3. HORIZONTAL MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK
A
Landmark in Horizontal Coordination
A Landmark in
Horizontal Coordination
THE ORIGIN
OF THE HORIZONTAL MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK
The Action
Plan for Official Languages requires all federal institutions to report on the
way in which they are fulfilling their commitments and obligations under the
Official Languages Act. Reporting on our collective accountability has made the
development of a horizontal management framework necessary.
For the
federal government, such a framework enables management to consider the overall
effect of a group of activities. It encompasses governance, performance
objectives, accountability measures and reports to Canadians. It does not
replace the performance measurement systems specific to departments and agencies
that evaluate in detail those initiatives for which they are responsible.
Horizontal management frameworks strengthen the function of modern
comptrollership whereby information on expenditures and performance is gathered,
and managers are provided with appropriate control systems, a considered
approach to risk management, and a common set of values and ethical principles.
The
initiatives of the Action Plan cannot be separated from the whole set of
activities undertaken by the government in compliance with the Official
Languages Act and in support of linguistic duality. The framework deals with the
Official Languages Program (OLP) as a whole 8. It emphasizes the links between
the priorities of all areas, it offers an overview of activities, funding and
progress and it sheds light on how programs work together to achieve results,
make use of resources, pursue activities and report to Canadians. The framework
was designed to be applied over time to all federal institutions.
Official
Languages, Intergovernmental Affairs, Privy Council Office, have coordinated and
managed a complex structure of interdepartmental committees and working groups
established specifically to build the horizontal management framework: a
steering committee responsible for directing the project, a senior working group
which clarified the content and prepared reports for the Committee of Deputy
Ministers on Official Languages (CDMOL), and a broader working group including
representatives of ten departments and agencies, in particular fields (policy
officers, program managers, evaluation experts and other specialists) as well as
assistance from the communities.
Work was
based on the following approach:
•
examination of documents (e.g. the OLA and the Action Plan, the 1994
protocol and its designation of the institutions having the most direct impact
on communities and the equal status of French and English, briefs submitted
during the development of the Action Plan, etc.);
•
examination of management frameworks, audit frameworks and other
documents guiding the implementation of the Action Plan initiatives by each
department;
•
working sessions on strategies for performance measurement, evaluation
and risk management; and
•
consultation sessions on indicators and the performance measurement
framework with non-governmental partners and especially communities.
•
The horizontal management framework reflects the contributions made by
numerous participants in an environment which was marked by an openness to
learn. It also owes a great deal to the comments and suggestions made by the
communities, the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, and
parliamentarians. Implementation of the framework has just begun.
STRUCTURE
AND USE OF THE HORIZONTAL MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK
The
horizontal management framework has four components:
•
a governance structure for the OLP (Figure 1, p.45), in which: the Prime
Minister and the Cabinet have ultimate responsibility; the Minister responsible
for Official Languages, the Ministers whose mandate is described in the Act and
the Group of Ministers play a leadership role; the Privy Council Office, the
Committee of Deputy Ministers and senior officials ensure the consistency of
policies and the interdepartmental collaboration necessary, and so on throughout
all levels of the federal system, with partners outside the government being
taken into account;
•
a results-based logic model (Figure 2, p.46), that fits the goals of all
institutions together with the rationale for the overall program, illustrates
the connections between the targeted results and the activities required to
achieve them, and integrates the logic models of the departments and agencies in
their specific areas;
•
a measurement framework and an evaluation strategy, which describe how
the government and its partners will seek the relevant data and measure progress
in light of the expected results; and,
•
an accountability strategy that details the evaluation activities and
reports expected from federal partners.
This also
represents an attempt at harmonizing departmental evaluation cycles. The midterm
report and the official launch of the horizontal framework in the Fall are part
of this strategy. There will be formative evaluations from which preliminary
conclusions may be drawn in 2006 which will serve as a point of reference for
the summative evaluation of 2007. The results reported by the federal partners
in the context of these evaluations, and the annual reports by Canadian
Heritage, the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency, and the
Commissioner of Official Languages will be taken into account in the overall
analysis of the data gathered on the OLP to prepare the final report in 2008.
The
horizontal management framework is already being used, more or less extensively,
depending on whether an institution is one of the ten partners in the Action
Plan, belongs to the 30 designated institutions whose impact on the development
of the minority communities and promotion of French and English is the greatest,
or is one of the 190 or more subject to the Official Languages Act. To use it to
best advantage, federal institutions must not only collaborate among themselves
but also call on the governments of the provinces and territories–as well as
the community organizations and other groups interested in official
languages–to be involved.
The
horizontal framework is the work of numerous stakeholders and its use will be
central in reports by the government to Canadians. It must evolve with time as
changes occur in the field of official languages. Use of the framework will grow
as a larger number of federal institutions and stakeholders enter data and
tailor it to meet their needs. Eventually, the institutional silos will
disappear and the effects of policies and programs in relation to one another
will be clear. It will become natural to ask whether measures taken in education
are preparing Canadians for continuous learning; whether community development
encompasses identity, cultural, economic and social factors; and whether the
example of the public service is influencing society and the communities.
Figure 1: Governance for the Official Languages Program
Figure 2: Logic Model – Official Languages
Program
8. See the introduction to this
Report and Annex 1.
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