The Canadian Public Service Has a Personality Review
Donald Savoie: How government went off the runway
If authorities could win the Second Globe War and proceed the economy strong, the thinking went, and so it could take on any new challenges we throw at it
There are things that government must exercise whether it is skilful at information technology or not. Government will never give up its monopoly on controlling violence in guild, nor should it. Governments must control their borders, manage clearing and monetary policy. Foreign affairs and negotiating trade agreements are government responsibilities. No authorities will ever want to fully renounce its role in establishing a regulatory regime.
Since the 1940s, even so, governments have expanded beyond their core responsibilities and added i activity on elevation of another without asking what it is that authorities is good at. By the cease of the 2nd World War, the public'due south conventionalities in the ability of government was high. Not just had the Allies won the war, but governments had planned the war effort and run the economy very well indeed. Unemployment had substantially fallen to nil and still prices had been held down, at least when the goods were available. If authorities could exercise this, so it could take on any new challenges Canadians and their politicians would throw at it.
Information technology became widely accustomed that governments in Canada could carve out new roles in every sector of the economic system. Governments responded and introduced new programs in health care, social services, industrial development, the environment, postal service-secondary pedagogy, economic development, arts and culture, agriculture, fishery, regional economic evolution and the list goes on and on.
No one asked what government was proficient at because most felt that information technology had already established a rail record to be expert at any it tried
Adding departments, new units and programs to the machinery of authorities was viewed as the easy part. Little, if any, thought was given on possible new organizational models or whether regime was well suited to take on new responsibilities in all economic and social sectors. No one asked what government was good at because most felt that it had already established a rail record to be good at whatever it tried.
The less gifted, or the ones perceived every bit less gifted, would look after authoritative matters and the details of the day, a pattern that continues to this day. The challenge for ambitious public servants was and remains tied to policy, to coming forward with whiz bang ideas and policy prescriptions and identifying measures to run into the expectations of the prime government minister, his close directorate and the more senior ministers. The thinking was and remains: come up with the ideas and the machinery of authorities will do as told.
We have overloaded the mechanism of government with new responsibilities, new departments, new agencies and new crown corporations. The result is that we now have a mistake line in government
The courts, rather than acting as a constraint on government, have also become an musical instrument to expand the telescopic of government. They, too, strike decisions, thinking that the machinery of government will do as told. The courts have the luxury of making decisions to aggrandize the role of government without having to detect the funds or figure out how their decisions should be implemented. Those are always somebody else'due south problem. The Supreme Courtroom, information technology will be recalled, ruled in a unanimous decision that governments and schoolhouse boards could not plow to upkeep constraints or other arguments to avert programs to help students with special needs to get an fairly tailored education. In other instances, the Supreme Courtroom was not content to issue a decision. It instructed the government to report back on how well it was doing in implementing the conclusion.
We have overloaded the mechanism of regime with new responsibilities, new departments, new agencies and new crown corporations. The outcome is that we now have a error line in government. The prime minister, his firsthand advisers, senior ministers and senior public servants operate above the fault line. This is where whiz bang ideas are generated, the blame game is managed and efforts are made to keep bouncing ministers — or senators — out of trouble.
Below the fault line is where government is coming upwards brusk, often because the ones operating higher up it have no appreciation of how the machinery operates. Information technology is also where the swell majority of Canadians bargain with their government. The view among politicians and the courts is that government is about 90 per cent ideas and 10 per cent implementation. Making a policy or programme announcement, defining the right media line and keeping an eye on the blame game as it is played out in Parliament and the media are what truly matters. They expect that program managers beneath the error line should simply run on their tracks and avoid providing fodder for the arraign game. The view among the majority of Canadians and front-line government workers, however, is that government should be xc per cent delivering services efficiently and 10 per cent ideas. Canadians are too ofttimes left waiting, for an hour or and then, to talk to someone afterwards calling a one-800 number, days to get a telephone phone call returned or weeks to get an answer to what they regard equally a straightforward question.
Not only have we overloaded the machinery, we have also misdiagnosed the patient. The thinking that we could somehow make the public sector as efficient equally the private sector was misguided, plush and counterproductive. The thinking conveniently overlooks the fact that the public and individual sectors are different in both of import and unimportant ways. Consider the post-obit: 76 per cent of public-sector employees vest to a marriage versus 16 per cent for the private sector. The arraign game plays very differently in both sectors and the private sector has an unrelenting bottom line, while the public sector has none, or rather has a superlative line called the prime minister, Parliament and the media. In the individual sector, expert managers learn to consul down. In the public sector, practiced managers acquire to consul upwards.
In the search for a lesser line, governments have created an abundance of oversight bodies, management constraint measures and vapid performance and evaluation reports. It has only made the machinery of authorities thicker, more hazard-averse and created a veritable army of public servants kept decorated turning a crank not attached to anything. It has besides given rise to a serious morale problem in the public service.
This is not an indictment on what government tried to do or on the office of regime in mod order merely rather how the government tried to exercise it. Thinking that you tin just pile on responsibilities to the existing mechanism and somehow emulate private-sector direction practices while retaining the command and control approach to operation is where things went off the rails.
National Post
Donald J. Savoie is Canada Enquiry Chair in Public Administration and Governance at the Université de Moncton and author of What Is Government Good At? A Canadian Reply.
Source: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/donald-savoie-how-government-went-off-the-rails
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