Increasing Accountability in the Federal Public Service
CGA Canada Conference 2000: A New Management Culture in the Public Service for the Next Millennium
David Zussman, President Public Policy Forum Ottawa, January 27, 2000
Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today. When I was approached by the CGA, it was suggested that I address the following issues: the impact of accrual accounting in the federal government, comptrollership in the federal government, and public sector reform. Given that every one of you in this room knows more about accrual accounting than I do, I will avoid this issue and focus my remarks on public sector reform, and the importance of good comptrollership in achieving public sector reform. And, given that the majority of you here in the audience are public servants, I look forward to a good conversation with you about the
effectiveness of public service reform at the conclusion of my remarks.
I think it is safe to say that there is no large institution, or workforce, whether in the private or public sector, that has not undergone a radical transformation in the past decade. The federal public service has faced downsizing, salary freezes, increasing workloads, and the introduction of revolutionary information
technology. At the same time, there is a new emphasis on service standards and concern about outcomes, layered over the need to maintain a strong value system based on ensuring the public interest.
The stress resulting from the speed and scope of the changes has taken its toll on the work environment in the public sector. Today, I'll be talking about some of the measures that the government is taking to both improve service to the public and enhance the attractiveness of the federal government as a place to work — as the Clerk of the Privy Council, Mel Cappe, has stated, his goal is to make the public service "an exceptional employer of choice."
First, allow me to put today's situation in context, by stepping back a few years. One of the first major public sector reforms undertaken by the Liberal government was Program Review, an initiative I was involved with when I was recruited to work in the Privy Council Office in 1994-95. In the words of Marcel Massé, the goal of Program Review was "getting government right". With close to one third of every tax dollar going to service the debt, and an annual deficit of $42 billion, the federal government realized that radical changes in priorities and program delivery were required in order for the government to continue serving as a viable institution.
We needed to look at all of our activities, and to define those that we considered to be core activities. Every single federal program and activity was examined to see whether it met a specific set of criteria: (1) a public interest test; (2) if the answer was yes, should government be providing this service? (3) could the program be better administered by another level of government (4) by the private sector, and (5) were there more efficient ways to deliver the program. Then, of course there was an affordability test — could the federal government afford to continue offering the program. As a result of Program Review, dozens of programs were cut, 65,000 jobs were eliminated and annual expenditures were reduced by billions of dollars, setting the government on the path toward a balanced budget.
Program Review also introduced a new focus on results and comptrollership. One of the things we learned during the Program Review exercise was that we simply did not know enough about the outcomes of federal government activities and programs. In fact, the federal government had been spending millions of dollars on program evaluations, but the information had not been properly used in assessing the overall
Depuis la fin de l'examen des programmes, les parties intéressées au sein du gouvernement fédéral ont fait des efforts concertés en vue d'améliorer la fonction de contrôleur. D'ailleurs, je suis convaincu que bon nombre d'entre vous avez participé à cet exercice. En 1996, le gouvernement fédéral a créé un groupe d'experts indépendants connu sous le nom de Groupe de travail indépendant chargé de la modernisation de la fonction de contrôleur dans l'administration fédérale du Canada. Ce groupe avait pour mandat d'aider le gouvernement à adopter des principes et des pratiques modernes de contrôle pour faire en sorte que les données financières traduisent correctement les fruits des dépenses gouvernementales. Je sais que CGA-Canada a soumis au Groupe de travail un excellent mémoire sur la fonction moderne de contrôleur. Ce document des plus stimulants recommandait que le Conseil du Trésor prenne l'initiative de concevoir et de promouvoir de nouvelles stratégies en matière de rapports, qu'il veille à ce que les rapports soient soumis en temps opportun et qu'il appuie l'intégration de la fonction de contrôleur au niveau de tous les postes de gestion.
Since the completion of Program Review, the federal government has made a concerted effort to improve its comptrollership, and I am sure that many of you here today have contributed to that goal. In 1996 the federal government commissioned a panel of outside experts, known as the Independent Review Panel on
Modernization of Comptrollership in the Government of Canada, to obtain assistance in introducing modern principles and practices of comptrollership. The goal was to start linking financial data to the results achieved by government expenditures. I know that CGA submitted an excellent and challenging paper on modern comptrollership to the Panel, which recommended that the Treasury Board Secretariat take the lead in developing and promoting new reporting strategies, ensure that reporting was done on a timely basis, and support the integration of comptrollership into all management positions.
So, I realize that I'm preaching to the converted when I say that comptrollership is essential to good management. And, modern comptrollership means evolving comptrollership from a purely financial function to a broader focus on the sound management of resources and effective decision-making. This means a shift in emphasis to results — outcomes, not outputs — and values. This will require a deep change in the management culture of the federal public service. One of the Panel's key recommendations was to "move comptrollership to a core responsibility of every manager in the public service". The goal is to give managers greater accountability for their decisions, and for achieving better results.
Since the publication of that report, all departments and agencies have been asked to specify, on an annual basis, the anticipated results for their program expenditures, and to identify how they will monitor and measure their performance and report on their achievements. The Comptrollership Modernization Office was created to support departments in developing appropriate measurement and reporting mechanisms.
Dans la foulée des recommandations du Groupe de travail, le Conseil du Trésor s'est maintenant vu confier le mandat d'agir comme conseil de gestion du gouvernement. Par le passé, le rôle du Conseil du Trésor se limitait surtout à faire des interventions ponctuelles lors de l'allocation de budgets à l'appui de programmes approuvés par d'autres comités du Cabinet. Désormais, le mandat du Conseil consiste à pousser l'analyse et à aborder les dépenses de programme selon une perspective horizontale, à travers tous les ministères, dans le but d'établir un cadre d'examen global. En outre, le Conseil étudie les projets afin de déterminer s'ils cadrent avec les objectifs essentiels du gouvernement en matière de qualité des services offerts au public, de coordination des interventions des organismes chargés de dispenser les services ainsi que d'efficacité de l'exploitation de la nouvelle technologie.
In keeping with the Panel's recommendations, Treasury Board has now been tasked to act as the Management Board for government. In the past, Treasury Board was primarily transactional, allocating funds for programs approved by other Cabinet Committees. Treasury Board's new mandate is to dig deeper and view program expenditures from a horizontal perspective, across all departments, to provide a more holistic assessment framework. Treasury Board also reviews proposals to determine whether they further the government's key objectives: better service to the public, better coordination among service providers, and effective introduction of new technology.
During the past year, the President of the Treasury Board asked the Public Policy Forum to conduct a study of how successfully the Treasury Board, as a Cabinet Committee, is achieving its new mandate. As part of the study, I interviewed all the ministers who were members or alternate members of Treasury Board at that time. I was encouraged to see their commitment to viewing initiatives from a government-wide perspective, and to establishing performance measurements for programs to enable them to make better informed decisions when allocating resources.
Ministers also had high praise for Treasury Board officials, the depth of their knowledge and their
professionalism. Many of them considered Treasury Board to be the best performing of any of the Cabinet Committees they had participated in.
Congratulations are due to both the Secretary and President of the Treasury Board, Peter Harder and the Honourable Lucienne Robillard, for their commitment to good comptrollership. They have championed this cause, and have made tremendous progress in selling it to both political and public service leaders. Still, the federal government can look to provinces such as Alberta for leadership in measuring and communicating results. The Province of Alberta now issues an annual report on its budget, including not only the standard consolidated financial statements, but also performance results.
Citizens deserve to see an analysis of how their tax dollars are spent. As stated in the preamble to
Measuring Up, Alberta's performance report, two purposes are served — the report informs Albertans on the results achieved compared to the targets set out in the Government Business Plan, and can "help program managers improve programs and services for Albertans."
Alberta's annual report contains 25 core performance measures. These measures are related to the government's three core businesses: people, prosperity and preservation, and are tied to 17 government goals. These 25 core measures are key indicators, providing a rough measure of the progress Alberta is making in areas such as the economy, health, justice and the environment.
The core measures and results are clearly stated, year-over-year changes are provided, and both failures and successes are identified. For example, under the measure for Educational Attainment, the performance of Alberta students is benchmarked against that of students in the rest of Canada and in other parts of the world. Financial results are compared to the goals stated in the budget, and the report clearly demonstrates areas in which the government has fallen short of its goals. And, starting in 1999, each provincial Ministry must prepare its own detailed annual report.
The federal Treasury Board Secretariat now submits to Parliament, on an annual basis, a report called Managing for Results, which outlines the steps federal departments are taking to establish performance measurement systems. Many departments are consulting with key stakeholders to identify meaningful criteria for measurement, and in time, we will see full performance reporting from the federal government. Performance measurement is already being included in inter-governmental agreements, such as the Social Union Framework negotiated just over one year ago. Another example is the Great Lakes 2000 initiative, under which Environment Canada, six other federal departments and four Ontario ministries established 50 public results commitments and measures in consultation with local citizens. And, under the Health
Information Roadmap, announced in the 1999 federal budget, all levels of government are working with key stakeholders to improve health information and establish measures to report on the health of Canadians and the performance of the health system.
This year, the federal government will be holding national consultations to design a usable set of societal indicators in the following areas: Health, Environment and Public Safety, Economic Opportunity and participation, and Social Participation and Inclusion.
Buy-in from the top is essential to the successful adoption of new practices and values, and if our political and public service leaders hadn't already bought into the value of good comptrollership, they will all be fervent believers after the past week's revelations from Human Resources Development Canada.
The situation at HRDC clearly demonstrates why good comptrollership is essential, but also how challenging it can be to balance the goals of empowerment and speedier decision-making with the need to respect due process. As I understand it, the problems at HRDC date back to the early 1990s. The combination of downsizing, the amalgamation of five departments into a single entity, Social Security Review and Program Review, the devolution of responsibilities to the provinces and a new focus on faster service to the client combined to create an administrative nightmare. Year after year, audits identified areas for concern, yet the spider's web of activities made even the auditing difficult. Today, fingers of blame are pointing in every direction, but this truly seems to be a systemic failure. The learnings from this experience should bring new converts to the cause of good comptrollership.
Despite the situation at HRDC, I still believe that significant progress is being made. However, the federal government still needs to establish clear measurements for its key priorities, namely outputs and outcomes of federal programs, the work environment in the public sector, and the quality of service provided to Canadians. The discussions are heading in the right direction, but it's time to walk the talk.
Treasury Board started to assess the state of the public service work environment in 1999, when it conducted the first ever government-wide employee survey. The results were released in November, and when I say results, I mean all the results, down to the level of work groups.
The government deserves full credit for its openness in sharing the outcomes — a commitment made long before the results were known. It was a difficult decision, but the right one — partial disclosure would have only bred cynicism among employees, who would have felt that they were getting a whitewash of the situation.
The survey response rate varied by department from a low of 55% to a high of 80%. To the surprise of many observers, including myself, on the whole public servants appeared relatively satisfied with their work:
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64% strongly agreed with the statement "I believe the work I do is important", and a further 32%"mostly agreed".
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87% are proud of their unit's work, 88% like their jobs, and 75% find their department or agency a good place to work.However, almost half of the respondents believe they do not have a fair chance of getting a promotion, close to one third indicate that supervisors don't recognize good work, and, approximately one in five reported that they had experienced some form of harassment in the workplace.
Treasury Board will be holding a series of consultations to determine ways to improve the survey, and ways to address the problems identified in the survey.
Je vous rappelle que le visage de la fonction publique a radicalement changé et que l'accroissement de l'imputabilité ne constitue qu'un élément de la nouvelle culture de gestion que le gouvernement cherche à instaurer. L'accent sur le service constitue un autre élément-clé de cette culture. Dans cette optique, la définition d'objectifs et la mesure du rendement sont des conditions essentielles à la prestation de services de qualité.
As I stated earlier, the public sector workforce has been undergoing a tremendous transformation, and increased accountability is only one facet of the new management culture being promoted. Another key
component of the new corporate culture is an increased focus on service. Performance goals and measures are essential to the development of good service.
In 1996, the federal government set up the DM Task Force on Service Delivery Models. The Task Force stated that service delivery must be "citizen centric" and defined Citizen Centric Service in this way: "CCS incorporates citizens' concerns at every stage of the service design and delivery process; that is, citizens' needs become the organizing principle around which the public interest is determined and service delivery is planned."
À titre d'agence responsable de la formation des cadres au sein de la fonction publique fédérale, le Centre canadien de gestion a établi, en juillet 1997, le Réseau du service axé sur les citoyens. Réunissant des porte-parole des trois paliers de gouvernement, ce réseau compte plus de deux cents hauts fonctionnaires fédéraux, provinciaux ou municipaux ainsi que d'éminents universitaires et experts du domaine de la prestation des services gouvernementaux.
In July 1997, the Canadian Centre for Management Development, the agency responsible for executive training in the federal public service, responded by establishing the Citizen-Centred Service Network (CCSN). The CCSN includes representation from all three levels of government across Canada — it is composed of over 200 senior officials from the federal, provincial and municipal governments as well as leading academics and outside experts in the field of public sector service delivery.
The Network's mandate is to identify areas where further information or knowledge is required to guide service improvements, then carry out the necessary research and feed the results back to its members for action.
The Public Policy Forum has supported the drive toward excellence in service delivery by creating a course for the CCMD known as "Managing Citizen-Centred Services". This module provides senior public servants with an opportunity to learn the concepts and theory behind service excellence, then visit private sector employers who exemplify these concepts to see how they can be implemented in the public service work environment. The pilot program we developed is now part of the CCMD curriculum.
The new service culture will have a large information technology component, which is strongly supported by Canadians. A recent survey conducted by Industry Canada indicated that the majority of Canadians support electronic service delivery — 59% of respondents agreed with the statement that the "Internet is an effective way for governments to communicate with Canadians." When asked to identify their preferred channel for service delivery, respondents put "e-kiosks" in first place (25%), followed by IVR (interactive voice response) at 22%. Internet and mail tied at 18%, followed by "at counter" service at 17%.
The federal government is opening over 110 Access Centres in 1999-2000, where Canadians can obtain information and assistance on virtually any federal government program. They have also introduced 1-800-OCanada, making the Government Enquiry Centre database available to front-line service providers, again enabling them to respond to questions on a wide range of government programs. Canada.gc.ca will also be a key delivery channel, and will support secure transactions.
However, what Canadians really want is one-stop shopping — for services from all levels of government. To date, many governments are responding by creating single portals to services within their jurisdiction, but there has been no linking of jurisdictions. However, Industry Canada has set a goal of creating an inter-jurisdictional portal by 2004.
The greatest barrier to achieving seamless Government on Line, as identified by public sector managers in response to an Industry Canada survey, is not the technology, it's the human dimension - 61% stated that "leadership, cooperating and managing politics/turf" will be the hardest obstacles to overcome.
Kevin Lynch and his team at Industry Canada are actively working on GOL, in keeping with the commitment made in the Speech from the Throne:
"The Government will become a model user of information technology and the Internet. By 2004, our goal is to be known around the world as the government most connected to its citizens, with Canadians able to access all government information and services on-line at the time and place of their choosing." Fidèles aux principes d'excellence qui sous-tendent la fonction de contrôleur, de nombreux organismes fédéraux s'affairent à évaluer les besoins et priorités de leurs clients afin d'implanter des stratégies de satisfaction de la clientèle axées sur les résultats. Selon les conclusions d'un récent sondage à l'échelle de tout le pays, les Canadiens et Canadiennes jugent qu'en matière de qualité des services dispensés, le secteur public offre un rendement égal ou supérieur à celui de nombreux organismes privés, et j'y vois là un signe fort encourageant.
In keeping with the principles of good comptrollership, many federal organizations are measuring clients' needs and priorities in order to implement a results-based approach to improving client satisfaction. It is encouraging to see that in a recent national public opinion survey, public sector service delivery ranked as high or higher than the service delivered by many private sector organizations.
I have touched on a wide range of issues today, but there is a constant theme — the importance of setting clear targets, establishing measures for success, and reporting results. You, and the CGA, deserve recognition for your active promotion of the importance of good comptrollership throughout the federal government.
The Public Policy Forum, to which the CGA belongs, is a non-profit, non-partisan association dedicated to improving public policy and public sector management by promoting dialogue among the public, private and voluntary sectors. In our recent business planning exercise, we identified the following priorities for our work over the next three years:
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Globalization and Canadian Governance (with a particular focus on North American integration)•
Public Trust in Public Institutions•
Public Sector Management•
Productivity, Competitiveness and Quality of LifeGood comptrollership plays a particularly important role in two of these priority areas: it is essential to achieving effective and accountable public sector management, and it will also contribute to enhancing public trust in public institutions. We have been concerned in recent years by an apparent decline in the level of trust in government, and good comptrollership, coupled with transparent performance reporting, should serve to enhance Canadians' respect for and trust in government. My colleagues and I at the Public Policy Forum look forward to working with the CGA to achieve these goals.
The importance of a strong public service to Canada's success as a nation has been one of the Forum's key themes since its inception. I was extremely pleased to see that Canada's political leadership is recognizing the value of the public service. In the October 1999 Speech from the Throne, Governor General Adrienne Clarkson stated that: "To ensure that the Public Service of Canada... provides Canadians the highest quality of service into the 21st century, the Government will focus on the recruitment, retention and continuous learning of a skilled, federal workforce."
A new public service culture is essential to recruit and retain employees, and I believe that the federal government is moving in the right direction by promoting good comptrollership and a strong service orientation. By enhancing individual accountability, and providing measures by which public servants can
clearly see and communicate the impact of their work, the public service will become a more attractive place to work.
In closing, I'd like to return to the lessons we can learn from this week's revelations about file management at Human Resources Development Canada. First, we should congratulate HRDC for having an internal audit system in place — some departments still don't have even that. Second, we need to look at the
management culture — employees who are empowered to act quickly to meet new service commitments must know that accountability is an essential element of empowerment. Third, managers must ensure that the employees have the tools and training required to achieve both empowerment and accountability, for example, training in risk management.
Next, an appropriate feedback mechanism must be established when funds are allocated — the recipient of the funds and the program manager must agree when reports should be submitted, how often, what should be in those reports, and to whom they must be given. Finally, some of the HRDC programs are further complicated by the political dimension — the local MP may play a role in some of the allocation decisions, so an element of accountability must be added for the MP if he or she is involved in recommending that funds be granted.
Notwithstanding the recent problems at HRDC, I still believe that the work values and ethics within the public service are strong, and that comptrollership and service quality are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the HRDC situation might provide the incentive needed for government-wide adoption of modern comptrollership practices.
