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Canada! A Snapshot of Its Managing for Results
Initiative
by John M.
Kamensky
President Bush announced his Management Agenda last year, with a heavy emphasis on creating a more results-oriented government. The Canadians have a year’s jump on him, though. In 2000, the Canadian government committed to a comprehensive managing-for-results agenda, Results for Canadians: A Management Framework for the Government of Canada, and put its equivalent of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in charge – the Treasury Board Secretariat. How is that effort organized, in comparison with the Bush agenda, and what results can be seen so far?
The principles of the Canadian agenda have a familiar ring: citizen-focused, results-oriented, responsible spending, and strong public service values. The areas of emphasis also have a familiar ring to them: expenditure management and planning, comptrollership (financial management, procurement, and asset management), service and innovation, information management and technology, and human resources. The Results for Canadians report defines the roles of departments and agencies as well as the role of the Treasury Board Secretariat in pursuing improvements in these areas. The Treasury Board Secretariat does not use a scorecard approach to assess agency progress but does, like OMB, review information on the results of individual programs.
The Treasury Board Secretariat goes beyond OMB, however, by reporting on how well the country is doing in 19 areas, using such societal indicators as employment growth and air quality. These are grouped into four main themes reflecting the priorities of the Canadian Government: economic opportunities and innovation, the health of Canadians, the Canadian environment, and the strength of Canadian communities. The first annual report on overall outcomes, Canada’s Performance 2001, compares Canada on these key indicators to other countries and past time trend data. It was released in December 2001, about nine months after the end of the fiscal year.
Observers believe it will take several years for this kind of information to be integrated into policy debates. In addition, since parliamentarians traditionally have a strong desire to see the strategic context of how programs connect to results, the usefulness of this report will continue to evolve. In the opinion of most experts, one of the report’s strong points is that it is based on data from Statistics Canada (Canada’s Census Bureau) and other long-standing data sources that do not change much from one year to another. It also compares Canada to other countries as well as provides time-series data. This will reduce the possibility of charges that the data are politically driven.
The report acknowledges that the Canadian federal government is but one of many actors influencing these 19 societal indicators and “does not attempt to link our quality of life to any one level of government or sector.” While it lists agencies and programs that contribute to results in each of the four major themes, it does not attempt to describe any strategies as to how these programs attempt to influence the direction of the indicators. Nor does it present the dollar value of these programs so that Canadians can see how much is being spent in each of these areas.
The report acknowledges these shortcomings, noting that this is “the initial step of a multi-year initiative,” and asks for public comments on the format and usefulness of the report. Lee McCormack, executive director of results-based management for the Treasury Board Secretariat, says that some Canadians “thought the report was too positive . . .they want a balanced view of our strengths and weaknesses.” The report did flag major challenges facing Canadians, such as serious environmental pollution problems. But for the most part, the story was quite positive. The Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation applauded the report, saying “the federal government will not be able to take indicators off the table. This will force continuity and consistency, which has not been there in previous performance reports.”
McCormack also says that the Treasury Board Secretariat is in the process of developing and applying causal logic models to individual programs to show how they contribute to the broader goals outlined in the report. By the end of this year, they will have reviewed the models and approaches of over 300 transfer payment programs. Much like OMB, the Treasury Board has developed a set of self-assessment criteria, the Results-Based Management and Accountability Framework. This framework is built around a five-part life cycle model: strategic assessment, plan for results, implement, monitor-measure-evaluate, and report. The Treasury Board Secretariat has also created a web-based resource center for other aspects of its results-based management initiative and runs learning events to help train the departmental and agency community.
Another impetus for increasing transparency and accountability for results is the 1999 Social Union Framework Agreement. This intergovernmental agreement between the Canadian federal government and the provincial governments commits them to work more collaboratively in the health and social sectors in order to improve results for Canadians. By focusing on the definition of common outcomes, metrics and strategies, this agreement marks a shift: “governments are now directly accountable for results to Canadians instead of to different orders of government.”
So, while the Canadians admit that they have a long way to go, they’ve defined a path that acknowledges the collaborative nature of getting results, the value of reporting broad societal indicators, and the need to develop cross-cutting “horizontal” strategies. This may serve as inspiration to the US federal government’s future managing for results efforts.
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