Donald Savoie, the Canada Research Chair in administration and governance at the Université de Moncton, warns the government’s plans to cut spending will come from front-line programs and services rather than operations unless it simplifies, de-layers and rolls back many of the practices that have become embedded over the past decades.
In his latest book, Whatever Happened to the Music Teacher?, Savoie argues the New Public Management (NPM) measures that came into vogue 30 year ago have failed and even backfired. Those measures, implemented in all Anglo-American democracies, were designed to make the public service run like a business, have bureaucrats think like entrepreneurs, and treat citizens like customers. (To read an excerpt from the book, click HERE.)
He concludes efforts to make public servants flexible, dynamic, entrepreneurial and efficient have had the opposite impact. His book title is a metaphor for disappearing front-line services — the so-called music teachers.
The measures, first popularized by the Thatcher, Reagan and Mulroney governments of the 80s, have largely been discredited. Practices implemented to replicate the bottom line that drives the private sector backfired by creating a public service that is so risk-averse and mired in bureaucracy that it is “collapsing under its own weight,” said Savoie.
Savoie’s book comes at a time when the Conservatives are promising big efficiency savings by modernizing and streamlining back office operations without affecting front-line services. The government promised 70 per cent of $5.2 billion in spending cuts will come from operations.
Although it has run its course, Savoie says the legacy of new public management is deeply embedded in practices within the public service and the language has become “standard communication or messages in press releases.” He argues NPM was far more successful as a “communication tool” than as a “management tool.”
“It’s been a standard line for a long time now so when the government tells me they are going to protect front-line services, my guess is that it isn’t going to happen,” he says.
With new public management, politicians decided to take a bigger role in policy making and forced public servants to become managers and run departments like the private sector.
Savoie argues politicians successfully got a bigger role in policy-making, and now the evidence-based and long-term policy advice of public servants is no longer desired. Instead, policy-making is made on the fly, shaped by opinion surveys, Google searches, and focus groups, or connected lobbyists.
The drive to improve management flopped. An industry mushroomed within the bureaucracy to fabricate a bottom line with new oversight units designed to help evaluate and audit programs, manage risk, measure performance and hand out performance bonuses. These shops are filled with bureaucrats and hired consultants who, Savoie says, “turn cranks attached to nothing,” and churn out reports for Parliament that are barely read. Savoie argues this oversight bureaucracy has come at the expense of front-line services.
The public service added about 70,000 jobs over the past dozen years, concentrated in the National Capital Region where most departments are headquartered, rather in the field where the “rubber hits the road” and public servants deliver services to Canadians. Thirty years ago, 72 per cent of public servants were in regions, and today that has shrunk to 57 per cent.
He puts much of the blame for the growth of oversight on the auditor-general, whom he calls “the biggest proponent of new public management,” and on other parliamentary watchdogs.
“The essence of the public service is to provide front-line services to Canadians and we have lost sight of that. The public service is tasked with managing the paper burden, feeding the beast and managing processes and we can lay much of that at the doorstep of the auditor-general and other parliamentary officers.”
So far, the Conservative government has distinguished itself as the government of “transparency and accountability,” which Savoie argues added more layers, rules and watchdogs to a already overburdened system. Canada has more agents of parliament than any other Westminster-style government
Savoie argues that privatizing operations actually works better than imposing a false bottom line to make public servants manage as if they were in the private sector. He maintains managing the public service like a business will never work as long as its work is connected to politics. Similarly, coming up with ambitious reforms of the public service won’t work unless Canada’s political institutions are revamped too.
Instead, he calls for a back-to-basics plan for reform built on the traditional values, processes and controls that recognized the public service was distinct from the private sector and instilled “frugality” and “parsimony” among public servants who once considered themselves “guardians of the public purse.”
The reforms he suggests include overhauling the work of agents of Parliament, making Treasury Board a budget office again and rebuilding the relationship between politicians and public servants. He calls for legislation to define the role of the prime minister, the clerk of the Privy Council and the public service so they have legal grounds to refuse political interference. At the same time, he argues deputy ministers would be more independent and free to offer “fearless advice” if they were no longer appointed by the clerk and prime minister.
If however, he could do only one thing in Ottawa, Savoie would shrink or get rid of most parliamentary watchdogs. He would start with the auditor-general, slicing its budget in half and limiting its mandate to financial audits. He would get rid of the value-for-money audits that Savoie argues intrude into policy and turn the auditor-general into a political player.
He also assailed the Parliamentary Budget Office for “playing to the media” rather than helping MPs understand how money is being spent.
He argues parliamentary watchdogs are accountable “to no one but the media and God” and have taken over the jobs of the opposition parties. They cost the government a lot of time and money as bureaucrats race to meet their requests and implement their recommendations with more evaluations, internal audits, financial controls and values and ethics rules.
“No business would survive under such oversight but it would take political courage to tell the auditor-general it was wrong.”
At the same time, the piles of program evaluations and reports should be scaled back and limited to departments with services that can be measured, such as passports and tax returns.
Savoie thinks the biggest machinery failure was turning Treasury Board, once the “guardian of the public purse” into a “friendly” management board. It gave up its budget-office role and did away with the rules and processes for guidelines, “soft evaluations and performance assessments,” said Savoie.
It left a huge void and neither the powerful PCO nor Department of Finance conduct the detailed reviews of departmental spending plans and operations that Treasury Board once did.
Finally, he says the government should eliminate most, if not all associate positions, which have contributed to the doubling of executive ranks over the years. There are now 20 associate deputy ministers and associate positions have been created for every level of management from assistant deputy minister to director. Again, the positions proliferated in Ottawa at “head office” rather than in regions..
The consequence, he says, is that they have “thickened” government, muddied accountability and added another layer in the chain of command to “distort information” and make it more difficult for front line managers to get their concerns up the hierarchy.
“We now have a public service that has lost its way. It’s looking for a role in policy advice, how to deal with politicians and how to speak truth to power. It’s more obvious today than ever that we have been taking bad turns for the past 30 years.”
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: KATHRYN MAY
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