Accountability, transparency key to vibrant public service
-visiting Canadian official
Oscar P. Clarke
Stabroek News
November 12, 2003
Ontario's Deputy Minister of Inter-governmental Affairs, Fareed Amin, sees accountability and transparency as key elements in facilitating the creation of a customer-driven public service catering exclusively for the needs of its customers.
According to the Canadian provincial deputy minister, these among others are vital for a vibrant public sector that adequately caters for the needs of the public.
Amin, a graduate and former lecturer at the University of Guyana, delivered a lecture last Wednesday evening on the Ontario experience of public-sector reform. He said that the custodians of the service, who handle it on behalf of the public, must do so with the necessary care and attention.
Government has launched efforts to reform the local public service and consultations of stakeholders are at an advanced stage.
According to Amin, transformation of the Ontario public sector began in 1995/6 when the then conservative government inherited a debt of CDN$1 million per hour to provide provincial services. This led to the clear recognition that the status quo had to change,
Amin said, and a response to this challenge which saw the revamping of services to make them more relevant.
However, he noted that prior to the transformation a number of barriers existed which inhibited this process including historically-organised portfolios. He posited that local government did not always deal with municipalities, nor did agriculture departments interact with farmers only.
But some hurdles, including the attitude barrier, which sees public servants reluctant to take risks and adopting protectionist mentality, had to be removed.
The capacity barrier also had to be eradicated where there was no innovative or creative input on the part of workers, but everything was rule-based, antiquated and meaningless, especially in the twenty-first century.
According to Amin, the Ontario public service in 1997 was a rules-based entity employing around 95,000 persons each driven by their department's individual initiative, with which the current Guyana scenario is comparable.
The journey began in 1997 with the hope of achieving several targets by 2002. Some key goals focused on people, technology and services.
Each ministry was asked to formulate a document outlining its core business and employees were encouraged to take an external look at their organisation as a way of gauging customer satisfaction.
They were asked to determine exactly what citizens expected from their departments and how barriers could be reduced to allow services to flow freer.
A red-tape commission was formed in 1997 and almost immediately recommended the repeal of 50 acts of parliament seen as inhibiting the smooth access to services.
Additionally all acts recognised as barriers to business and other relevant functions including some 1,700 regulations deemed irrelevant to modern thinking were thrown out.
According to the deputy minister, the second framework of action focused on quality service.
As part of the reform process it was important to show that the public was benefiting and standards were established in all key areas, including response time for letters and telephone calls. A decision was also made to adjust the operating hours to suit those to benefit from the services.
All deputy ministers were asked to assess the service to ensure that it was performing to the best of its capacity.
The reform process also imposed the 'no wrong door' policy with customers being aided even if they went for services that the department didn't necessarily offer, Amin said.
University students were tasked with testing the adequacy of the system, Amin said, and during the summer recess some 65,000 telephone calls were made. Significant improvements were noticed over the years especially with regard to telephone calls, he said.
In 1999, 91% of them were answered in three rings. This improved to 96% by 2002. Even the ombudsman report alluded to the decline in complainants about the public service, Amin said.
As another way of ensuring seamless service and time management, each ministry developed time charts, which were placed in full view of the public to indicate the length of time they could expect to wait to complete their business, Amin said.
Key clusters were also grouped together, like those of business, senior-citizens matters and trade issues, to allow customers to access these services in one building, Amin said.
The Ontario experience, the deputy minister said, has also taught that learning is critical to developing a well-functioning sector better capable of managing tasks assigned.
In 2000 the Canadian province embarked on a policy of integrating services to allow a combination of ministries to undertake functions which each were accustomed to doing themselves like payroll, enforcement, investigation. This led to the creation of policy clusters.
However, Amin noted, the modification of the incentives regime and celebrations of success to let employees know when they have achieved milestones were a necessary factor in the achieving of some of these objectives.
Staff, he also noted, need to be involved at all levels of the organisation in order to ensure timely evaluation to achieve the desired results.
Critical to the reform of the sector is the need for champions in the public service whose primary responsibility is the promotion of change, Amin said. In this regard, as in other areas, the university has a role in offering advice and training to allow these challenges to be met. Amin also demonstrated how the Ontario telephone directory blue pages had been redesigned to give focus to the service instead of the ministry.
Under the new dispensation the public service has to undergo a through review of its services every four years in which relevance of the service will be used as a yardstick to determine continued funding.
Amin's lecture, held in the Cheddi Jagan Lecture Rooms at the Turkeyen Campus, formed part of UG's fortieth anniversary and reunion week activities.
Among those in attendance were members of the diplomatic corps, government functionaries, UG academics and staff and trade union leaders.