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Luc Juillet
Centre on Governance
University of Ottawa
Outline of presentation
- What are horizontal initiatives?
- Challenges of working horizontally
- the accountability conundrum
- other operational difficulties
- Identified success factors
- A tripartite approach
- Negotiating a common framework
- Nurturing human capacity
- Establishing appropriate processes
What are horizontal initiatives?
- Collaborative endeavors among autonomous organizations seeking common policy objectives through shared governance and resources
- Horizontal initiatives differ widely
- interdepartmental, intergovernmental or intersectoral
- internal, service delivery or policy strategy
- degrees of formality
Rationale for horizontal initiatives
- Greater efficiency
- sharing financial and human resources
- Greater effectiveness
- sharing expertise and knowledge
- building on respective strengths
- innovation
Two levels of difficulties
- Charting new territory on the accountability front
- Overcoming behavioural and procedural obstacles in the trenches
The accountability conundrum
- A plurality of accountabilities
- A fundamental weakness of collaborative arrangements?
Interim advice on accountability
- Recognize the shifting mix of accountability relationships
- the public servant as a polyvalent actor
- Collective endeavors require greater transparency
- constitutive documents and key decisions
- performance information
- access to information provisions
Other operational difficulties
- Dealing with the past
- Working against the organizational culture
- divided loyalty, sharing of information
- middle management and risk aversion
- Asking for irrational behaviour
- problems of unrewarded collaboration
- fear of unacknowledged contribution
- Uniform rules, unique cases
Identified Success Factors
- Salience and importance of the cause
- Shared values
- Leadership
- Mutual trust and confidence among partners
- Clear mandate
- Managed expectations
Building horizontal initiatives
- A tripartite approach
- Negotiating a joint framework
- Nurturing human capacity
- Establishing appropriate processes
A Common Framework
- A transparent governance council
- clear, shared expectations
- agreed-upon indicators of results
- A collective reporting strategy
- assure collection of meaningful data
- respect autonomy of partners
- A forum for resolving disputes
Human Capacity
- Nurture key managerial competencies
- leadership
- conflict management
- negotiation skills
- team work abilities
- Commit the financial and human resources
- training the people involved
- dedicate real time to collaborative efforts
- support third party when necessary
- Reward collaborative behaviour
- Build and preserve social capital
- limit turnover of personnel associated with the initiative
- Joint Career Transition Committees
Appropriate Processes
- Create collective learning opportunities
- the crucial importance of a shared narrative
- Learn from affected citizens
- advisory boards
- consultation mechanisms
- Use constructive performance audits
- third-party audits
- the peer-surveyors system
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