Introduction
I am pleased to present the Twelfth Annual Report to the Prime Minister on
the Public Service of Canada, a yearly opportunity to discuss the key
accomplishments, challenges and directions of the Public Service.
The Public Service's mission is an exciting one, but it is becoming more
demanding. Our challenge is to serve in an era of transparency without retreat
or fear of risk; to rise to the issues facing our country; to be innovative and
creative in how we serve; to renew ourselves continually; and to be an
institution that a new generation of leaders will want to join. This past year
both reminded us of the challenges and gave us reason to be optimistic.
A Culture of Transformation and Reallocation
The Public Service continues to take pride in the extraordinary efforts and
results of program review but at the same time none of us wants to need such a
wrenching exercise again. Program and expenditure review must instead become an
integral part of how we work.
This past year marked significant progress toward creating a culture of
continuous learning and improvement in the Public Service. Central to this
transformation has been the creation and work of the Expenditure Review
Committee, which deliberately focused on crosscutting, transformative changes—from
the launch of Service Canada to procurement reform. Expenditure review means
continuously reassessing the value for money we achieve so that we can alter
course or shift resources to where needs are greatest and to what works best.
This new way of thinking must become an ongoing part of serving the public,
driving the continual reassessment of priorities and the search for more
effective and smarter ways of working.
Expenditure review has already yielded significant savings, almost 90 per
cent of which will come from innovation in government operations. As important
as these savings are, perhaps the more significant impact will be on how we
work. The Public Service is transforming itself. It is changing the way it
serves Canadians and how it accounts to them.
Service transformation is not fiscally driven. It means reaching more
Canadians with the right services at the right time. It means better services
leading to better outcomes. The newly launched Service Canada initiative is
intended, over time, to provide Canadians with integrated, one-stop access by
phone, on the Internet and in person to their government and, where possible, to
their governments. Canadians should be able to resolve the majority of their
requests for service or benefits in the first contact they make with government.
Implementing Service Canada will clearly be challenging—risks will have to be
managed and there will have to be close collaboration between management and
bargaining agents and between the field and headquarters. But we welcome the
challenge. This initiative represents the most significant change in decades in
how we deliver services to Canadians.
Results are already starting to show. Information is easier to find through
better, user-focused Web sites and toll-free telephone services. More and more
services are available on-line, from tax filing to applying for employment
insurance. Processing is faster and more accurate. These are some of the reasons
why Canada has ranked first in Accenture's international e-government survey for
the past four years. Public servants should take great pride in this recognition
because it reflects our commitment to serving Canadians. Going forward, the
Secure Channel, built in partnership with the private sector, will provide a
platform for our continuing leadership in secure on-line services.
We should be applying the same approaches to our internal services. And so we
will introduce shared services for information technology, human resource
management and financial management to improve efficiency and quality, and
reduce costs.
Other important innovations will not be as visible as Service Canada, but
they will be no less significant. The Budget formally launched the reform of
procurement and real property management. While these are not functions that
most Canadians see, it is critical that we perform them with integrity and with
a commitment to value for money. We need to use technology more effectively,
working with all suppliers of all sizes to consolidate purchasing so that we can
leverage our buying power to get the best possible prices. It means managing our
real property better through accommodation standards and better inventory
management. It also means taking better care of our capital assets, realizing
savings through good planning and ongoing maintenance. It means a commitment to
environmental stewardship and sustainable development. And above all we need to
work with the private sector on a new partnership based on a shared commitment
to integrity, trust and best practices.
Managing for Results
In my report last year, I said that there is always a gap between our
aspirations and our achievements. The gap is never truly closed. A healthy
organization is always confident in its mission but never satisfied with its
progress.
Service transformation and resource reallocation are part of a larger
management agenda for the Public Service through which we are continuing to
strengthen governance and accountability. We introduced the Management
Accountability Framework, a common basis for performance reporting, which sets
out a rigorous accountability regime. We are one of the few countries to report
annually on societal indicators that allow parliamentarians to assess progress
along the major dimensions of public policy. We have improved our reporting to
Parliament but more needs to be done. Parliamentarians will, therefore, be
consulted on the kinds of information they use and what format best meets their
needs.
Since it was re-established, the Office of the Comptroller General has led
our efforts to improve financial management. A central feature of our culture of
reallocation is the ability to align resources with government priorities and
track expenditures. We are improving our systems for gathering and analyzing
information on spending and performance across government. And we are getting
better at recognizing risk and focusing our attention on those areas where it is
highest.
Public Service as Vocation
The Public Service of Canada is an extraordinary place to work, offering real
opportunities to learn, varied experiences through which to grow professionally
and personally, and above all the chance to make a difference for Canadians and
to help shape the future of our country.
To fulfill our vision, we will need to recruit the best talent we can
find—a new generation of public servants who embrace and represent diversity,
who bring new ideas and experiences to our workplaces, and who challenge
established ways of doing things.
The Public Service Modernization Act is intended to help us compete for the
talent we will need and to tap and develop the talent we have. It is intended to
build a new relationship between management and labour and to clear the brush
away—the layers of rules and process—to help us become more agile and more
open.
The new Canada School of Public Service will be an important institution for
the future. Career-long learning for all employees helps make the Public Service
an attractive place to work and helps ensure we have the talent we need to
deliver the results Canadians want. We will upgrade the skills of our managers
through a modern curriculum emphasizing leadership and responsibility. Our
learning program will include orientation for new employees, retraining of the
current workforce and strengthening core capacities—including financial and
human resource management. And the Canada School of Public Service will need to
become a place for all public servants to be exposed to big ideas, global
trends, new and emerging opportunities and critical challenges if the public
service is to be the pre-eminent source of strategic policy options.
One way of expanding our reach and opening up the Public Service is by
promoting exchanges between executives in the federal government and other
sectors. Building on exchanges already in place with major corporate partners
and other organizations, the government has introduced the Prime Minister's
Fellows Program, which will continue to foster mutual understanding among the
key sectors of Canadian society.
In the end, the success of our efforts to modernize our human resource
management regime will be measured by whether these reforms helped us to renew
ourselves and recruit and develop the people we need, whether they helped create
a climate in which excellence and innovation thrive, and whether we are
representative of the diverse country we serve.
Transparency and Risk
Today's public servants work in a very different environment than their
predecessors. More savvy and demanding citizens and the possibilities of new
technology have resulted in a level of transparency unimaginable only 20 years
ago. Access to information, more frequent external audits and the posting of
information on the Web—from internal audits to contracts—have changed the
workplace in fundamental ways. The risk, of course, is that transparency and a
more personal form of accountability will breed timidity and fear of error at a
time when the Public Service must be innovative, creative, and able to adapt to
and lead change.
Clearly, the Public Service cannot tolerate breaches of the law or of our
core values and ethics. Through strengthened audit and better information
systems we seek to uncover wrongdoing and we need to get better at responding to
it.
But we cannot build systems based on distrust. We cannot go backwards,
building layers of hierarchy and rules governing each transaction. And we cannot
treat all errors in the same way. Errors made in good faith are inevitable,
especially in an organization that values innovation and creativity.
Accountability requires that we report honestly and accurately, including the
errors, and demonstrate that we have learned from the mistakes and have made the
necessary adjustments. But accountability cannot become mere blaming.
Shaping the Future
The Canadian Public Service matters to the lives of Canadians and the future
of the country. It must continue to be a vocation, an institution driven by the
public interest and the responsibilities of the public trust, and able to rise
to the great challenges facing Canada in a changing world. We must not let fear
of risk make us timid when what Canadians need from us is the courage to help
shape the future.
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