The Last Post - maybe

Well it's a hot and humid Thursday July 8, 2010 in good old Toronto the Good.  After four years, tomorrow is my last day as CEO at IPAC.  It has been quite an experience working for a not-for-profit that focuses on public administration and management.  In those four years, I think we have accomplished quite a lot. When I joined IPAC in August 2006, I replaced Joseph Galimberti who had joined IPAC in 1969 and became Executive Director in 1975 until his sudden, untimely death in April 2006.  As you can imagine it is quite interesting and challenging to join an organization that had one person as its leader for 31 years. The thing one has to remember is that you cannot be the person you are succeeding, you have to be your own person and do things your way - which can sometimes be difficult for long time staff!

In these last four years, IPAC has evolved in terms of its outreach, programming and web presence (including this blog and my tweeting!).  There are more innovations to come in terms of IPAC's web presence but I will not divulge these as I don't want to spoil the surprise.  In this day and age organizations such as IPAC must embrace technology to leverage its work and spread the word about what it is doing.  I will leave others to judge what was accomplished in those 4 years.  In my previous post, "All Good Things", I  wrote about the support, or lack thereof from various jurisdictions in Canada.  I know that some will say that they do not provide core funding to organizations or they may even say why support IPAC as opposed to some other organization.  To these comments I just say that IPAC is the only national organization that brings together public servants from all orders of government in Canada and academics in the field of public administration and management.  IPAC conferences, both National Conferences and local events organized by any of our 17 active regional groups, bring together people from all orders of government and academics to discuss and debate issues in public management and policy and allows us to learn from our peers and create connections that will ultimately help create better public services. To those who have the power to do so, I say, support your chosen profession of public service.  If not you, then who? If not now, then when?

I think that all of us who have a few years under our belt (or in my case quite a few years!) have an obligation to give back to our chosen profession and ensure that the next generation of public servants have the same opportunities that we had to connect with their peers across the country, with their peers working in other orders of government and the opportunity to contribute to the evolution of excellent public service in Canada and around the world.  Remember that most of the public policy issues that we now face will require collaboration within government and between governments, between municipalities, provincial/territorial governments, aboriginal governments, broader public sector organizations and the federal government.  A crisis is a difficult time to build good working relationships, IPAC offers the opportunity for us to get to know each other and understand each other through our common bond - the desire to provide excellent public services to Canadians.

Well this may be my last post on this blog.  I want to thank all of you, my faithful readers, for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you over the last number of years.