Results and lessons from Canada's PS2000
| Date | 01 November 2006 |
| Published date | 01 November 2006 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.4230150202 |
| Author | Gerald E. Caiden,Alexis A. Halley,Daniel Maltais |
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT, VOL. 15,85-102 (1995)
Results and lessons
from
Canada’s
PS2000
GERALD
E.
CAIDEN
University
of
Southern California
ALEXIS A.
HALLEY
Meridian International Institute
DANIEL MALTAIS
E.
N.A.
P.,
University
of
Quebec
SUMMARY
Canada has been a world leader in administrative reform, eager to experiment during turbulent
times in public administration. Public Service
2000,
an attempt to instill the Canadian public
service into a people- and results-oriented management culture, has been widely heralded as
among the boldest of recent Canadian administrative reforms. Results from implementing
PS2000 were expected within a decade of its 1990 launch. Halfway through that timeframe, the
results are surprising, complex, contradictory and paradoxical. For example, in the second year
of implementation, the longer term solutions of PS2000 conflicted with a financial crisis
demanding fast results, and
PS2000
principles, throughout implementation, contradicted certain
traditional public service values. Reflecting on their experience, individuals who participated in
PS2000 confirmed lessons in the extant literature, and suggested lessons specific to Canadian
circumstances. PS2000 has been an unavoidable and much-needed effort to reform the Canadian
public service, though perhaps inevitably it fell short of expectation. Yet, inside opinion remains
mixed, seeking rationalist explanations, and expressing dissatisfaction over the progress of
implementation.
PS2000
has been absorbed into
a
much broader plan to reinvent federal
government administration and the role
of
the state in Canadian society. Continuing difference
of opinion may well call for a more fundamental change in administrative and managerial
doctrine, especially with respect to launching future comprehensive administrative reform
projects.
INTRODUCTION
Given turbulent times, governments everywhere find administrative reform imperative
and unavoidable, just to keep pace with the flood of events. Seemingly, any hesitation
or
reluctance to depart from the status
quo
ante, means that they inevitably fall behind
and their performance suffers. For a limited time, they can live off their past achieve-
ments and cover over their deficiencies, but sooner or later public complaints gather
momentum and temporizing degenerates into perpetual crises that force panic and
Gerald
E.
Caiden is Professor at the University of Southern California, School of Public Administration,
VKC Building, Los Angeles, California 90089-0041, USA. Alexis A. Halley is Director at the Meridian
International Institute, Washington, DC, USA and Ottawa, Canada. Daniel Maltais
is
Professor at the
Ekole Nationale d’Administration Publique
of
the University
of
Quebec, Canada.
CCC
027
1-20751951020085-1 8
0
1995 by John Wiley
&
Sons, Ltd.
86
G.
E.
Caiden,
A. A.
Halley
and
D.
Maltais
errors. Indeed, reluctance to take
on
vested interests in existing arrangements who cling
to traditional, i.e., outdated and outmoded, ways of conducting public business
threatens to bring them to the brink of collapse; they no longer can hide the fact that
government barely functions at all, as existing mental maps and familiar ways of doing
business no longer work. They have long passed the point where incremental changes
alone suffice. Drastic and fundamental institutional and administrative reforms must
be made. Governments slow to realize this find public and even internal pressures
ahead of them.
Canada is no exception. Over the past few decades, the federal government of
Canada (Johnson, 1992) and the provincial governments have between them instigated
far-reaching changes in the
way
they have conducted public business. Indeed, Canada
has
been among the world’s leaders in administrative reform and one eager to exper-
iment and innovate in public administration. Among the boldest of
its
most recent
projects is Public Service 2000 (PS2000), an attempt to transform the nature of public
management in the Canadian public service. Although it has been preceded by several
other notable reforms, PS2000 has been regarded since its inception in late 1989 as
different in process and in kind. It was intended to revitalize (‘renew’) the Canadian
public service and prepare it for the twenty-first century. It was to involve over half the
civilian work force of the federal government in radically changing to a management
culture that would put clients and results first (Tellier, 1990). Its designers believed that
its prospects for success would be high for several reasons. First, there had already been
broad agreement on the need to reform. Second, PS2000 had been designed by public
servants who presumably knew best what had to be changed and how
to
do it. Third, it
drew on the reforms being made in other countries as well as on Canadian experiences.
Lastly, it focused on management rather than governance and policy concerns and was
expected to profit from business management experience and support.
The seeds of PS2000 could be found in previous reform initiatives, particularly the
Glassco Commission (1 962), which recommended that public sector managers really
should manage, and the Lambert Commission (1979), which stressed the need to make
public managers more accountable (e.g. Plumptre, 1988). In 1986, the Treasury Board
(a subcommittee of the Privy Council i.e. Cabinet, responsible for financial and
administrative affairs) had decided that it was necessary to give ministers and senior
public sector managers even more discretion and flexibility in the use of agency
resources and to enhance their accountability for results both in the implementation of
Treasury Board policies and in programme delivery through its initiative entitled
‘Increased Ministerial Authority and Accountability’ (Treasury Board of Canada,
1989). Although these attempts to transform the Canadian public sector had appreci-
able impact, they were still far short of changing traditional management ideas and
practices and modernizing the public service.
PS2000 would go much further by boldly attempting to change the whole culture of
the public sector and break the ‘vertical solitude’ of senior managers (Zussman and
Jabes, 1989). Not only would it make the public service less bureaucratic, less centrally
managed and more flexible, but it would also encourage greater delegation from the
central agencies to the line agencies and thereby simplify administrative processes.
Public sector managers would have greater freedom in using the resources made
available to them. Public employees would be empowered and they would be able
to
demonstrate increased innovation and creativity in doing their jobs. Moreover, citi-
zens and interest groups would be more encouraged to participate through more
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