WUSC Student Refugee Program – 30th year and 1000 students

Tonight I attended a reception at Oakham House, Ryerson University organized by the World University Service of Canada to celebrate the 30th year and the 1000th student under their Student Refugee Program.

The Student Refugee Program focuses on young refugees whose academic aspirations have been by conflict in their countries of origin. The program allows refugees not only to settle in Canada but also allows them to continue their postsecondary education. This is a tremendous program that has allowed 1000 refugees to contribute to Canadian society.

I had the pleasure of speaking to Marangu Njogo the Executive Director of the Windle Trust Kenya who is also a WUSC Board member. The Windle Trust Kenya is WUSC partner in Kenya helping refugees that are selected to the Student Refugee Program prepare for their Canadian adventure. Mr. Njoga and I had a very interesting talk about the sad situation that is happening in Kenya.

Anyway for those who are interested in learning more about the Student Refugee Program, please visit the WUSC website at www.wusc.ca

Open Source Government - Faceless Book

You may have heard that a number of governments have banned or restricted access to Facebook for their employees. I wrote about this in the last issue of our magazine – Public Sector Management. You can read the article on-line by going here http://www.ipac.ca/PSMEditorial_Dec2007 . I won’t repeat all my arguments here.

Governments have done this in the mistaken belief that employees will waste time going on Facebook. It is not as if employees who want to waste time don’t have any other options, right? How about surfing the net, or talking on the phone, or reading a newspaper or a book, or talking with colleagues? If you have a productivity issue with certain employees, deal with it! Don’t ban what could be a tremendous collaborative tool. There is the potential for Facebook like collaborative tools to be used to really connect with citizens and to leverage the intellectual capacity of society to solve issues. We should be embracing this technology.

Given that in the traditional understanding of public service, public servants are supposed to be faceless, I have come up with the idea of creating a new networking tool for public servants across Canada. They will thus be able to network with their peers and with ordinary citizens. This tool can help in the development of policy and in finding solutions to societal issues. I call this “Faceless Book”. So what do you think? Would you join Faceless Book?

Open-Source Policy Development - Part I

Tomorrow approximately half of eligible voters in the US will be casting votes for either Republican or Democratic candidates as part of the primary process. One thing that will stand out in this great democratic exercise is the extensive use of technology to get the message out.

It seems that all camps are utilizing technology – interactive website, videos on YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, etc – to get their message out. Some campaigns have done this better than others. I was struck by the effectiveness of the Obama campaign to reach and mobilize younger voters (those aged 18 -29) who have responded to his message and have come out and vote in greater numbers than in the past. In fact, in some primaries so far, their vote has matched the percentage of older voters who exercised their democratic franchise. This is quite amazing. I think that part of the reason is the messenger and his message of Hope and part of the reason is his ability to connect with younger voters in the way that they connect with each other – using technology.

I came across a video on YouTube that combines music and one of his speeches entitled “Yes, We Can” you can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY This is but one example of what is out there in cyberspace.

Hilary Clinton is no slouch when it comes to the web either – if you go to her YouTube site (http://youtube.com/hillaryclinton ) you will see over 200 videos posted. (BTW Obama has close to 600 videos on his YouTube site).

I think what this tells us is that the old media and the methods of communicating ideas are changing rapidly. New technologies provide for a cost-effective way to delivering a message without the “filter” of traditional news organizations. These technologies also allow governments to connect with citizens. And these technologies, if used properly should allow for an interactive dialogue between citizens and their government on a myriad of issues.

I have been thinking lately, that one of the ways we can increase citizen engagement in government is to move to what I have termed “open-source policy”. This would be akin to Linux, IBM and P&G, etc who utilize open-source methodologies to develop their products. In this way, government can mobilize the intellectual capital of all its citizens in developing solutions to societal problems. No one has a monopoly on good ideas. In the next while, I will write some more on this topic and hopefully I can find examples of governments who have been brave enough to embark on this journey. By the way, I am not talking about the annual “pre-budget consultations” that governments hold or the one-way presentation of briefs to parliamentary committees, etc. I am talking about an open, interactive and collaborative way to develop public policy.

Public Policy vs. Public Administration - Part II

This is a follow-up to a post I did last December on public policy versus public administration. A friend at the new U of T school of Public Policy and Governance sent me the following:

A butterfly and a giraffe fell madly, desperately in love. However, they were frustrated because they've been unable to consummate their relationship. The giraffe, determined to solve this dilemma, went in search of an answer from the wise old owl.

"Dear wise owl, I have a problem. I've fallen in love with a butterfly but we are just unable to move ahead and show our love for one another...what can we do?" the giraffe asked.

"Well," the owl said thoughtfully, "this is a dilemma." He paused, and the giraffe waited anxiously for a response. After a few minutes, the owl turned to the giraffe and said, "you'll have to turn into a butterfly. This way you can consummate your relationship and go forth with your lives together."

The giraffe was excited with this answer and exclaimed "Yes! That's it!! Thank you, wise owl." He took a few steps away, and then turned back to ask, "But, wise owl, how am I to do that?"

The owl replied, "Oh, well, I am just the policy owl. You'll have to speak to someone else about implementation."

Health Governance

It’s been over 10 days since I last blogged – time to catch up a little.

On January 16, 2008 we held a very successful conference on Health Care Governance renewal that focussed on the changes being implemented in Ontario. Ontario is in the process of implementing a “made in Ontario” regional model that integrates health services by region under what are called Local Health Integration Networks or LHINs in acronym. The job of the LHIN is to integrate all health services in a given geographic region – home care, long-term care, hospitals, mental health, etc. Unlike BC or Alberta, the model in Ontario has meant the elimination of the local level of governance (health provider Boards). The model therefore includes local governance, a LHIN governance structure (there are 14 LHINS in Ontario) and the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care at the apex.

These changes in structure mean that there is a tremendous amount of transformation of the system that has to occur – changes in the management of the system; in the governance of the system; in the interaction between the players; in the way that the Ministry of Health interacts with the system; etc. A lot of change!! The conference brought together Board members and senior management from a wide variety of health care providers, LHINs, Community Care Access Centres, etc to talk about how to start changing governance and management to ensure the integration of the system and the strategic alignment of the system.

We have created a new section on the IPAC website that is dedicated to health care – by health care I mean the management and governance issues related to health care (not clinical issues!). We will be expanding this section over the next few years as we continue to work in helping ameliorate health care management and governance in Canada. Check out this new section – there are two ways to get there: Look under “Key Initiatives” or look for Health Care under the “Research” section of the website.

Nuclear Fallout

Have you been following the saga of the AECL reactor located in Chalk River? This is an interesting case of the independent regulatory function bumping up against politics.

Thomas Walkom of the Toronto Star says it best...here is the linkhttp://license.icopyright.net/webprints/Njk4MTc0.html

The Politics of Public Money

On January 10, 2008 I had the pleasure of being on a panel with David Good from the University of Victoria who has just published a new book under the auspices of the IPAC Book Series in Public Management & Governance. It is entitled “The Politics of Public Money – Spenders, Guardians, Priority Setters, and Financial Watchdogs inside the Canadian Government.”

The session was co-sponsored by the Toronto Regional Group of IPAC and by the IPAC National Office and very well attended (over 80 registrants).

David’s book is a comprehensive review of the evolution of the budgeting process at the Federal level. The forces at play that he describes – the interaction between the four key players in the budget process – spenders, guardians, priority-setters and watchdogs – are also relevant to other levels of government and provide the “lay” reader with an appreciation and understanding of the forces at play. It is a good way to describe the modern budget framework that has evolved in Canada. As he also notes, there are a myriad of other forces both public and private that affect these four players and the dynamics of their interaction.

To quote David’s book: this framework “helped us to see the uneasy balance among the competing budgetary objectives – determining fiscal aggregates, allocating resources, and achieving efficiency in the management of expenditures. In terms of budget outcomes – controlling total expenditures, linking expenditures to priorities and ensuring efficiency in expenditure and avoiding financial mismanagement – we see that it is rare that the government can achieve simultaneously high scores in all three areas. Instead, as government focuses its limited attention and scarce resources on one, it gives less priority to another, sometimes with significant and undesirable consequences.”

The budgetary process is one in which scarce resources are allocated amongst a broad range of seemingly worthy programs and priorities. The dominance of one of the player (guardian versus spender) over another is determined in large part with the particular fiscal circumstance that the government finds itself in as well as the public mood or politics. The periods of relative success of guardians are those when the economic and fiscal circumstances of the government were such that priority-setters had no choice but to make fiscal considerations paramount. We see this at the federal level in the mid-1990’s and in provinces around that time and also later. The era of having acceptable deficits has ended and the public expectation was of a balanced budget. This was reflected in the retrenchment that one saw in governments of all political stripes across Canada.
The stresses at the provincial and municipal levels are greater in that they are more directly responsible for direct service delivery – health care, education, social services, etc.

The emergence of the financial watchdog – Auditors General – has greatly impacted the budgetary process and the public perception of that process. The new accounting rules promulgated by the Public Sector Accounting Board (PSAB) and enforced by Auditors General have changed budgeting in Canada and new upcoming rules will further change the budgeting process. I will comment more about this in a forthcoming post on my blog.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in the budgetary process in Canada and also for those who want to understand how to impact that process. Kudos David!!