Ten Principles of Reinventing Government

Type of government	Expression of principle	Demonstration
Catalytic	Steering rather than rowing	Using NGOs to implement international development goals
Community owned	Empowering rather than serving	Having local municipalities manage and promote historical sites in their own communities
Competitive	Injecting competition into service delivery	Having private institutions such as colleges and training institutes provide public service training courses on a competitive, contractual basis
Mission driven	Transforming rule-driven government	Requiring the public service to offer a wide variety of services to the Canadian public via the Internet
Results oriented	Funding outcomes, not inputs	Providing Health Canada funding for specialized programs to reduce wait times for specific medical procedures, such as hip replacements
Customer driven	Meeting the needs of the customer, not the bureaucracy	Having the Canada Revenue Agency respond to citizen complaints about the tax filing process by making forms more easily understood and capable of being submitted via the internet
Enterprising	Earning rather than spending	Requiring CBC to increase commercial advertising in its programming in order to generate revenue
Anticipatory	Preventing rather than curing	Promoting physical education in schools in order to forestall childhood obesity
Decentralized	Encouraging participation and teamwork, not hierarchy	National Defence, Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and the Canadian International Development Agency working with NGOs to implement development projects in the developing world
Market driven	Leveraging change through the market	Privatizing Petro-Canada, CN Rail, Air Canada, and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited

The following text provides commentary on a variety of federal public service management reform initiatives dating from the 1980s and the Mulroney government’s PS2000 initiative to similar reinvention/reform projects launched by the Chrétien and Harper governments, and to current revitalization initiatives of the Trudeau government, such as Blueprint 2020 and Beyond 2020. As you read through these materials, be thinking about what these initiatives have in common. What are their strengths and weaknesses? And how do we know if these programs are successful? And why does the federal public service always seem to have, or need, a new version of these initiatives? Is such continuity a sign of success, or failure?

Case Study: New Public Management: Applying the Concepts to Federal Initiatives

Serious questions can be raised about the degree to which the program review and La Relève ventures conformed to the concepts of NPM and reinvention. No one can deny the profound impact of program review on the federal government and the country, and in its early incarnation, it was demonstrably influenced by NPM. But program review never lived up to expectations of it as a vehicle for reconfiguring government operations because central authorities, primarily in the Department of Finance, used the process as a rough and ready guide to major, albeit incremental, budget cutting.

Rather than engaging in a reflective assessment of their policies and programs, departments and agencies were confronted with ad hoc budget cuts dictated by Finance, and these capricious levels of cutback were persistently supported by the finance minister and the prime minister as vital to deficit reduction. That objective, and not a revamping of the governance system, drove the operational logic of program review.

Assessing the Results
Most analysts see program review as a failed NPM exercise. It did not support a comprehensive and rationalistic reappraisal of government, and it fell short of empowering middle managers and staff. Instead they became passive recipients of the decisions of a few centralized authorities, and the exercise of power within government was fundamentally unaltered. As Savoie has argued, the process only demonstrated the increasing centralization of power and the continued presence of the command-and-control mode of decision making.

Given that executive power in Ottawa is concentrated in the hands of a few bureaucratic and political authorities, it is not surprising that an analyst such as Inwood (2012, 308–9) would suggest that official efforts to promote administrative decentralization and participatory management have in general been merely symbolic. They are more indicative of an appeal to the latest fad in organizational theory than of an honest attempt to transform decision-making processes.

Public servants who lived through PS2000 and program review may be excused for being somewhat cynical about their purported involvement in the redesign of operational activities. Terms such as empowerment and participatory management were the buzzwords of senior management amid the exercise of real power by lead authorities. And it is highly doubtful whether La Relève changed the status quo either. While it could actually benefit senior officials to confer widely with subordinates and to embrace the broad tenets of the organic-humanistic model of organizational theory, it is rare for them to disavow the command-and-control approach to leadership and responsibility—quite the contrary. The basic principles of the NPM and reinvention thesis with respect to participatory management have been, in practical terms, abandoned.

How would you evaluate the Harper program review exercise between 2011 and 2014? And does Blueprint 2020 conform to the NPM thesis? Why or why not? And does Beyond 2020 offer any hope of meaningful reform in the federal public service for the 2020s? Or are these types of plans just window-dressing, things that look good to outside observers, but actually have no real impact on the life of the government and its public servants?

White Paper: Thinking about the Reinvention of Government

Dispatch Box: Public Service Renewal Action Plans

As part of its commitment to public service renewal, the Privy Council Office produces annual Action Plans to focus attention on reform priorities for the federal public service. The plans can be found at the PCO website. They outline in detail how the public service should meet its strategic renewal objectives.

The 2010–11 Action Plan provided four targets for public service renewal:

Supporting managers

• Deputy heads will engage their managers and foster managers’ communities.
• Deputy heads will work with the Canada School of Public Service and align departmental learning activities with CSPS offerings.

Knowledge management

• Deputy heads will assess and improve their approaches to managing knowledge and information as corporate assets.
• Deputy heads will build knowledge transfer considerations into their talent management and succession planning strategies with respect to pending executive retirements.

Innovation

• Deputy heads will foster a culture of innovation through activities such as building strong employee and manager networks, developing collaborative work environments, and experimenting with Web 2.0 technologies.

Public service values

• The Chief Human Resources Officer is to finalize the Values and Ethics Code for the public service by fall 2010, and deputy heads are to develop and implement departmental codes by March 31, 2011.
• Deputy heads will encourage dialogue among employees on values and ethics. (Derived from Canada, Privy Council Office 2011, 2)

Do you find this summary a plan of action or a statement of desires? Could the plan be more specific? How? Why doesn’t the plan describe actions more concretely? Are such plans still relevant in the 2020s?

White Paper: Thinking about Public Service Renewal

Some major initiatives were undertaken by the Harper government in the name of public service renewal during the early years of his administration. Despite steady talk of restraint over the previous two decades, the Harper government oversaw substantial new hiring into the federal public service. As David Zussman (2010, 226) noted, from 2006 to 2009 more than 20,000 new public servants were hired by the federal government. And the total from 1999 to 2009 was more than 100,000. These were serious numbers.

All this new hiring was aided by the Public Service Modernization Act of 2003 which, as Chapter 7 discussed, required departments and agencies, from deputy ministers on down, to integrate human resources management and staff development into their business plans. And as this renewed focus on new hiring and staff development took root it was aided by the establishment, in 2009, of the Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO). This new institution took over the role of the former Canada Public Service Agency as well as elements of the Treasury Board Secretariat that managed public sector pensions and benefits. As we saw in Chapter 7, the mandate of the CHRO is to provide centralized guidance for human resources planning and program management across the federal public service.

Finally, federal human resources development initiatives were greatly aided by the Canada School of Public Service. This institution, as we have seen, provides training and development courses for public servants at all levels of the federal service.

Assessing the Results
David Zussman (2010) commented extensively on the various public service renewal initiatives of the Harper government, finding them ultimately “precarious.” Significant new hiring was accompanied by substantial turnover in middle management and executive staff, leading to discontinuity in departmental and agency leadership. All too often, policy and program development suffered from a constant churn of new people, especially new managers, wanting to impose their mark. The results were delays and convoluted, ever-changing initiatives and dynamics.

Zussman also noted the intensified centralization of decision making at the highest levels in Ottawa over the past 20 years. Executive authority now rests with the prime minister, the minister of finance, and senior officials in the PMO and PCO. And within departments, especially those within the Harper Conservative government, Zussman observed, ministers have come to rely heavily on their partisan political advisers at the expense of advice coming from the senior ranks of their own departments. This increased the partisanship of ministerial decision making and diminished the status of senior policy advisers (2010, 227–32).

Perhaps the most damning indictment from Zussman came in relation to the creaking apparatus that developed in the wake of the Federal Accountability Act and other efforts to improve transparency. Complex administrative processes, multiple administrative approvals, and ever more onerous reporting requirements hindered public service reform and renewal: “Rather than increasing transparency and accountability, the web of rules has created an even more pronounced culture of risk aversion. Public servants at all levels have lost the ability to take a balanced approach to reasonable risk taking. Too many rules and procedures have had negative implications on timely decision making, productivity, and innovation, ultimately hindering effective service delivery to the public” (2010, 231).

White Paper: The Harper Government and Program Review

As we’ve seen in Chapter 6, the worldwide recession of 2008–9 resulted in the Harper government feeling compelled to engage in massive stimulus spending, known as the Economic Action Plan, designed to spur the economy, generate jobs, promote national infrastructure development, and, hopefully, drag the country out of recession. While the Harper government had inherited a budgetary surplus in 2006, by 2009–10 the federal government was running a $55 billion deficit. After the Conservatives won a majority government in the 2011 election, Prime Minister Harper made the commitment that the government would return to a balanced budget by 2015—just in time for the next election.

The development of the Economic Action Plan and its $55 billion Keynesian approach to fiscal policy was very much the result of crisis management rather than any long-developed rational plan of financial management. And once the prime minister decided to eliminate the deficit in advance of his next election bid, the program to achieve this was in no way rooted in strategic NPM thinking. Rather, the Harper government’s program review initiative, much like that of Prime Minister Chrétien’s in the mid-1990s, had more to do with incremental, top-down, command and control decision making than rationalistic objective-setting, planning, cost-benefit analysis, programming, and budgeting.

As noted in Chapter 6, the Harper government’s program review exercise required the federal government to reduce overall expenditures by $5.5 billion annually between 2011 and 2016. Departments and agencies were informed by the Department of Finance that they were required to present to the Treasury Board two plans for spending cuts—one seeing the organization reduce expenditure by 5 per cent annually, the other witnessing reductions of 10 per cent annually; Treasury Board would then impose its preferred plan on the given organization. By 2013 the Department of Finance informed departments that cuts in excess of 10 per cent would now be required. In their defence of these measures, both Prime Minister Harper and Jim Flaherty, minister of Finance, stressed that these cuts were to “back office” administration and that no front-line services would be affected. As the prime minister argued, program review was designed to eliminate “billions in fat” (Savoie 2015, 201).

Critics of the Harper government, however, ranging from opposition parties to public service unions to members of the general public, did not trust the government’s reasoning. Fears were expressed that such budget cuts would necessarily affect the quality of public services, especially when it was announced that this program review exercise would result in the loss of 19,200 public service jobs between 2012 and 2015. Federal public service union leaders were quick to assert that these job cuts were hurting front-line services in everything from waiting times for passport applications, to food safety inspections and environmental assessments, to programming for veterans. Indeed, the closure of seven regional Veterans Affairs offices became a touchstone for those opposed to the Harper government (Thomas 2014, 186–88).

The Harper government forged ahead with program review, dismissing all criticisms as the ill-founded complaints of its political enemies. By the spring of 2015 then finance minister Joe Oliver was able to announce that the federal budget had returned to balance, with the government posting a modest $1.9 billion surplus. But by this time many Canadians were questioning the quality of public services the federal government was claiming to deliver, and morale in the federal public service had plummeted, with sick leaves having grown by 68 per cent in the past 10 years (Savoie 2015, 205). It was to address these growing tensions within the public service that in 2013 the clerk of the Privy Council initiated the Blueprint 2020 exercise, the latest public service renewal initiative within the federal government.

Case Study: Human Rights Policy and Public Service Renewal

White Paper: Thinking about Program Review

1. Identify the main principles of new public management theory.

The key principles to analyze are:

• separation of politics and management;
• private sector management and leadership techniques;
• objective results management; and
• participatory management systems.

2. Describe and assess the ten elements of reinventing government.

Your response should ask and answer the following questions:

1. Catalytic government
   Can government be innovative and transformative? What are the obstacles?
2. Community-owned government
   Can government devolve power and authority to local communities and citizens? What are the practical and jurisdictional problems?
3. Competitive government
   Can governments bring private sector approaches to service delivery into public services? What are the drawbacks?
4. Mission-driven government
   Should governments get away from a focus on rules and regulations? What are the drawbacks?
5. Results-oriented government
   Should governments fund outcomes, not inputs? What are the strengths and weaknesses of this option?
6. Customer-driven government
   Should governments put the interests of citizens ahead of public servants? What are the drawbacks?
7. Enterprising government
   Should governments think more about earning than about spending? What are the pros and cons?
8. Anticipatory government
   Can governments promote prevention rather than cure? What would the public service have to do to make this a reality?
9. Decentralized government
   Can hierarchy be replaced with participation and teamwork? What militates against this objective?
10. Market-oriented government
    Should governments operate more like private sector firms? What are the pros and cons?

3. Analyze the degree to which the Chrétien government transformed the federal public service in the 1990s.

Your response should focus on the Program Review initiative of 1994–95 and assess cuts to the public service between 1995 and 1997. Also assess Budget 95 in light of the problems identified in the lead-up to La Relève, and pose and answer the following questions:

• Did budget cuts represent a fundamental change to how the federal government works? Why or why not?
• Were the cuts necessary to eliminate the deficit? Did they bring more harm than good in the long run?
• Do the actions of the Chretien government in the mid-1990s reveal liberal or conservative principles?

4. Analyze the degree to which the Harper government transformed the federal public service in the late 2000s.

Your response should focus on the Federal Accountability Act, public service renewal, and the Harper government’s 2011 program review initiative overseen by Treasury Board Secretariat. Pose and answer the following questions:

• Did the Federal Accountability Act live up to its expectations? Why or why not?
• Did public service renewal live up to expectations? Why or why not?
• Did the 2011 program review initiative actually work against the ideals of public service renewal? Why or why not?
• Is the federal government substantially different now from the 1990s? Why or why not?
• Do the actions of the Harper government from 2006 to 2015 reveal liberal or conservative principles?

1. Which of the following reforms did the Thatcher administration in the UK propose, starting in the late 1970s?

• a. The power of the public service had to be reduced.
• b. Private sector lobbies had to be given more voice in government decision making.
• c. The public sector had to be made more responsive to elected ministers.
• d. None of the above

2. Which of the following is an assumption of the new public management theory?

• a. Politicians and public sector managers should collaborate more closely.
• b. Politicians and public sector managers should keep their roles separate.
• c. Politicians should function as the clients of public sector managers.
• d. None of the above

3. Bryne Purchase and Ronald Hirshhorn discuss the reinvention thesis as one aspect of a

• a. postbureaucratic paradigm
• b. postindustrial economic framework
• c. postwar focus on political efficiency
• d. all of the above

4. Catalytic government refers to a government that

• a. rows rather than steers
• b. earns rather than spends
• c. spends rather than steers
• d. steers rather than rows

5. Donald Savoie’s main fear about NPM theory and practice is that it will

• a. make governments too strong and out of touch
• b. weaken the private sector and harm business
• c. weaken the power of the PMO
• d. make governments smaller and less important to society

6. PS2000 was an NPM initiative of the Mulroney government designed primarily to

• a. simplify human resources policies and programs and increase the power of department managers
• b. simplify financial management policies and programs and decrease the power of department managers
• c. reduce and monitor the power of the Privy Council Office
• d. enhance the decision-making power of the Treasury Board Secretariat

7. The first legislation passed by the Harper government on coming to power in 2006 was the

• a. Tough on Crime Act
• b. Canada–Israel Free Trade Act
• c. Federal Accountability Act
• d. Long-Gun Registry Abolition Act

8. Which of the following is a priority area for the Harper government’s public service renewal policy?

• a. integrated planning for departments
• b. new recruitment into the public service
• c. downsizing the role of government
• d. both a and b

9. According to the Canadian Centre for Management Development, which type of public servant is most respected by Canadians?

• a. university professors
• b. librarians
• c. nurses
• d. firefighters

10. According to Paul Thomas, when governments seek to reform themselves, the best they can hope to achieve is

• a. maintenance of the status quo
• b. fundamental reinvention
• c. avoidance of retrogressive trends
• d. modest reform

Chapter 8 Answer Key

• 1. a
• 2. c
• 3. a
• 4. d
• 5. d
• 6. a
• 7. c
• 8. d
• 9. d
• 10. d

Citizen Satisfaction with Public and Private Sector Service Delivery

La Relève
A human resources reform policy developed in 1997 to address the perceived “quiet crisis” confronting the federal public service following a major program review in the mid-1990s. La Relève sought to rejuvenate the federal public service by attracting younger Canadians into public service while enhancing management training and centralizing senior executive training.

managing for results
A component of the expenditure management system (EMS) and expenditure management information system (EMIS) established in 1995. MFR obligates departments to produce annual business plans that articulate departmental policy and program objectives and the resources needed to achieve them. MFR also requires that departments and the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat measure the degree to which those goals are being met, and whether alternative, less costly means are viable. MFR remains a vital part of current federal financial management policy via EMIS. See also expenditure management information system; expenditure management system.

new public management
An approach to public sector management that emerged in the 1980s to foster greater economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in government. It emphasized that the public sector should adopt some of the techniques and behaviour of the private sector and grant public servants much greater operational freedom, subject to the overall control of elected politicians.

program review
An initiative of the Chrétien government established in 1994 to assist the prime minister and cabinet in eliminating the deficit. Program review required all departments, with the exception of Indian and Northern Affairs, to engage in a highly rationalist assessment of their policy and program fields, distinguishing between core and secondary or tertiary responsibilities and objectives. The latter were to be downsized or transferred to other levels of government or privatized, while the former were to be streamlined.

PS2000
A human resources reform policy launched by the federal government in 1990 to reinvigorate the federal public service by 2000. PS2000 was a highly rationalistic approach designed to bring human resources planning for the federal public service into line with similar practices found in the private sector.

public service renewal
A federal policy dating from 2006 representing a commitment by the Privy Council Office to reform the federal public service through renewed emphasis on recruitment, improved planning and priority setting, staff training and development, and better use of communication technologies to facilitate productivity.

reinventing government
A concept of government reform widely promoted by American authors David Osborne and Ted Gaebler. The thesis they advocate involves ten major reform initiatives that governments should adopt.

strategic prime ministership
The policy dynamic of a prime minister who sets the strategic direction of government by selecting four to six key policy and program aims to define his or her four- to five-year term in office. The implementation of these aims will be “brought to the centre” for prime ministerial leadership and direction, while all other, more routine matters of policy and administration will be left to ordinary ministers and departments to manage.

CyberCemetery National Partnership for Reinventing Government

Government of Canada

Institute of Public Administration of Canada

Office of the Chief of Human Resources Officer

Privy Council Office

Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat