V

Strengthening Policy Capacity

Last year's report noted the need to pay greater attention to longer-term and strategic policy development and to horizontal and crosscutting policy issues. It also noted the need for every department to replenish its policy capacity in order to be in a position to provide the government with broad policy options in every field. These priorities remain as valid today as they did last year.

Challenges to improved policy development

Providing high quality policy advice to ministers and the government will always be a key role for the Public Service of Canada. The Task Force on Managing Horizontal Policy Issues, a 1996 task force of deputy ministers, noted: "Policy making is central to what governments are about, and it is the policy development function of government that most distinguishes it from private sector organizations." It is, therefore, important to have a strong and vibrant policy capacity in the Public Service.

Over the past two years, through two deputy ministerial task forces -- the Task Force on Strengthening Our Policy Capacity and the Task Force on Managing Horizontal Policy Issues -- we have examined the policy advisory role of the Public Service of Canada and identified ways to improve the policy development capacity of the Public Service. Through these task forces, we learned the following:

• The key to good policy is sustained demand. Good policy development is an ongoing process, requiring strong, consistent leadership and support.

• There is a need to build a strong policy community among departments -- a community of policy managers who can share best practices and address common problems concerning policy management and methods.

• The multifaceted nature and rapid pace of change trigger a heightened need for long-term, reflective policy planning that ascertains how change will affect Canada's future. Policy-makers must not get caught up in short-term, reactive, crisis-oriented policy development.

• Many of today's principal public policy issues are horizontal in nature. Horizontality requires corporate rather than departmental action, a characteristic which is placing new demands on traditional Public Service decision-making structures and culture. The Public Service must expand its knowledge base and increase inter-organizational collaboration to tackle the growing number of crosscutting policy issues that defy the authority and expertise of any single department or even, in a globalized world, any single government.

• In today's world, a more integrated and collaborative approach to policy development is required. The policy capacity of the Public Service must be strengthened so that the Public Service views policy development as more inclusive and approaches it in a more inclusive manner. The Public Service must promote the involvement of citizens in the public policy debate in order to meet their growing demands for greater access to information and greater participation in decision making. Citizens want their voices to be heard.

Making progress

The work of the two task forces mentioned earlier and their key findings are now being discussed in all departments. Their recommendations will serve to guide departments and central agencies as they strengthen the policy capacity of the Government of Canada.

Horizontal, Open and Inclusive Policy Development: The most critical elements in improving horizontal policy development and making the process more open and inclusive are a culture shift and strong leadership to reinforce the importance of co-ordination and collaboration across departments, and the involvement of citizens, stakeholders and others in the policy development process. Sustained commitment will be required across government.

In many sectors, departments are working more closely together to address crosscutting policy issues and to open up the policy development process. For example, the deputy ministerial Committee on International Affairs provides a forum for dealing with foreign policy issues and their domestic implications. The deputy ministerial Justice and Legal Affairs Committee is a key mechanism for the development of long-term multidisciplinary policies in the area of social justice.

Focus on the Long Term: For policy development and decision making to be effective, it is critical to ensure that the Government of Canada has the capacity to identify and address long-term policy issues and pressure points, and that it has the information and analysis to take account of future trends in dealing with current policy issues.

To meet these objectives, a project called "Canada 2005" has been launched to identify and analyze the major forces that will affect Canada in the next decade. As part of this initiative, an interdepartmental committee of assistant deputy ministers is undertaking integrated research to provide an overview of the pressure points on Canadian society and to propose a research agenda and work program to fill possible gaps in our information base. This will become a permanent process to help achieve the ongoing integration of research throughout the government.

Other elements of the Canada 2005 project include creating opportunities for deputy ministers to hold informal discussions on key issues with experts from the academic and business communities.

Building a policy community: Over the past year, an interdepartmental umbrella group of policy assistant deputy ministers has been established to address shared problems of policy management, methods and best practices in policy work. Two areas of early study for this group are personnel management of the policy community and relations with the external research community. Over time, this umbrella group of ADMs will serve to forge a stronger sense of community among those involved in policy work and thus improve the policy-making process.

Improving the Policy Development Process: As noted in last year's report, Cabinet's strategic focus was reinforced by the introduction of an annual strategic planning cycle. This has contributed to the development of a sustained demand for long-term, strategic policy advice from the Public Service.

Over the past year, Cabinet's strategic planning cycle has been extended to the senior ranks of the Public Service. At the core of this process is an annual cycle of three deputy ministerial retreats. These are linked to the Cabinet planning process and focus primarily on implementing the government's comprehensive policy and management agenda. The work of the retreats is supported by permanent deputy ministerial committees which focus on the management of key operational and policy files.

Among the highlights of deputy ministerial deliberations over the past year has been the creation of a series of ad hoc groups that have supplemented the permanent committees by dealing with specific, issue-driven items. These temporary groups have taken the form of deputy ministerial task forces examining a number of challenges associated with the policy agenda and modernizing the Public Service. They were established to look at issues in greater depth than is possible at a single retreat or biweekly meeting. Over the past year, separate task forces have addressed the future of the Public Service, service delivery models, federal presence, federal presence abroad, overhead services, values and ethics, policy planning, and horizontal policy issues.

The newly devised ADM Forum also gives ADMs the opportunity for more broadly based corporate involvement. It affords them the opportunity to contribute their views on the principal policy and management files of the day and, at the same time, forges a sense of community and common purpose. The ADM Forum consists of an annual cycle of three meetings. The meetings allow ADMs to examine in depth issues of a corporate nature which they have identified as of interest to the community.

The Association of Professional Executives of the Public Service of Canada (APEX) also helps, through its annual meetings and other forums, to inform and engage a diverse group of executives.

Over the next year, there is a need to extend the strategic planning framework beyond DMs and ADMs to all levels of the Public Service. Including individual public servants in regular deliberations on the increasing number of horizontal issues can only serve to strengthen strategic, integrated, and collaborative approaches to Public Service management. We need to find vehicles to engage the federal regional councils more directly in the policy development process and to reach downward in departments.

Moving forward

As with service delivery, one of the main challenges to overcome in strengthening the policy capacity of the Public Service is the vertical stovepipes that divide government activities into somewhat artificial domains. While departments are structured so that there is a close fit between the departmental mandate and the main issues facing the government, many policy issues cannot be easily compartmentalized along institutional lines. As noted by the Task Force on Values and Ethics: "Ultimately a truly integrated and horizontal form of service delivery may also lead back, indirectly, to an integrated and horizontal approach to policy. For there is only so much that can be done at the front line if the policies themselves do not work together."

Public servants will have to rethink how they conceive and develop policy proposals. They will need to focus on their collective responsibility to serve the broader public interest and to work across institutional lines to develop the best possible policy. They must strike a balance in fulfilling both their individual accountabilities to their clients and stakeholders and at the same time their collective responsibilities to the broader public interest.

There again, this will require a culture change.

• It requires public servants to recognize the interdependence of policy issues and to work co-operatively across departmental lines to develop stronger, more integrated policy responses.

• It requires more open, participatory and transparent decision making. Citizens want a greater say in policy making. To respond to the increasing expectation among Canadians that they will be involved in policies and programs that affect their interests, it is incumbent on the Public Service to expand the avenues for open and inclusive policy development.

• It requires a collegial policy community working in partnership with other levels of government on policy issues that cross jurisdictional boundaries.

• As issues become more complex, it becomes more important than ever to nurture and mobilize the policy capacity of the broader community -- think tanks, stakeholder groups, and the academic community -- both to fill research gaps and to validate policy direction.

• It requires sustained leadership that is committed to investing in long-term policy research and development and prepared to signal that co-operation, collegiality and collaboration are priorities in policy development.

• We need a "whole-of-government" approach to policy development which looks outward to the public interest -- where departments bring government-wide objectives into their policy development processes and integrate departmental and corporate objectives.

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