rated the federal government poorly in terms of attention to program performance and effectiveness: the spending departments focus on developing expenditure proposals and linking them to government priorities, rather than program performance. It is well known that the program evaluation function did not make much of a contribution to earlier program reviews in the mid-1980s and 1990s. Moreover, there is some indication that departments have lacked evidence about program performance when preparing for the current strategic reviews.

To meet the challenge this situation will have to change. The question is what influences the integration of evalu-

ation into budgeting: what is required?

This article draws its inspiration from a government-wide audit of evaluation (Chapter 1, “Evaluating the Effectiveness of Programs,� Fall 2009 Auditor General’s Report), and a 2010 Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS) report on the health of the evaluation function. Below are five factors influencing the integration of evaluation into budgeting: capacity, quality, coverage, timelines and utility.

Capacity is the question of how to ensure sufficient, qualified evaluation staff and funding to meet the needs for program evaluation. In the three years following the enactment of the Federal Accountability Act, departments increased professional staff in evaluation units, and received some central funding to implement the Act, with its requirement for evaluation of grants and contributions programs. Despite these gains, departments have experienced a shortage of experienced evaluators, and have faced difficulties finding experienced professional staff, particularly at senior levels.

Quality can be assessed in terms of coverage of issues, validity and reliability of methods, and the independence and objectivity of reporting. While studies sponsored by TBS have rated most program evaluations as acceptable in quality, the assessment of program effectiveness also depends upon reliable data on performance.

In many cases, evaluation has been hampered by unavailable or low-quality data.

Coverage requirements for grants and contributions are being met, in compliance with the legal requirement. In terms

of overall direct program spending, it remains a challenge for departments to evaluate an average of 20 percent of spending each year. In particular, full coverage calls for a change in planning practices, since evaluation efforts can no longer be targeted on the basis of risks.

Timeliness is the extent to which evaluation reports can be made available at the appropriate time in the annual budget cycle or when needed for other types of expenditure review. It has been identified as an underlying reason for the lack of use of evaluation findings in budgeting. There is a need for coordination with evaluation planning, which is carried out on a rotating five-year basis and requires Treasury Board approval. In addition, evaluations of larger, more complex programs can take more than one year to complete, potentially rendering them unavailable for a given annual cycle.

Utility refers to the use of evaluation findings in budgetary decision making: the question of fit or alignment. Some officials have viewed program evaluation as detailed, longer-term research, not always well suited to the less formal evaluations used in budgeting. In addition, budgeting tends to focus on fiscal aggregates, notably the budgetary balance and the elimination of the deficit; however, expenditure review targets can bring it back to the level of programs.

In conclusion, the successful integration of evaluation in budgeting is a work in progress. Many of the necessary steps are known, and achievable. Overall, program evaluation can be better aligned with the budgeting, by tailoring evaluation studies to the needs of the budgetary process.

September 2012 // Canadian Government Executive / 23

Procurement

John Read provides procurement consulting services to public sector clients.

He served for almost 15 years in the Public Works procurement arena.

Contract A

is anti-competitive… …well, maybe not – but there is a link.

Governments must learn to seek the best, be reasonable and decisive and decide fast.

Competition is a goal or result in which the best suppliers vie to win government contracts, with the eventual contractor being the best fit for the job.

There are business reasons why this may not happen. “Best” suppliers may be committed to other work; perhaps the work is in a location that a “best” supplier cannot support efficiently; a job may be too small or too big.

Government buyers cannot control supplier business decisions but their actions can dissuade suppliers from bidding, and therefore be anti-competitive.

Buyers often have the attitude: “I buy, I set the rules. If you don’t like them I will find someone else.” For example, a recent procurement specified a completion date.

That alone could have made it impossible for some already-committed “best” suppliers to bid. No contract was awarded. A new call for bids had to be issued, with a new completion date, meaning program delay with time and money lost. What value or relevance, then, the original supposed completion date? What if a potential bidder in the first process had requested some date flexibility so it could bid? When a potential bidder asks for flexibility or suggests other changes to a procurement bid, a modification may give more competition, a better-fit contractor and better program results.

Do organizations value fast bid evaluation? More likely they drag the process out: evaluators are busy, and besides the

bids are valid for months, so what’s the rush?

Every day costs bidders money. In bidding they undertake to do the work if they win the contract (the Contract A link).

That means keeping resources available “in case”: it costs money for resources to sit and wait. It is high risk for a bidder to go after other contract opportunities using the same resources: what if it ends up winning two contracts, and an impossible obligation to use the same resources on both? Conversely, by not bidding on multiple opportunities a supplier may end up with no work.

Delays cost government buyers as well.

Prudent suppliers pass up opportunities in order to maintain their readiness to carry out other contracts. Each pass decreases the buyer’s likelihood of finding the “best fit” contractor. Program delivery and budget may suffer. Suppliers may bid but increase their prices to recuperate some of their “waiting time” costs, with the result that governments pays more for the same thing. Aggressive bidders may win overlapping contracts – they split their resources between both or use replacements, and both buyers risk “B Team” results.

For example, suppose a supplier bids for a large contract, certain it has no conflicts of interest. While the bids are being evaluated … and evaluated … and evaluated, one of that supplier’s proposed sub-contractors receives another very small contract with the same program. After our hypothetical bidder is evaluated as the “best fit,” someone in the contract award decision chain learns of the second contract,

24 / Canadian Government Executive // September 2012

decides that it could constitute a potential conflict of interest, and despite making reasonable proposals to remedy the situation, the successful bidder is pitched.

Had the first evaluation been completed quickly the problem might not have arisen: with the contract awarded before the alleged conflict arose, the buyer would have had the “best fit” contractor. Instead, the buyer denied itself the benefit of a known “best fit” contractor, based on nervousness about “could” and “possible.”

Of greater concern, our hypothetical bidder was pitched because of an afterthe-fact event that could not have had any impact on the development of the bid or the integrity of the evaluation. Is it fair or reasonable to take post facto events into account, when standard procurement practice (and Contract A) requires bid evaluation based only on what is in the bid? If the bidder proposes possible solutions, such as removing the “conflicted” resource from its team and re-evaluation based on the rest of its proposal, is it reasonable for the buyer to refuse because it would be bid repair? Sounds more like bid destruction.

Allowing extraneous and/or after-thefact information to alter bid evaluation results cannot but undermine supplier confidence. That increases buyer risk with fewer bids, less likelihood of finding the best fit contractor, negative impact on program delivery and increased cost.

These three examples undermine the spirit, integrity and benefits of competition. Buyers need to be confident that their procurement activities are not having the same effect.

CANADIAN

SCIENCE

POLICY CONFERENCE CALGARY ALBERTA

CSPC 2012

Honorary Conference Chairs Preston Manning President & CEO, Manning Centre for Building Democracy

Dr. Elizabeth Cannon President and Vice-Chancellor University of Calgary

CSPC 2012 Themes

Dr. Eric Newell Chancellor Emeritus, University of Alberta Former Chair and CEO, Syncrude Canada Ltd.

• Innovating on energy supply and demand for more sustainable resource management: a critical test for the integration of science, technology and policy • Re-imagining Canadian Healthcare: How innovation in science and policy can contribute to a more sustainable system • Food, Fuel and Farmers: Agriculture at the convergence of multi-disciplinary science policy issues • Science-Technology-Society-Nexus 21 Panel Sessions | 80 Speakers 3 Days of Conference, Workshop: Science Policy 101 Info@cspc2012 | www.cspc2012.ca | @sciencepolicy

The Leader’s Bookshelf

Harvey Schachter writes The Globe and Mail’s Managing Books and Monday Morning Manager columns.

He is a freelance writer specializing in management issues.

Recruiting a better business bureaucracy

Leadocracy Geoff Smart Greenleaf, 163 pages, $20.50

In this column, I usually share books with techniques that I think can be helpful to readers, and that they may want to delve into in more detail later. This month, I’ll break from the tradition and look at a book that Canadian government executives should be aware of, but which doesn’t have any particularly tempting techniques, is wedded to the American scene (even though that is taken as a proxy for the world), and is startlingly naïve and perhaps pernicious in its view of government management.

It’s by Geoff Smart, an author I saluted for his book on recruitment, Who, which I looked at several years ago in these pages. But he has moved beyond his area of expertise in this work, which will no doubt be comforting reading to many businesspeople, the Republican politicians he has connections to, and government bashers in Canada, which is why you should be familiar with it.

Smart, who by his own admission had been cynical about government for 40

years, received a surprise invitation late in 2010 from the newly-elected governor of his state of Colorado, John Hickenloper, to help with recruiting the best people possible for the new cabinet. He was inclined to decline, but didn’t, and went ahead with a meeting with the businessman-turned-governor and his chief of staff, Roxanne White, who had been CEO of a not-for-profit and seems to have impressed Smart with her tough-asnails, can-do attitude, even if she wasn’t from the almighty private sector that is glorified throughout the book for its wonderful leaders.

Smart was surprised when the governor indicated he wanted the best people for his cabinet, without regard to partisan affiliation. Of course, that wouldn’t travel to Canada, appealing as the idea is at first blush, since cabinets in our system are made up of elected partisans, with any outsiders invited in expected to run for election as part of the governing party.

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper drafted David Emerson into his cabinet from the Liberal party – the closest we have come in recent years to such a nonpartisan appointment – it was not greeted with universal applause, despite Emerson’s previous experience as industry minister and in business executive ranks.

Smart was also bowled over when the governor referred to citizens as customers. I was bowled over, too – in 2010, how could anyone be shocked at citizens being called customers by a politician, given that fad is about a decade old? It was a sign of how out-of-touch he was.

Smart believes the number one problem preventing us from living a better life is that government is on the wrong path – a path marked by a sign that reads bureaucracy. He is still entranced by the copy his father gave him as a child of Free to Choose, Milton Friedman’s epistle to

26 / Canadian Government Executive // September 2012

free markets, which deplores the inevitable subpar outcomes provided by bureaucracy. “Unfortunately the challenges of fixing government today typically lie in the hands of bureaucratic non-leaders we have put in office. These are people who never had a chance to develop the skill of leadership. People who have not analyzed complex problems, allocated scarce resources to their highest and best uses, and aligned people to take coordinated action to achieve the people’s goals.

People who are not familiar with best practices of budgeting, hiring, strategic planning, continuous improvement, lean management, process improvement, customer satisfaction, goal setting, and accountability,” he writes.

He seems to be referring to elected politicians there, but he does flip between those and government executives throughout the book, making the same accusations (unless they had a private sector career, in which case by implication they are apparently exonerated). In Canada, where noted management professor Henry Mintzberg has probed into government at length and found admirable leaders at all levels, we might have a different viewpoint. We also, of course, have seen government executives like Ed Clark, Paul Tellier and Michael Sabia move from success in government to success in business.

But Smart expects the solution to the number one problem he defines for America to come from the opposite transition. He asks readers to imagine their country had vast, untapped gold resources that could be used to improve everyone’s quality of life. “I believe that the vast pool of private sector leaders in this country are like that unused gold.

There are so many amazing leaders in the private sector, but so few of them dare tread into government,” he writes.

The Leader’s Bookshelf He notes that six of the 50 U.S. governors have been successful private sector leaders before getting into government.

“That is only 12 percent! The rest of the governors either were career politicians, or had tried and failed to be successful in the private sector.”

He reports that there are approximately 2.3 million leaders in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Department of Defense. About 13 percent are in the military, with 8 percent in the public sector – federal, state, and local government, including government-run schools and hospitals. That leaves 79 percent, the largest pool, in the private sector, by the figures he gives. “I’m interested in hiring more great leaders into government. I don’t care where they come from. But if you take a ‘segmented approach’ to identifying the biggest source of leaders, you would focus on the private sector, since this is the largest pool,” he writes.

Of course, segmentation these days also includes psychographics. And if government service requires people who are drawn to serve others, then it might be that you are more likely to find that in leaders in the military and in the public sector (which is not to say private sector people don’t have the impulse to serve others; many do, happily within the private sector, providing their product or service, and might also be interested in

fulfilling that desire in government). But the psychographic that seems to appeal to Smart would be people who are impatient, action-oriented, and driven to cut costs.

Leadership, he says, is not a state of being but a state of doing. And the three criteria we need from leaders, his consultancy has found after 16 years of research, are the 3As of analyzing, allocating, and aligning: figuring out what outcomes are desired and how to achieve them; establishing a plan to concentrate scarce resources, like money, time and people, toward their best uses, and avoid waste; and influencing others to behave in a coordinated way, according to the plan, to achieve those desired outcomes.

“Now, more than ever, we need leaders who are skilled at the 3As in the public sector,” he says. It would be surprising if there aren’t many leaders with those skills already in American government, of course.

Business leaders shun government, he says, because they lack knowledge of government and the bureaucratic system; think the required sacrifices will be too great; and dislike the public scrutiny they will encounter. He therefore urges business leaders to overcome those obstacles by prepping for a government stint, and planning on that time in government to be short-term.

To help them along, he shares stories

of people who enjoyed their time in government, feeling they gained new experiences and new accomplishments. And he has developed a leadocracy pledge, reprinted in the book, where he asks readers to join him in declaring they will complete a full-time, two-year leadership role in government by their 70th birthday. His leadership initiative, to promote the concept, will focus on encouraging private sector leaders to aim for appointed roles in state governments, rather than electoral office, which draws more media scrutiny.

The book is written for fellow travellers from the business community. For those who already have committed to government, it may seem insulting or inflammatory. But career growth for individuals is helped by encouraging new challenges and breaking down barriers and silos to allow more job mobility.

In Canada, businesspeople can and do run for political office. The prime minister’s chief of staff was drawn for a shortterm stint from Onex Corporation, the model the book touts. But making it easier for leaders outside today’s government offices to be recruited to public service – and government officials to shift to posts in the private sector or NGOs – is an improvement that can be welcomed, without having to view businesspeople as the fount of efficiency, productivity and organizational wisdom.

A Balanced Program Designed for Government, Higher Education, Healthcare & Nonprofit Organizations This program offers up to 13 CPE Credits

SPECIAL OFFER - 15% DISCOUNT! Quote Booking Code: SSPS_CGEAD to claim your discount to attend.

November 13 - 14, 2012 | Chicago, IL, USA

*Terms & Conditions: End-Users only, offer not to be used in conjunction with any other offer.

How to Do More With Less in Lean Times ✔ Build a strong business case for change ✔ Communicate goals effectively and achieve broad buy-in ✔ Implement performance management and continuous improvement to differentiate from typical budget reduction initiatives and create value

www.sspublicsector.com

•

✔ Improve processes and deploy effective technology enablers, thereby enabling a high performance operation and workforce

✔ Gain a thorough understanding of the role of metrics in every stage of your shared services operations deployment

✔ Scale up your services and learn when and how to develop new lines of business

✔ Fund shared services and chargeback models in complex and muti-faceted organizations

✔ Collaborate more effectively across traditional jurisdictional boundaries

✔ Increase data sharing capabilities for agencies throughout the state

1-800-882-8684

Sponsored by:

September 2012 // Canadian Government Executive / 27

opinion

Elizabeth Friesen is an academic and researcher whose work explores the role of social and normative forces in supporting, as well as contesting, the rules and practices which govern international relations.

Privatizing profits and socializing losses As the global financial crisis continues to stagger forward, one thing remains particularly astonishing: the apparent success of the claim that it is primarily government actors who are to blame for the current state of affairs.

The financial crisis, which for one brief moment in the fall of 2008 seemed to reveal the dangers inherent in an increasingly deregulated global financial system, has instead been successfully reframed as the result of regulatory failure. At the same time, the part played by the reckless ambition of financial speculators and their energetic enthusiasm for circumventing financial regulations has been largely forgotten.

In most quarters talk of “market failure” has been eclipsed by a more familiar rhetoric which blames incompetent regulators and spendthrift governments. According to this logic the debtor states facing chronic financial crisis have no one to blame but themselves and the remedy to their troubles lies in “tightening the belt” on government spending. But is this really the case? How can one so easily forget the bigger picture and overlook the part played by global financial actors? More important, what lessons can be drawn from the current crisis and what might be obscured by accepting the simplistic explanation that unsustainable government spending is at the root of the problem?

Politics and finance Arguably the ongoing crisis is part of a much larger struggle that is more political than economic. Fundamentally, it is about “who gets what, when and how” – in other words, as Harold Lasswell so concisely defined the term, it’s about politics.

The organization of international finance is not a natural phenomenon. On first glance, however, the power relations inherent in the arbitrary system of rules and practices governing international finance may not be apparent. Finance is notoriously technical and, for most of us, the rules and practices surrounding the organization of international financial relations remain eyeglazingly boring.

In this mind-numbing quality lies an important strategic advantage. For many potential critics, finance simultaneously appears to be too technical to be political and too complex to master. It is this quality that conveniently leaves the field free for those who do appreciate and benefit from its substantial possibilities.

Manias, panics and crises Clearly an active, innovative and stable financial system is necessary for a healthy economy. But what has developed over the past four decades is an international financial system which is prone to irrationality, over exuberance and crisis. As Kindleberger documents, the tendency to “manias, panics and crises” has long been a feature of finance.

Recently, however, many international financial institutions have grown too big to fail without endangering the entire system. As a result we now have a system which generates fantastic profits when times are good but requires public bail outs during crises. In effect this system privatizes profits but socializes losses.

Since the 1970s it has become commonplace to assert that finance should be self regulating. The Glass Steagall Act passed in 1933 was overturned in 1999

28 / Canadian Government Executive // September 2012

for just this reason. Yet, in spite of claims that financial deregulation will produce a more efficient financial order, it has instead produced an explosion of debt backed primarily by a combination of greed and irrational exuberance.

Public bailouts This is by no means the first time that public money has been required to bail out private excess. The third world debt crisis followed a similar path. In the 1970s the collapse of the Bretton Woods system generated increased opportunities for international bankers at the same time as the oil crises produced large pools of petrodollars seeking investment opportunities.

As private international lending surged, the herd mentality of bankers seeking new opportunities in the developing world was reinforced by opinion leaders such as Walter Wriston, the chairman of Citicorp, who famously claimed that this lending was secure because “countries don’t go bankrupt.”

By the summer of 1982, however, the first Mexican financial crisis demonstrated that countries could indeed go bankrupt. This marked the official start of the third world debt crisis and, in the following decades, country after country faced default. Time and again public intervention was necessary to contain financial contagion and prevent the financial house of cards from tumbling down. Today a similar dynamic is emerging but this time it is the developed world which is at the center of events.

The interference myth Since a healthy international financial system is necessary to the global economy, it is important to consider how internation-

opinion al finance is organized. The assertion that finance functions best with only minimal government “interference” has not been supported by recent events. While minimal regulation may serve the short-term interests of some, it eventually results in crisis. This is not an efficient way to organize such an important part of the global economy. While it may be true that bad regulation is no better that no regulation, neither state of affairs is desirable.

Ideally, what is needed is an international regulatory system in which private practitioners as well as public regulators pool their expertise and work together in an atmosphere of mutual respect to create the conditions for the healthy and sustainable financial system. It is high time that private financial actors looked beyond individual self interest and accepted their responsibility to the larger community.

Too big to fail?

At present the international financial system is unprecedented in scope and scale.

It is too big to fail and yet it is failing states. During crises taxpayers must bail out financial institutions or lose hope of a stable financial system and with it any hope of a prosperous economy. But what do taxpayers get for their investment?

They are cautioned not to ask for shares or nationalize rescued institutions. Instead privatization remains the mantra and liberalization the goal.

Such arguments, put forward by some of the most respected and wealthy members of society, continue to have tremendous resonance. Many who benefited from government intervention are now emboldened to blame the very governments that rescued them.

An enormous public relations offensive is underway in which the ongoing crisis is being reframed as a failure of regulation and therefore a failure of government. There is no recognition of the anti-regulation consensus or the chronic underfunding of regulatory organizations in the period which led up to the crisis.

Instead the assertion that governments are inefficient and that markets must be “free” is repeated again and again. In such an environment it is particularly important to remember that the blame for the current crisis lies in the private financial sector and it was public actors who averted disaster.

At present we live with an international financial system that not only institutionalizes but also rewards reckless behaviour.

Clearly privatizing profits and, when you encounter difficulties, socializing losses is nice work if you can get it. It is, however, up to government actors and all those who defend the interests of citizens and taxpayers to be aware of this dynamic and work toward implementing a regulatory order capable of ending this peculiar state of affairs. To accomplish this, it will undoubtedly be necessary to challenge the assertion that international finance must be self-regulating while firmly keeping in mind the inherent limitations of the private financial sector.

Visit our site for Public Courses or Contact us to Arrange an on-site Course in Your Province or City EML:

WEB:

Educating, Mentoring & Consulting Specializing in Custom On-Site Courses

info@BuildTheVision.ca www.BuildTheVision.ca

Building Innovation Together The Integrated Management Framework

Consulting By Experienced Practitioners Professional Development Courses Offered Knowledge Stewardship and Management Enterprise Architecture Using TOGAF 9.1 Executive Overview, Foundation and Practitioner Tailored Courses available for Government, Public Safety and Defence (In English et en français)

Specializing In Business Strategy & Planning Enterprise Architecture Knowledge Management September 2012 // Canadian Government Executive / 29

Governing Digitally

Jeffrey Roy is professor in the School of Public Administration at Dalhousie University (roy@dal.ca).

Democratic schisms: The clash of old and new voices For Egyptians and Mexicans, this past summer showcased the imperfections of democracy. Indeed, one year after the socalled Arab Spring of 2011, some Mexican observers sought to import the label and all its hopeful aspirations. As in Egypt, the results were far more modest and humbling, but not without reason for hope.

Egyptians went to the polls in their first, free presidential elections in decades, a two-round process that narrowly favoured now-President Mohammed Morsi, candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Aside from the laudable absence of violence in this fragile transition still playing out, the presidential contest proved to be something of a cold shower for proponents of the social media-infused uprising one year prior, especially tech-savvy youth. Between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, the time and means were simply not there to enable an alternative candidate to organize sufficiently, with several prominent prospects bowing out as a result.

This episode is emblematic of the schism between spontaneous and organic forms of societal democratization (fueled by Internet freedoms and online mobilizing) and the more arduous task of constructing political institutions capable of delivering both legitimacy and stability. For many that flooded Cairo’s Tahrir Square one year prior, incessantly tweeting and video chatting with global media talk shows most everywhere, there now seems little to do for the moment but watch and wait.

For Mexico, a youthful but more established democracy, a similar dynamic revealed itself on July 1 as the victory of Enrique Pena Nieto coupled a charismatic

new leader with a revived old guard. His Institutional Revolutionary Party (IRP) once ruled the country for 71 years consecutively before peacefully ceding power in 2000. Promising open and accountable governance, the IRP now controls the presidency, both Houses of Congress, most State governorships, and as a result, many are glum about the prospects for serious debate and contested authority.

Why, then, claims of a “Mexican spring” just a few short months ago? Such hopeful claims stem from the unprecedented mobilization and impact of Mexican youth during the campaign, and not surprisingly much of it online. Having been accused by the IRP as being partisan and manipulated by the Opposition, some 130 Mexican youth activists took to YouTube to declare their independence and to voice their aspirations for change. The video quickly went viral, as they say, leading to massive protests in Mexico City and elsewhere, and was described as the most important student movement since 1968 (a comparison no doubt resonating with Quebec’s political class).

Although the movement galvanized interest in an otherwise lethargic campaign, its electoral impacts were quickly stunted, a sign of either democratic maturity for the country as a whole or an inability to sustain momentum and organization (or more likely some combination of both).

Unlike 2006, when many Mexicans protested a perceived fraudulent result, the main challenger this time around found his similar calls falling on deaf ears, as most domestic and international observers deemed the election imperfect but

30 / Canadian Government Executive // September 2012

reasonably fair. Still, protests continued throughout the summer: among other antics, the PRI is accused of distributing pre-paid debit cards to disperse campaign funds to eligible voters.

Despite starkly different religious orientations, Mexicans and Egyptians now look ahead with a mix of hopefulness and trepidation – especially among more educated and increasingly online youth.

A recent study by the respected PEW Research Centre in the U.S., for instance, found two-thirds of Egyptians expressing a desire for democracy, with Tunisia and Turkey emerging as important regional role models (a complex relationship with the U.S. also enjoins Mexico and Egypt as only a small minority of citizens in the latter country view the U.S. as a proponent of democratic change).

Such countries, of course, have little in common with Canada, a richer and more solidly democratic country. Or do they?

A summer 2012 public opinion survey of Canadians commissioned by Reader’s Digest Magazine found the highest levels of trust afforded to the military and the courts (suggesting an attachment to order and stability), whereas the least trusted institution…the federal House of Commons.

Put into this light, perhaps the student movement in Quebec denotes something more than an attachment to low tuition; instead indicative of a globalizing struggle between rising demands for new political voices and venues on the one hand, and the virtues of order and stability that also underpin safe and prosperous ways of life on the other.

gtec12ca

REGISTER TODAY! Receive 15% off your Conference Pass or Next Generation CIO program. Details Below.

November 5–8, 2012 | Ottawa Convention Centre

Innovating & Collaborating Making a Difference for Canadians As GTEC marks its 20th anniversary, governments are facing an environment of unprecedented change. The pressure to do more with less continues and the need to collaborate and innovate has never been more important. In response to this increased pressure, GTEC 2012 will be centered on the theme, Innovating & Collaborating — Making a Difference for Canadians.

SPECIAL OFFER FOR CANADIAN GOVERNMENT EXECUTIVE SUBSCRIBERS (CGE): Save 15% on a Conference Pass or Next Generation CIO program with Promo Code CGE2012

GOLD EVENT PARTNERS

TWENTIETH EDITION

gtec12ca_ad-CGE-v3.indd 1

SILVER EVENT PARTNERS

BRONZE EVENT PARTNERS

To learn more visit www.gtec.ca

8/1/12 4:29 PM

Your newest employee is a Canon.

DR-6030C

DR-9050C

Departmental Document Scanner

Production Document Scanner

60 ppm

90 ppm

Some people sell scanners. Canon sells digital imaging solutions.

With an extensive line of high-speed document, you can be sure that there's a model which meets the unique document scanning demands of your business. Our versatile product line is designed to maximize productivity in high-volume, centralized, data capture environments. Canon’s high-speed document scanners maintain the integrity of documents at rapid speeds for mission critical document conversion and content management.

For more information, please contact your Authorized Canon Distributor or visit www.canon.ca/contactus/ ww www.canon.ca

Canon is a registered trademark of Canon Inc. imageANYWARE and imageFORMULA are trademarks of Canon Inc. Š 2011 Canon Canada., Inc.