|
Fourteenth Annual Report to the Prime Minister on the Public Service of Canada
I. Introduction
This is the fourteenth report by the Clerk of the Privy Council on the Public Service of Canada, and the second since I took up my current responsibilities as Head of the Public Service in March 2006.
My first report was very much a personal statement of how I see my duties as Clerk in relation to the vital national institution that is the Public Service of Canada. I said a year ago that “there are few careers that allow one to directly impact the lives of fellow citizens in almost all aspects of one’s work [and] … few workplaces that provide such a broad range of experiences.” Making the most of the opportunity to serve is the challenge facing every Canadian who chooses a career of public service.
Purpose of this report
This, my second report, fulfills a rather different purpose than last year’s document. It is intended to set out what I see as the future direction of the federal Public Service, and specifically to describe the path of renewal on which we are embarked. The process of public service renewal must be driven by many different people in dozens of government organizations, large and small, from one end of Canada to the other. The role of the Clerk, as the most senior federal public servant, is to define major objectives, to set out benchmarks against which we can measure our progress, and to drive a continuing process of change and renewal that will take us well into this new century.
To this end, this report has essentially four objectives as a reference point for the continuing process of renewal that we have begun.
a) Why renewal?
The first objective is to generate in the mind of the reader an appreciation of the need for renewal. Why, exactly, is it important in 2007 to focus on the renewal of Canada’s Public Service? Many would say that the Public Service seems to have been renewing itself for much of the past 20 years. Is this process never going to end? Why is it necessary to put people and institutions through still more change and, some would say, upheaval, when there are so many other things to be done by government in the service of Canadians?
The answer, to put it simply, is this: if the Public Service, as a core national institution, does not renew itself for future as well as current service to the government and people of Canada, it risks becoming less relevant, less useful and less respected as the years go by. If we do not commit ourselves to a continuing process of renewal, the Public Service will not remain a creative national institution, central to the governance and development of our country.
b) What is driving change?
The second goal of this report is to lay out a clear factual foundation and context for renewal. We need to understand the particular circumstances of our country and of the Public Service that compel a major investment of time and effort in change and renewal. What are the driving factors in our society and in the world that motivate a fundamental rethinking of what public servants are doing and how they are doing it? Why is it important to pay particular attention to issues such as recruitment, leadership and learning? What is required to create a workplace that fosters creative policy making, responsible decision making, and clear accountability for results?
c) Goals and yardsticks
A third objective is to set priorities, year by year, and define clear, credible goals against which we can measure and report on progress over the next five years. Five years represents what an optimist might call the foreseeable medium term; a realist might be less sanguine about our capacity to anticipate future developments, but equally convinced of the need for a multi-year planning horizon. However events actually unfold, it is essential to plan today for a continuing process of change and renewal, recognizing that course adjustments will be necessary along the way.
d) Moving ahead together
The final aim of this report is to build a sense of shared purpose and commitment to renewal, at all levels of the Public Service. Like many thousands of my colleagues across government, I have spent my entire career as a public servant. Like those colleagues, I am proud to have been able to work on policies and programs that have affected the lives of Canadians. I would hope – indeed I am committed to ensuring – that future generations of young Canadians will consider careers as public servants with the same spirit of optimism as I did, and will be able to conclude their public service careers with a well-earned sense of satisfaction.
Despite some recent claims to the contrary, this same sense of pride and purpose can be found throughout Canada’s Public Service. The latest Public Service Employee Survey, for example, achieved an impressive 59 percent response rate. It showed that 90 percent of respondents were proud of the work done in their unit, and that 96 percent were strongly committed to making their organization successful. Over 80 percent felt their organization was a good place to work.1 A private sector CEO who saw these numbers remarked recently that any organization – private or public sector – would be happy to see this level of commitment and job satisfaction from its employees. At a minimum, these very positive attitudes within the Public Service provide a solid foundation on which to build a continuing sense of shared purpose for the future.
Structure of this report
This report has six sections. Following this brief introduction, Section Two: The Public Service in 2007 describes Canada’s Public Service today – what it is, where it has come from and how, in broad terms, it is organized.2 The section talks about the very wide range of duties fulfilled by public servants and the importance of a well-functioning Public Service to the security and prosperity of our country.
Section Two also sets out the major issues and challenges facing the Public Service – both today and over the medium to longer term. These include renewal, leadership, risk management, balancing appropriate accountability with a commitment to service and innovation, and generally preserving the values of the traditional Public Service while applying them in the everchanging environment in which we serve.
Section Three: Public Service Renewal sets out the principles that must underpin a successful and sustained process of renewal, as well as the instruments that are available to drive that process. These range from committees of deputy ministers to specific programs of recruitment and development that will touch thousands of public servants, both newcomers and veterans, over the coming years. The section also talks about the many different partners, inside and outside government, who have a stake in renewal.
Section Four: Priorities for the Short and Medium Term identifies four priorities that have emerged from a dialogue within the deputy minister community and from other discussions within the Public Service. The section talks about specific goals in each of these four areas, how we intend to measure progress, what we hope to achieve in the short term and what will take longer (in some cases, much longer).
Section Five: Looking at the Longer Term examines some of the issues that will preoccupy the Public Service in the coming years, notably simplification of process, innovation, risk management and leadership. The purpose here is not to cast a workplan in stone, but rather to give public servants and those who care about the Public Service a sense of the elements of our longer term agenda, recognizing that circumstances can change and that, as always, we must be prepared to adapt our efforts to meet new challenges.
At the conclusion of the report, Section Six: A Message to Fellow Public Servants speaks to readers who, like myself, have committed themselves to careers in the Public Service. Most of them have lived through a somewhat bumpy process of change over the past 15 years or more. They have sustained programs and generated new policies for new governments, while perhaps wondering how external forces will affect them and their careers, and even asking what the very concept of public service means today. I want every one of them to know that we are in this process of renewal together, and for the long term. Collectively, it is public servants themselves who are the true stewards of this vital institution, Canada’s Public Service.
II. The Public Service in 2007
Description
The federal Public Service is the largest enterprise in Canada and certainly an important one. 250,000 Canadians work in the core federal Public Service3 – these are the people employed in the 20 departments and 180 regulatory and administrative agencies of the federal government. Beyond this are the 220,000 Canadians who are members of the Canadian Forces (64,000 plus 25,000 reservists), the RCMP (some 20,000 regular and civilian members) and Crown corporations (for example, employees of CBC, VIA Rail and Canada Post).
Public servants work in dozens of different occupations from food inspectors to First Nations claims negotiators and from public health specialists to diplomats. The Government of Canada employs some of the most highly skilled people in the country, many of whom are internationally recognized for their expertise and their accomplishments.
The activities of government can be similarly divided into dozens of different lines of business and thousands of individual programs. These are delivered directly by more than 200 federal organizations, and indirectly on behalf of the government by hundreds of non-profit agencies across Canada. The federal government operates 1,600 points of service across the country, and abroad Canadians are served by diplomatic and consular offices in 180 foreign countries.
One of the most fundamental functions of the federal government is to raise revenue to pay for the federal programs and services Canadians need. In 2005-2006, tax revenue was some $222 billion, while spending amounted to $209 billion, leaving a surplus of $13 billion.
The pattern of federal spending has changed considerably over the last decade to meet the evolving needs and expectations of Canadians. The largest growth has been in health spending, reflecting an aging population, innovation in health care and other factors. One of the other fastest growing areas of federal spending, especially since the events of 9/11, has been in the broad area of national security. Spending on public safety and anti-terrorism grew 43.6 percent in the four years between 2002-2003 and 2006-2007.4 This has been accompanied by increased spending on justice and crime prevention domestically, and internationally by increases in defence and aid spending.
If there is a longer term trend line for the federal Public Service, it surely must follow the evolution of the federal government’s role in the federation, shaped of course by a changing public environment and broader changes in technology and in global realities that have an impact on our society. The trend line is toward a more focused role for the federal government in some key areas, including the delivery of services; redefinition of the relationship with First Nations; closer engagement with the provinces in areas of shared interest and responsibility such as immigration and the environment; and a growing realization of the importance of investing – and re-investing – in research and essential infrastructure to sustain a successful modern economy. Needless to say, effective fiscal management ensures a solid budgetary foundation for all of these activities and for the prosperity of the country as a whole.
Why a top quality public service is important
The work of public servants has always been complex and challenging, whether it involves regulating air transportation, promoting Canadian exports, or inspecting to ensure safe and high quality food on our tables. Today, however, working inside government is arguably more difficult than ever because the issues facing government are so complex, and because there is so little tolerance for error in the environment in which public servants work. The changes brought by the information revolution of the past 25 years, among other factors, have affected the business of government profoundly because they have amplified public expectations of what governments can do, at the same time as they have exposed every facet of public sector work to critical public scrutiny.
That scrutiny is to be welcomed because it is an essential feature of the democratic process. Parliament, the press and the public are entitled to ask what the government is doing with the tax dollars it is collecting, and whether it is performing as effectively and efficiently as Canadians expect. But the current environment of scepticism about government and of increasing demands for accountability also brings its own risks – notably the risk that public servants will become so enmeshed in systems for monitoring and reporting that they lose their capacity, and their readiness, to manage risk. Strengthening accountability does not have to mean stifling creativity in policy or compromising service delivery.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund all have done studies that show clearly what Canadians have long taken for granted, namely the importance of an effective public service to national competitiveness and to public faith in the integrity of institutions and governments.5 While Canadians have traditionally been known as innovators in public sector management, there is some evidence that in recent years other countries – Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the United States – have begun to move forward more boldly than we have. The Australians, for example, have dramatically decentralized their human resources management regime, while still retaining the concept of a unified Public Service; and the British have made themselves world leaders in public sector performance measurement and reporting.
Whatever our successes in former years, we cannot afford to become complacent about the future. Canada’s Public Service is a vital national institution that has come through more than a decade of stressful change. As an institution, it is not broken but it is, as one distinguished scholar has said, at a “critical moment” in its history.6 The Public Service faces challenges from outside and from within that together demand a substantial, continuing investment in renewal.
Challenges
Why is public service work different and in many ways more challenging today than in the past? Many books have been written in an effort to answer this question, but the key factors that emerge in any serious study of public management today invariably include:
- Globalization, which makes government work vastly more complex and inevitably more international than ever before. Almost every issue has an international dimension and, to put the point in economic terms, no department is a closed economy today. All are affected by forces beyond the control of the Government of Canada.
- The information revolution, which has dramatically enhanced public expectations for speedy decisions, for immediate responses from government, for transparency in government operations, and for public engagement in decision making. The information revolution has also eroded the value of secrecy and of what was once the unique knowledge held by government. Today, the Internet makes information readily accessible to billions of people around the world. Information is a tool for everyone, and that’s a good thing.
- The emergence of many more horizontal issues such as climate change, competitiveness, biotechnology, border security and a hundred others which require new ways of working across government, new forms of accountability and new ways of engaging stakeholders.
- The sheer complexity of Canada today, an immense, regionally varied country with two official languages, a rapidly changing population mix and a host of new challenges emerging for all levels of government. To succeed as a modern institution, the Public Service must reflect and respond to the complex nature of our country.
- Changing public attitudes toward government coloured by high-profile cases that have tarnished the reputation of politicians and public servants alike. Canadians expect a lot of their Public Service, and it is our duty to live up to those high expectations.
The factors listed above are only the most visible of the considerations influencing the working environment of public servants today. To them, we can add demographic and other changes in Canada that affect the Public Service directly, as they do other institutions throughout our country.
These new factors include:
- An aging population that is reflected in the demographic profile of the Public Service. Fifteen years ago, most federal employees were under 45. Today, a majority are older than that. Put differently, almost 10 percent of public servants today have at least 30 years of pensionable service, a nearly three-fold increase since just 2000. The same phenomenon is prevalent in executive ranks, where the average age of assistant deputy ministers is now 53 years, and that of their immediate subordinates barely a year or two younger;
- A changing and more diverse population mix, that despite the efforts of the past decade, is still not adequately reflected in the ranks of the Public Service;
- A much more competitive labour market, as employers face a smaller cohort of new workers who in many cases have more opportunities and different, often higher, expectations of their future employers than did young people in the past;
- The need to ensure we recruit in ways that reflect the real business needs of government organizations, both immediate and longer term, and not rely on ad hoc methods that meet only the requirements of individual managers; and
- A public culture focused heavily on wrongdoing and individual accountability. The few, high-profile cases of inexcusable misconduct and lawbreaking we have seen in recent years have resulted in the increasing emergence of what has been called a “web of rules” that threatens both responsible management and effective program delivery, as well as creativity and responsible risk management. There is a risk of creating a government environment in which public servants are more concerned with not being accused of doing the wrong thing than with doing the right thing. The cost and complexity of these measures have become frustrating for ministers, public servants and Canadians alike.
Finally, we must not forget particular events and initiatives in the recent history of the Public Service that make renewal a priority today. Over the past 15 years, there have been several significant reorganizations that have affected virtually every organization and every employee in government. The Public Service has also undergone one major and several smaller exercises of program review that resulted in significant cuts to departmental budgets and the departure of thousands of experienced and knowledgeable personnel at all levels. More recent growth has not entirely compensated for those impacts.
During the same period, new agencies (Parks Canada, the Canada Revenue Agency, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the Canada Border Services Agency among others) have been created that perform traditional public service functions in new ways and, in several cases, with new employment regimes. And recent years have also witnessed a series of major efforts at human resources reform and renewal ranging from PS2000 in the early 1990s to La Relève in the latter half of that decade to the development and passage of the new Public Service Modernization Act in 2003, which encompassed significant reform in the areas of staffing and labour relations.
To sum up, the Public Service is today in a situation where it is compelled by demographics, by national and international circumstances, and by its own immediate history to rethink how it recruits, develops, manages and retains its workforce. Addressing these challenges will be a continuing task well into the future.
III. Public Service Renewal
When the Government took office in February 2006, the Prime Minister made clear his own commitment to the Public Service, and to the traditions and values of professionalism and political neutrality that have defined our institution ever since the adoption of the merit principle in 1918. This affirmation of political support for the renewal of the Public Service as a vital national institution is crucial.
Principles
When the Prime Minister said that “effective government requires effective public servants,”7 he captured very well the premise of the entire process of renewal. As public servants, our ethos is to contribute to effective and principled public administration. And our challenge today is to equip ourselves – both individually and in our institutions – to do our jobs effectively in this new environment.
If we public servants are to modernize and renew ourselves and our institutions, then we know we must:
- Respect and involve employees at all levels. Renewal is not a top-down, management-focused exercise – it is a comprehensive process that will touch every public servant in one way or another and, if we are successful, lay the groundwork for the Public Service of the future.
- Set goals and priorities that are relevant, ambitious and still realistic. We know we cannot do everything at once. We cannot stop our work while we retool the whole enterprise. We must rethink our jobs and our systems while still delivering the results that our ministers and Canadians expect.
- Set benchmarks for performance and be prepared to measure progress, both for the sake of employees and for that of the ministers, members of Parliament and Canadians generally who count so heavily on what we are doing and how well we do it. If we are to sustain their support, we must be able to show them what we have achieved along the path of renewal, and how it makes a practical difference to our effectiveness as public servants.
- Recommit to excellence as the hallmark of how we do our work. Public servants have always been rightly proud of what they can do. We need to reaffirm our traditional values of excellence in service delivery and policy development as the basis for our future success.
- Learn through the process of change. We have said for years that we are a learning organization. It is up to us to show that we can “learn while doing” and in particular that we can apply the lessons of experience in one part of the Public Service to challenges faced in other areas. We also must be ready to learn from our international counterparts who, in various ways, have already taken steps to reform and renew their institutions.
- Be prepared to adjust our course as we move ahead. We should have no illusions that in a year or so we will have somehow “got it right,” and all that is required is to implement ideas and decisions already in hand. Nothing could be further from the truth. What we know today is that we have to change our skills, our systems and our human resources management regime. We have to make ourselves more efficient and more transparent as an employer. We need to adapt our approach to human resources management to reflect the lessons learned through the process of change and renewal. And we must be ready to meet challenges as yet unforeseen.
In any successful, modern enterprise, renewal is not a single event or initiative – it is a constant process, requiring continuing attention from managers and staff at all levels. Renewal is not only about bringing in and developing new people; it is equally a matter of valuing and developing the talent already in our ranks. And however difficult it is to look ahead, we know already that many of the skills and ways of doing business we employed in the past will not be good enough in the future. We also know that, demographically, Canada is changing and so must the Public Service – we need to capture and shape the full possibilities of that inevitable process of regeneration.
Instruments
The most important instrument for renewal is the professionalism and personal commitment of every public servant. We are fortunate as a country that the Public Service continues to attract people of high quality to its ranks, and that those who have made it their career have maintained their sense of commitment to their vocation.
As Head of the Public Service, one of my responsibilities is to equip the community of deputy ministers and senior officials with the tools and mechanisms through which we can, collectively and individually, pursue our shared objective of Public Service renewal. These tools and mechanisms include:
- The Deputy Ministers’ Committee on Public Service Renewal, chaired by the Associate Secretary to the Cabinet, which is the senior forum for overseeing and driving the process of renewal.
- The Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee on the Public Service, which brings together senior leaders with a wide range of experience outside and inside government to advise the Prime Minister and the Clerk on the renewal and future development of the Public Service. Their work complements the work of the Deputy Ministers’ Committee and brings new insights and perspectives to our efforts inside government.
- Clearer guidance for deputy ministers that will include setting out medium and longer term objectives and priorities for them, and defining new expectations in the area of human resources management. These new obligations will in turn require adjustments to how business is done at senior levels, including a restructured senior committee system.
- A more clearly defined role for the Committee of Senior Officials (COSO), which is the senior committee responsible for management of the deputy minister community. The goal is to have COSO function much like the human resources committee of the board of a large corporation, addressing issues such as performance management, succession planning, and a more rigorous analysis of the qualities and skills we require in deputy ministers, with particular focus on leadership.
- An improved human resources toolkit for managers and employees that will increasingly include new measures to facilitate entry to the Public Service at middle and senior levels, and new programs to encourage interchange with other sectors, including the already-announced Government of Canada Fellows Program. There will also be new measures for recruitment and development of employees at all levels.
Partners in renewal
Meeting the challenge of renewal is not solely a task for the senior leadership of the Public Service. Rather, it requires the commitment of employees at all levels and the continuing engagement of a wide range of partners and stakeholders.
Some of these partners are to be found inside government, starting of course with the Prime Minister and Ministers of the Crown. They define the agenda of the government. Ministers decide priorities and allocate resources to the policies and programs through which public servants make their contribution to the public good.
The engagement of politicians, both those who make up the Ministry and parliamentarians generally, will thus be essential to an enduring and effective process of renewal. Politicians see public servants up close; they see our problems as well as our successes. They understand how important a well-functioning Public Service is to effective governance in Canada. Their expectations are high, and rightly so.
Other key partners in the process of renewal are the central agencies and other public sector institutions that are focused on people management. Here we can mention:
- the Privy Council Office, which is responsible for the selection, management and development of the most senior leaders in the Public Service, and which supports the Clerk as Head of the Public Service;
- the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency of Canada, which was created in 2003 and is responsible for leadership and service in human resources planning, accountability, modernization, employment equity, values and ethics, and official languages, as well as policies and compensation for executives, learning policy and management of development programs;
- the Treasury Board Secretariat, which, among its many other responsibilities, manages pensions, health care, dental care, labour relations, compensation and setting of terms and conditions of employment;
- the Canada School of Public Service, which is responsible for training and professional development, including leadership development and language training, for all levels of the Public Service; and
- the Public Service Commission, whose most critical role is to protect and support the integrity of the merit-based staffing system.
Together, these central institutions of government carry leadership responsibility for how we recruit, develop, pay and manage employees. But no less important to the process of public service renewal are the 200 departments and agencies that together make up the federal Public Service. It is in the actual delivery of programs and services, in regulation and in policy making, that the impact of the Public Service is felt by Canadians. Renewal must be seen to make a difference on the front line if it is to be viewed as a success.
Other partners within government who have a major stake in renewal are the public service unions, the Association of Professional Executives of the Public Service, and the large number of informal groups of young professionals and others who rightly want to play their part as the Public Service moves into the 21st century.
Partners and stakeholders outside government are also key to the process of renewal. They include special-purpose committees such as the Advisory Committee on Senior Level Retention and Compensation (Stephenson Committee), as well as stakeholders representing the different sectors of our society and our economy – business, the non-profit and voluntary sector, First Nations and other Aboriginal groups, universities and colleges, and the wider community of Canadians interested in public policy.
All of these parties have a stake in the quality and the relevance of Canada’s Public Service. Their voices must be heard in the continuing dialogue that will inform and sustain the process of public service renewal.
IV. Priorities for the Short and Medium Term
1) Planning
To make progress over time, you must have a plan. This is therefore our first priority – to better understand, in each department and agency and in the Public Service overall, the skills and needs of government and Canadians, and then to spell out the skills and capacities required to serve Canadians in the future.
Objectives
By integrating business planning with human resources (HR) planning, we will develop a better sense of our strengths and of the gaps we will need to fill, whether through recruitment or development or by bringing in specialized skills at mid-career. We will use the planning process in every department and agency to engage employees in the future evolution of their organizations.
Actions
Over the short term we will:
- enhance the capacity across the Public Service to do integrated human resources and business planning; and
- require every department and agency to include a human resources plan as a fully integrated element of its normal business planning and reporting.
Over the medium term we will:
- develop, in collaboration with departments and agencies, planning tools that will contribute to simpler, more effective HR planning in the future; and
- develop a unified Public Service human resources plan that captures, at a high level rather than as a roll-up, the key objectives, performance measures and achievements of the Public Service as a whole with respect to the management of people.
2) Recruitment
Recruitment and employee development are key dimensions of renewal. Fifteen years of prosperity and the changing demographics of our population have meant that the labour market in Canada today is tight. We know we have to be ready to compete for talent, and we must do so in a way that respects the principle of merit-based appointment and the goal of a nationally representative workforce, both of which are fundamental to Canada’s Public Service. We also know that we must be able to offer both new and existing employees the opportunity to develop their skills and pursue meaningful careers in government.
Objectives
Our goals with respect to recruitment are to ensure (a) that the Public Service as a whole has the people and skills it needs for the future, (b) that each department and agency is equipped to meet its needs for new personnel, as it defines them, and (c) that our recruitment processes are accessible, credible and efficient.
Success in recruitment requires effective “branding” – that is, identifying the Public Service as a career of choice in the minds of young Canadians. One way to do this is by demonstrating the enormous range of career opportunities available in the government, the satisfaction of public service, and the many other advantages to be had in a public service career.
Several studies have variously identified six factors that are of greatest importance in attracting people to an organization and keeping them:
- opportunities for learning and development;
- appropriate compensation;
- opportunities for career advancement; and
- policies and practices that contribute to a flexible and positive workplace.
The Public Service offers all of these advantages to its employees and the evidence – at least in terms of the attractiveness of the public service career – bears this out. Every year, tens of thousands of Canadians, most of them young and well qualified, apply for positions in the Public Service. And our more specialized programs of recruitment have shown we can compete effectively as an employer with the best companies in the private sector and with other levels of government. Our challenge is to fulfill the promise that our new recruits see in us; to be more timely and effective in bringing people into government; and to become more effective in helping them develop their skills and their careers.
Actions
Over the short term we will:
- put a strong focus on department-specific recruitment that involves the senior leaders of each organization reaching out to attract new talent;
- address projected shortages at senior levels through targeted programs of development of current executives, and deliberate efforts to reach outside the Public Service for people with the skills, experience and motivation to occupy senior leadership positions; and
- design pilot programs of pooled recruitment for specialized needs in areas such as finance, audit and evaluation, personnel management and procurement.
Over the medium term we will:
- refine and articulate a Public Service “brand” that can be customized to suit the particular needs and circumstances of individual departments and agencies;
- coordinate the enhanced recruitment activities of departments and the Public Service Commission, so that people on college and university campuses are not frustrated in their efforts to find the “front door” to the Public Service; and
- apply lessons from current programs such as the Policy Leaders Program, the Management Trainee Program, the Accelerated Economists Program and the Accelerated Executive Development Program to develop broader initiatives that will serve the renewal needs of the Public Service.
3) Employee development
The most valuable asset of Canada’s Public Service is the talent and commitment of its employees. Not only is it in the interest of the employer to ensure that employees have the opportunity to develop and apply their skills to the fullest extent, but also that development interest is shared by employees themselves.
Objectives
Our goals with respect to employee development are simple:
- Make sustained investments in development and learning throughout the Public Service.
- This applies on a system-wide basis, through institutions such as the Canada School of Public Service and programs like the Leadership Network. It is also a duty that falls to every deputy minister and agency head. At the workplace level, this agenda will require a sustained commitment to learning plans, dedicated resources for training, and increased mobility to facilitate employee development, not merely within a single organization but also between organizations.
- Develop and foster leadership at all levels of the Public Service.
Here we can take a lesson from our colleagues in the Canadian Forces who, for years, have recognized the importance of developing leadership skills for members from corporal to general officer. We on the civilian side of government can do the same.
- Ensure that all employees have the opportunity to do meaningful work in an environment where they can make their maximum contribution.
Public servants are long-term assets to be valued and developed in the service of Canada. This long-term commitment to employees will remain a feature of Public Service life, notwithstanding societal trends toward shorter term employment and more varied careers. Senior managers in every public sector organization must try to meet the needs and aspirations of younger employees by demonstrating the variety and opportunity to be found within the larger environment of the Public Service as a whole.
Actions
In the short term we will:
- implement the Government of Canada Fellows Program to foster interchange between the public sector and the private and non-profit sectors;
- ensure (a) that employees have meaningful learning plans that are reviewed periodically with their supervisors, and (b) that there is an employee development plan for every organization; and
- implement the ADM [Assistant Deputy Minister] Talent Management Initiative. This is a program that will maximize the skills and contributions of our assistant deputy ministers throughout the Public Service as well as identify future senior leaders through coherent career planning, learning and development strategies, and succession planning within the ADM community.
In the medium term we will:
- develop specific developmental programs for functional communities (finance, audit, human resources, etc.);
- as part of reviewing our performance management regime, develop a new approach to evaluating performance in people management; and
- expand the model of the ADM Talent Management Initiative to other executive levels.
4) Enabling infrastructure
To achieve our objectives for renewal, we must put in place the systems and processes to support efficient, user-friendly planning, recruitment and development.
Objectives
We need to establish benchmarks and share best practices. Our goal is to make better use of technology in all aspects of planning and management, including such things as integrated standards for human resources policies and programs. And we need to ensure that existing flexibilities and new tools for things such as integrated planning are better understood and applied by managers and employees.
Actions
Our short term action plan is to:
- establish a plan for streamlining the human resources business processes and systems across government;
- provide a more user-friendly database of best practices to departments and agencies, with corresponding central agency advice and support, and promote specific tools for activities such as succession planning; and
- develop modern electronic platforms for on-line learning, networking and sharing best practices across the Public Service.
Over the medium term we will:
- implement the plan for streamlining human resources business processes and systems across the government;
- invest in renewing the skills and leadership of the HR community; and
- introduce new tools to support more effective and efficient recruitment in departments.
The Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee on the Public Service
As we proceed with this action plan, both short and medium term, our work will be informed by ideas and recommendations coming forward from the Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee on the Public Service. I see a very useful complementarity between the Committee’s work and the renewal process being driven inside government. There is much we can learn from other sectors of our society about how to better manage people. I am very pleased to have had the benefit of early advice from the Committee on the specific issue of recruitment (see the Committee’s Report in
Annex 3).
V. Looking at the Longer Term
While we need concrete results in the short term, we also know that changes to organizational culture and to larger systems will take longer. Here again, if we want to make an impact we will have to start now and sustain our course over time.
The human resources system
There is much that can be done to reduce the complexity of the current human resources system in government, to invest in current HR staff and to reach out more effectively to a new generation of public service professionals. More can be done to open the doors of the Public Service to talented people at middle and senior levels who see an opportunity to make a contribution.
By making things simpler and more transparent, we will help to achieve another current objective, namely to strengthen accountability while improving the efficiency of government operations. Not only is this possible, it is the right thing to do.
Innovation and risk management
There is a broader process of cultural change that should be a part of the process of public service renewal. In particular, there is a need to change the culture of risk aversion that, for a number of reasons, seems to have emerged in recent years. I have spoken elsewhere about the need to restore a better balance between oversight and flexibility and to remove unproductive restrictions that prevent public servants from managing for results rather than simply managing by rules. This theme is reinforced in the recent report of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Grants and Contributions, which noted that “accountability is strengthened when compliance rules make sense and are established at a level that corresponds to risk and need.”8
Other issues related to the culture of the Public Service deserve our attention as we move forward with renewal. I believe, for example, that we need to look critically at our capacity to deal with performance issues and our readiness to set realistic objectives and manage toward them.
Leadership
Another issue that will require attention and investment over the longer term is leadership. This is one of my priorities for the Public Service – the others being accountability, teamwork, excellence and, of course, renewal. These are all issues that the Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee has expressed an interest in exploring through its own work over the coming months.
In speaking about the importance of leadership at the ADM Forum nearly a year ago, I said, “leadership is not about working longer hours, or harder or taking on more responsibility. It is about engaging employees and clients, setting the agenda, taking risks and being a role model.” Those remarks were addressed to a gathering of senior executives, but they could equally well have been directed to any group of public servants in the country. I believe leadership is a quality to be developed, in one form or another, in every public service employee. We need to do much more, in our programs of training and development, to instill and develop the leadership qualities that are so essential to a modern and effective Public Service.
Like the challenge of developing a culture of innovation and accountability, leadership development should be seen as a longer term endeavour. There will be more to say about all these important subjects in future reports, and specifically about the challenge of balancing the demand for increased accountability with the imperatives of modern, innovative management.
What is our ultimate goal in this broad process of renewal? It is the same objective that every public service leader has always held for his or her organization – excellence in the support of Canada’s government, excellence in the delivery of programs and services, and excellence in regulation and policy development. In this most basic sense, our essential mission as public servants has not changed. What has changed, however, is what we need to do in practice to live up to the standards of our institution and the expectations of our fellow citizens.
VI. A Message to Fellow Public Servants
My final words in this report go out to you, my fellow public servants. It is you above all who will be responsible for sustaining the process of public service renewal over the coming decade and more. It is you who will be the best judges of whether the changes we are making to rules and systems will really make a difference, or whether they will amount to just another retooling of traditional bureaucracy.
It is you, the public servants in nearly 200 federal departments and agencies, who will not only be affected by the changes proposed in this report, but who will be expected to drive and shape those changes. Surveys show clearly that public servants value their work and that they are proud of their role in serving government and serving Canadians. But whatever their job and whatever their level, their skills must be developed and their workplace adapted to meet the demands of an ever-changing environment.
It is the members of the Public Service who are the true partners in the process of public service renewal, and it is to you that I dedicate this report.
Kevin G. Lynch
- 2005 Public Service Employee Survey
- Further details on both the business of the federal government and the makeup of the Public Service are found in Annexes 1 and 2.
- The core federal Public Service numbers 250,000 and includes agencies such as the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the Canada Revenue Agency, Parks Canada and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service for whom the Treasury Board is not the employer and where the Public Service Commission is not empowered to appoint people in these organizations.
- Spending on public safety and anti-terrorism involves 150 programs and 33 departments and agencies. Spending in 2006-2007 totalled $6.26 billion, an increase of 43.6 percent since 2002-2003.
- See for example, Modernizing Government: The Way Forward (OECD, 2005); Public Sector Integrity: A Framework for Assessment (OECD, 2005); Governance and Corruption: Global Issues Seminar Series (World Bank, 2006); Good Governance and Development: A Time For Action (World Bank, 2006); The Cost of Government and the Misuse of Public Assets (International Monetary Fund, 2000).
- See Evert Lindquist, A Critical Moment: Capturing and Conveying the Evolution of the Canadian Public Service, Canada School of Public Service, 2006.
- Prime Minister Harper’s speech, “Accountability and the Public Service,” March 23, 2006.
- “From Red Tape to Clear Results,” Report of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Grant and Contribution Programs, 2006, p. 44.
|
