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.”

People & Organization Performance

Well, as I promised in my blog entry on "Evidence Based Policy Making", I have finally written up my talk to the Deloitte Public Sector Leadership Day in the form of an "Executive Brief" that I have posted on the IPAC website at Executive Briefs . In this paper I deal with issues that all governmental organizations will face in the future as they try to meet citizen expectations. More than in the private sector, government organizations will have to deal with the demographic time bomb as well as the more complex nature of its human resource make up. As a result of these demographics, we are going to be seeing more generations working in the same organization at the same time. The culture and experiences of the Y Generation is different than the ones that preceeded them. I hope you enjoy the paper & let me know what you think!

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.

Shift Happens/Did You Know 2.0

A second Blog entry in one day – what’s the world coming to?? A friend of mine mentioned a video that has been seen by over 3 million people (in its various versions) in the last 9 months. The video is entitled “Shift Happens” and asks some fundamental questions about the future and provides some startling information. Its purpose is to elicit the participation of people to come up with a system of education for our children that prepares them for the 21st century. Along with the video is a Wiki to give people a forum for discussion and collaboration. Though the video is aimed at the US, there are parallels for Canada. Education is the great leveler in society, and to compete in the new economy our education system must meet the challenge.

Go here to view video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U

Evidence Based Policy Making

I had the pleasure of attending the Deloitte Public Sector Leadership Forum on November 13, 2007 as a guest speaker (more about my talk later). One of the other guest speakers was Darrell Bricker, President and COO for Public Affairs of Ipsos Reid. Darrell is co-author (with Edward Greenspon) of a very interesting book that came out a few years ago entitled “Searching for Certainty: Inside the New Canadian Mindset” and a more recent one with John Wright entitled “What Canadians Think (about Almost Everything)”.

In his talk, Darrell spoke about the increasing importance of “evidence” in the development of government policy and in program evaluation. There are three underlying trends that one should be cognizant of:

1) The decline in public trust – not only in government, but in all institutions and organizations. Gone are the days when government could get away with saying to citizens “trust us”. Trust is now situational and has to be earned every time. It can also vanish very rapidly.

2) The rise of the knowledge consumer/citizen – people are not only more educated but they also have available at their fingertips a vast reservoir of human knowledge (thru the Web). People are more likely to challenge authority figures as they too have access to the same knowledge.

3) Searching for Certainty – Canadians are looks for the right answers to questions. They want to be certain about the solutions.

Darrell spoke about the “Rules of the Road” for navigating the new Canadian mindset. Fundamentally as I stated above, it is all about Trust. Citizens will judge the credibility of the sources of information and will seek what is called “trust marks” in judging the quality of the information provided. As part of this, citizens are demanding higher levels of accountability from their governments. This is why governments must move to “evidence based” policy making. As governments move to an “outcome” focus the accumulation of this evidence in an unbiased form that is readily available to citizens becomes more and more crucial not only in helping shape new policies and programs but also in evaluating the effectiveness of existing policies and programs.

In part of my talk I spoke about the massive demographic shifts that Canada will be experiencing in the next 25 years. I was therefore quite interested to hear Darrell speak of Multiculturalism as the new demographic Mega-trend. He also noted that governments are unprepared to deal with this Mega-trend. I will shortly put my speech up on the IPAC site – watch for it.

The Best Laid Plans

I just finished reading a wonderful book for anyone interested in Canadian politics, government, well-written prose and relaxing with a good book.

The book in question is called "The Best Laid Plans" by Terry Fallis. It is Mr. Fallis' first novel and frankly I could not put it down.

It is the story of a disillusioned and burned out political staffer in Ottawa who teams up with a one of kind maverick who reluctantly agrees to run as the Liberal candidate in a riding that has always elected Conservatives. I don't want to spoil the story so I won't get into too many details. The novel is funny, well written and insightful.

My fellow bus passengers must have thought I was crazy laughing out loud at a particular passage that described the dalliance between our hero's then girlfriend and her boss! In between the laughs,the wonderful prose and imagery there are serious issues raised about the role of the elected official in our modern democratic institutions. I heartily recommend this book. You can visit Terry's website athttp://www.terryfallis.com/ to listen to the podcast of the book and to find a list of bookstores where you can purchase the book.

Happy Birthday Ryerson

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a celebration of 45 years of teaching public administration at Ryerson University.

It was a great event that started with a panel speaking about public administration in general and the Ryerson program in particular. Among the panelists were NDP leader and former prof at Ryerson, Jack Layton; the 2007 Pierre de Celles award winner Paul Thomas from the University of Manitoba; Marg Rapapolt, the Deputy Minister of Aboriginal Affairs from the Government of Ontario; and 2 graduates from the Ryerson program. The two graduates spoke about Ryerson's unique approach to connecting to the community in offering their programs.

Ryerson Prez Sheldon Levy then introduced one of the original profs in the program and later Chancellor of the University, also former mayor of Toronto, Federal MP and Cabinet Minister (and many more titles) David Crombie. Mr. Crombie gave an off the cuff speech about how he started at Ryerson - teaching sociology, something he knew nothing about. His students quickly asked him to teach them how city hall worked. The rest is history as they say! Mr. Crombie's speech was entertaining and I am always amazed at how some people can, without any notes, give a wonderful speech.

It was a great afternoon - Congratulations to Ryerson University!!