Renewal of the Public Service

I attended the CSPS-CAPPA 6th annual symposium in Ottawa last Thursday and Friday – for those who are acronym challenged CSPS= Canada School of Public Service and CAPPA=Canadian Association of Programs in Public Administration. One of the major topics of the session was the future of the federal public service. Ian Green, of the Public Policy Forum (or PPF in acronym) and Jim Lahey from PCO (or Privy Council Office) presented on this topic. Ian is leading the study on Canada’s public service in the 21st Century while Jim is leading the newest public service renewal exercise for the federal government.

Having participated in one of the PPF roundtables a few months ago, it was interesting to hear about the status of the project. A number of trends form the context of the work undertaken by the PPF, among them are the changing demographics in Canada, the increased requirements for Transparency and Accountability, changing technology and the open-sourcing of policy by governments. We have all heard or read about the demographic trends in Canada (if you haven’t I will soon be posting a paper on this on the IPAC website) and what they mean for the future. There are those who believe that we are moving to an era of too few people chasing many jobs which shifts the dynamic between employers and employees. Basically, there are three broad areas that people have identified as key – 1) Leadership; 2) Accountability and 3) Organizational Culture. Not surprisingly, senior public servants are finding that most of their time is being taken in managing the “crisis du jour” and they are not spending enough time managing the organization and leading change. A number of challenges were raised in terms of the leadership needed now and in the future that relate to the skill set of senior management. In the past many people rose from policy positions to be Deputy Ministers. The new skills needed include strategic management skills, human resource skills, financial skills, communication skills, change management skills, public engagement/ stakeholder management skills, just to name a few. How does government ensure that people are well rounded as they move up to senior management positions?

At the same time there is an incredible “churn” at the senior levels. According to a Public Service Commission of Canada report, 50% of EX’s changed positions in the last year. Given that the average tenure in a senior position is shorter than the learning curve to become fully effective how can we expect government to be innovative? At the same time governments have seen a hollowing out of their policy capacity. Do they have the expertise to develop new ground breaking policy nowadays? There are many think tanks and one-issue organizations that can put together in-depth analysis of a policy issue from one point of view. What they lack and what government should excel at is joining all the dots in terms of developing a coherent policy that links, in a collaborative way, the many societal players that deal with the issue identified.

Well that’s all for this blog entry, though I will continue on this topic in my next blog entry and will write about some key questions that were raised about the future of the public service.