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Michael Wernick, Canada’s top bureaucrat, says the public service has to pick up the pace of its modernization plan so it can deliver the Trudeau government’s ambitious agenda.
Two months into his job as clerk of the Privy Council, Wernick said the public service has to move faster on implementing the reforms of its Blueprint 2020 plan, especially when it comes to the way it manages people, information and money.
“My first job and priority is to help the government deliver the agenda it was elected for, and the second, which is closely related, is to raise the capabilities of the public service,” Wernick said. “We won’t be able to do the first unless I make progress on the second.”
Wernick was barely installed in his new job when he described the public service as “a bit of a fixer-upper.” In a recent, wide-ranging interview, he explained the public service has good bones but is hobbled by structures that make it too slow, rigid and risk-averse.
The longtime bureaucrat is straightforward when describing what needs to be done. He says the public service has to get better at recruitment, training and learning; it has to find the right people and mix of skills.
The culture also has to shift to a focus on results achieved rather than simply work done, he said.
Public servants should take risks — smart risks, he said. There are too many managers, and the “load of rules, bureaucracy and process that isn’t productive” should be lightened.
He described a public service workplace that is tired. He said it needs better buildings and technology. It also has too many cases of reported harassment. Half of all health claims are for mental stress and anxiety at work.
Wernick said there are structures and processes that make it so difficult to “move dollars, people and information around, within and across departments.”
“The most challenging thing … is being nimble. Moving people around from one task to another or being able to dismantle a work unit and create a different one. We are too slow and not very nimble,” he said.
“It is a fixer-upper in the sense that the foundations are good and there are things that can be improved. That was a general comment about needing to get better at project management, people management, results and delivery, and better at doing policy in 2016. So yes, there are many ways we are a fixer-upper.”
Blueprint 2020, the reforms first rolled out by former PCO clerk Wayne Wouters to modernize the public service, will fix many of these problems. But Wernick said the Liberals have created an “urgency and ambition” for those reforms to be implemented faster.
A big pressure is the Trudeau government’s focus on results and delivery. It created a new delivery unit to be headed by trusted adviser Matthew Mendelsohn, who is the now first deputy secretary of “results and delivery.” His job is to make sure Liberal priorities are watched, tracked and delivered by the next election in 2019.
The model was borrowed from former British prime minister Tony Blair, who put his delivery unit right inside the PMO. The Liberals are the first to adapt that model to fit Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s promise to return to cabinet government, where ministers are given more power to manage their departments.
Trudeau appointed Wernick, 58, as clerk in January with the unusual assignment of also coming up with a new process to pick his next replacement.
Wernick had just served as the assistant clerk and spent about 35 years in the public service, wrestling thorny files from national unity to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement.
He is a longtime deputy minister — first promoted into senior ranks by prime minister Jean Chretien — and recently known for his eight-year tenure at Aboriginal Affairs, now known as Indigenous Affairs, where he served four ministers and stickhandled the passage of 23 pieces of legislation.
His biography cites the unique distinction of working on the transition, start-up and swearing-in of three new governments.
Before becoming clerk, 15 members of his various management teams over the years became deputy ministers.
As clerk, Wernick wears three hats: head of the public service, secretary to cabinet, and deputy minister to the prime minister.
His marching orders are laid out in the speech from the throne, mandate letters to ministers and most recently the budget.
The Liberals have courted public servants, promising to restore respect and rebuild a relationship damaged during the Harper era. Treasury Board Scott Brison, who leads the Liberals’ charm offensive, has said the government can’t deliver its activist agenda without an “innovative and agile” public service.
Wernick said the Liberals have brought a “very positive and constructive tone” to the public service. He said a new government is always refreshing and stimulating but the Liberals took “deliberate” steps to reset the relationship. They unmuzzled scientists and diplomats and introduced the first code of conduct for political staffers to ensure the line between politics and public service neutrality isn’t crossed.
Although he thinks the policy process should be modernized, Wernick takes exception to critics — particularly former public servants — who argue the service lost its policy skills or atrophied during the Conservative era, when ministers didn’t often seek its policy advice.
He said the public service had policy options ready when the Liberals took power and immediately faced big global issues — the Syrian migration, the Paris conference on climate change and the resetting of the mission in Syria.
He argues the challenge for public servants is the escalating pace, technological change and complexity of issues being wrestled.
His predecessor, Janice Charette, set up a deputy ministers committee on policy innovation and created a hub within PCO to encourage innovation in the public service.
The latest step is a review of the policy profession to put together must-have skills for today’s policymakers similar to qualifications required by those in human resources and finance. This review is patterned after British Prime Minister David Cameron’s drive to professionalize policy.
Wernick said the “mythical days” of policy-making in “ivory towers” or done in “stovepipes,” with analysts singly focused on economics, foreign affairs or the environment, are over.
Rather, today’s policymakers should know how to analyze big data and understand behaviourial economic, social finance and citizen engagement, he said.
“All the important issues facing Canada are multifaceted that require collaboration, and we have to get better working across silos internally. One of the real challenges and opportunities the prime minister has given us is a lot more space to collaborate work with people outside the public service,” he said,
Canadians are among the biggest consumers of online information in the world, which has ratcheted up their service expectations of government. They want information and service as fast as they get it on their mobile phones.
Wernick said people want their “services online, on mobile devices, and they want 24-hour access. We need to find ways of doing that while protecting personal information and privacy.”
At the same time, Wernick said cyber security will be one of the biggest operational challenges of the next five years. He said federal systems face millions of daily attacks by hackers trying to get at data or insert malicious software.
He said Shared Services Canada’s transformation of government IT is critical to protecting government information because it will drastically reduce the number of access points, email networks and data centres that need monitoring. Shared Services got a $383 million cash injection in last week’s budget and another $77.4 million for cyber-security.
“We have more than 200 organizations and need a secure firewall; secure network and service to protect Canadians’ information,” Wernick said.
“The only practical and efficient way to do that is through a common solution, which is Shared Services Canada. . . . The idea that organizations could do it by themselves is just not plausible.”
WHAT IS BLUEPRINT 2020?
Blueprint 2020 is the vision for the future of the public service based on input from thousands of public servants. Its reforms are built on four principles to build a “high performing” public service:
* An open and networked workplace that engages Canadians and partners for the public good;
* A whole-of-government approach to improve service delivery and value for money;
* A modern workplace that uses new technologies for networking, access to data and customer service;
* A capable, confident and high-performing workforce that embraces new ways of working and the diversity of talent to serve the country’s needs.
查看原文...
Two months into his job as clerk of the Privy Council, Wernick said the public service has to move faster on implementing the reforms of its Blueprint 2020 plan, especially when it comes to the way it manages people, information and money.
“My first job and priority is to help the government deliver the agenda it was elected for, and the second, which is closely related, is to raise the capabilities of the public service,” Wernick said. “We won’t be able to do the first unless I make progress on the second.”
Wernick was barely installed in his new job when he described the public service as “a bit of a fixer-upper.” In a recent, wide-ranging interview, he explained the public service has good bones but is hobbled by structures that make it too slow, rigid and risk-averse.
The longtime bureaucrat is straightforward when describing what needs to be done. He says the public service has to get better at recruitment, training and learning; it has to find the right people and mix of skills.
The culture also has to shift to a focus on results achieved rather than simply work done, he said.
Public servants should take risks — smart risks, he said. There are too many managers, and the “load of rules, bureaucracy and process that isn’t productive” should be lightened.
He described a public service workplace that is tired. He said it needs better buildings and technology. It also has too many cases of reported harassment. Half of all health claims are for mental stress and anxiety at work.
Wernick said there are structures and processes that make it so difficult to “move dollars, people and information around, within and across departments.”
“The most challenging thing … is being nimble. Moving people around from one task to another or being able to dismantle a work unit and create a different one. We are too slow and not very nimble,” he said.
“It is a fixer-upper in the sense that the foundations are good and there are things that can be improved. That was a general comment about needing to get better at project management, people management, results and delivery, and better at doing policy in 2016. So yes, there are many ways we are a fixer-upper.”
Blueprint 2020, the reforms first rolled out by former PCO clerk Wayne Wouters to modernize the public service, will fix many of these problems. But Wernick said the Liberals have created an “urgency and ambition” for those reforms to be implemented faster.
A big pressure is the Trudeau government’s focus on results and delivery. It created a new delivery unit to be headed by trusted adviser Matthew Mendelsohn, who is the now first deputy secretary of “results and delivery.” His job is to make sure Liberal priorities are watched, tracked and delivered by the next election in 2019.
The model was borrowed from former British prime minister Tony Blair, who put his delivery unit right inside the PMO. The Liberals are the first to adapt that model to fit Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s promise to return to cabinet government, where ministers are given more power to manage their departments.
Trudeau appointed Wernick, 58, as clerk in January with the unusual assignment of also coming up with a new process to pick his next replacement.
Wernick had just served as the assistant clerk and spent about 35 years in the public service, wrestling thorny files from national unity to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement.
He is a longtime deputy minister — first promoted into senior ranks by prime minister Jean Chretien — and recently known for his eight-year tenure at Aboriginal Affairs, now known as Indigenous Affairs, where he served four ministers and stickhandled the passage of 23 pieces of legislation.
His biography cites the unique distinction of working on the transition, start-up and swearing-in of three new governments.
Before becoming clerk, 15 members of his various management teams over the years became deputy ministers.
As clerk, Wernick wears three hats: head of the public service, secretary to cabinet, and deputy minister to the prime minister.
His marching orders are laid out in the speech from the throne, mandate letters to ministers and most recently the budget.
The Liberals have courted public servants, promising to restore respect and rebuild a relationship damaged during the Harper era. Treasury Board Scott Brison, who leads the Liberals’ charm offensive, has said the government can’t deliver its activist agenda without an “innovative and agile” public service.
Wernick said the Liberals have brought a “very positive and constructive tone” to the public service. He said a new government is always refreshing and stimulating but the Liberals took “deliberate” steps to reset the relationship. They unmuzzled scientists and diplomats and introduced the first code of conduct for political staffers to ensure the line between politics and public service neutrality isn’t crossed.
Although he thinks the policy process should be modernized, Wernick takes exception to critics — particularly former public servants — who argue the service lost its policy skills or atrophied during the Conservative era, when ministers didn’t often seek its policy advice.
He said the public service had policy options ready when the Liberals took power and immediately faced big global issues — the Syrian migration, the Paris conference on climate change and the resetting of the mission in Syria.
He argues the challenge for public servants is the escalating pace, technological change and complexity of issues being wrestled.
His predecessor, Janice Charette, set up a deputy ministers committee on policy innovation and created a hub within PCO to encourage innovation in the public service.
The latest step is a review of the policy profession to put together must-have skills for today’s policymakers similar to qualifications required by those in human resources and finance. This review is patterned after British Prime Minister David Cameron’s drive to professionalize policy.
Wernick said the “mythical days” of policy-making in “ivory towers” or done in “stovepipes,” with analysts singly focused on economics, foreign affairs or the environment, are over.
Rather, today’s policymakers should know how to analyze big data and understand behaviourial economic, social finance and citizen engagement, he said.
“All the important issues facing Canada are multifaceted that require collaboration, and we have to get better working across silos internally. One of the real challenges and opportunities the prime minister has given us is a lot more space to collaborate work with people outside the public service,” he said,
Canadians are among the biggest consumers of online information in the world, which has ratcheted up their service expectations of government. They want information and service as fast as they get it on their mobile phones.
Wernick said people want their “services online, on mobile devices, and they want 24-hour access. We need to find ways of doing that while protecting personal information and privacy.”
At the same time, Wernick said cyber security will be one of the biggest operational challenges of the next five years. He said federal systems face millions of daily attacks by hackers trying to get at data or insert malicious software.
He said Shared Services Canada’s transformation of government IT is critical to protecting government information because it will drastically reduce the number of access points, email networks and data centres that need monitoring. Shared Services got a $383 million cash injection in last week’s budget and another $77.4 million for cyber-security.
“We have more than 200 organizations and need a secure firewall; secure network and service to protect Canadians’ information,” Wernick said.
“The only practical and efficient way to do that is through a common solution, which is Shared Services Canada. . . . The idea that organizations could do it by themselves is just not plausible.”
WHAT IS BLUEPRINT 2020?
Blueprint 2020 is the vision for the future of the public service based on input from thousands of public servants. Its reforms are built on four principles to build a “high performing” public service:
* An open and networked workplace that engages Canadians and partners for the public good;
* A whole-of-government approach to improve service delivery and value for money;
* A modern workplace that uses new technologies for networking, access to data and customer service;
* A capable, confident and high-performing workforce that embraces new ways of working and the diversity of talent to serve the country’s needs.
查看原文...
