Renewal of the Public Service – Part Deux

So here is the continuation of my synopsis of the 6th Annual CSPS-CAPPA Symposium that I attended recently. In the last entry I blogged about the work being undertaken by Ian Green. Today’s blog will focus (as much as I can focus, that is) on some of the questions that were discussed about the public service and renewal. The focus of the discussion was on the Federal Public Service.

Q1: Is the public service excellent now? Organizations are very good at blowing their own horn and calling themselves the “best” in the world, in their field, in the universe, in history, etc. But what criteria do we use to judge the performance of governments (apart from the periodic assessment of the voters)? In general, across Canada, the public service is relatively good at routine processes such as the collection of taxes. The Public Service, by and large, is also relatively good at dealing with a crisis – think of the Ice Storm in Eastern Canada or the Red River flooding. There are those who believe that the public service is not so good at the horizontal integration/collaboration needed to deal with complex issues today. And as in most large organizations, some governments are not really good at change.

Q2: How will the Federal Public Service evolve over the next 10 -20 years? There were a range of possibilities discussed – from the narrow focus on federal constitutional responsibilities to a larger role. Citizens expect that governments will work together to deliver services. They really have no patience for jurisdictional finger-pointing. Concepts like Biz-Pal that integrates services from all three orders of government are what citizens are seeking.

Q3: What is the role of the Public servant in relation to Ministers and other elected officials and political staff? The traditional bargain that has underpinned the Westminster model in Canada is changing. The roles of each of the players are overlapping more than they did in the past. Some argue that the “accounting officer” concept that is contained in the Federal Accountability Act is adding to that blurring. As well, given the increased scope and pace of government and the myriad and complexity of issues that government now deals with, some have argued that the traditional bargain is a quaint but outmoded concept and that a new relationship is evolving.

Q4: What will the characteristics of the ideal employee be in 10-20 years? The rapid evolution of knowledge and technology; the instant access to information; the horizontal nature of issues all mean that new employees must be very adaptable and at ease with technology and working with partners both inside and outside the organization. It also means that employees must have a balance between the specialist with in-depth knowledge and the generalist, who can pull together different steams of information.

Q5: Should the current career model (life-long employment) be retained? Demographic changes will mean that in likelihood Canada, like the rest of the industrialized world, will experience more jobs than people. As well, Generation Y-ers (see previous blog on “People & Organization Performance”) are more likely to want to go off for a year or two to gain different experiences. This means that employers, especially governments, must be more flexible in their human resources approaches. Governments must be prepared to allow employees to take a leave of absence for a period of time or even allow for employees to leave for a few years and come back later in their career. They must also make it easier for mid-career professionals to join the public service and give them the supports they need to thrive in the public service culture.

There is a major generational change just around the corner – at the Federal level the average age of a Deputy Minister is 54, ADMs – the successor group, has an average age of 53, while middle executives average age is 51. The entry level executive group’s average age is 50 and the feeder group average age is 47.6. Assuming a retirement age of 65, this means that the feeder group will have retired in less than 20 years.

These are all very interesting questions and there a many more as the public service contemplates it future.

As a final point I want to quote Gaius Petronius Arbiter a Roman Satirist ( 210 BC): “We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”

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.