Previous page: A global, common-language inventory of services
Unique in Canada, New Brunswick publishes a Web-based inventory of its services - 1,277 of them. And it works just like Oberle's hardware store.
A user can go online to www.gnb.ca and within the Service New Brunswick icon, enter, say, "driver's licence" in the search box. Up comes full information about the various licences, eligibility rules, fees, forms and packages, online transactions, service contacts and related links.
The directory was launched in June 2005 in response to a recommendation by the Red Tape Reduction Committee of the Office of the Premier and is operated by Corporate Information Management Services (the CIO office, known as CIMS) within the Department of Supply and Services.
All provincial departments own and update their respective information within the directory.
"The directory is really contributing to an open, transparent government," says Diane Nadeau, chief information management strategist within CIMS.
"It's similar to searching for a company's products. Rather than being a search engine like Google, which gives you hundreds of random pages containing a given word, it guides you directly to specific services."
Oberle and Ross have used the information conventions of the New Brunswick inventory, such as how to present phone numbers or describe various attributes of a service, as the foundation for a set of standards that could be used on a national level.
The second pillar of their project is the Governments of Canada Strategic Reference Model (GSRM). This is a ready-made way to define and describe federal government services.
The model is incorporated into the Business Transformation Enablement Program (BTEP), a change management methodology and metrics tool used by the federal government.
The GSRM is compatible with service description models used by other levels of government. It evolved from the Government of Ontario's model, called the Public Sector Reference Model, which in turn was adapted from the Municipal Reference Model developed in the 1990s by a group of municipalities organized by the Municipal Information Systems Association (MISA) of Ontario.
By coincidence, the national service inventory project is being developed at the same time that the Municipal Reference Model is being upgraded and modernized. That project is directed by MISA Canada, the national association working to advance municipal IT capabilities, which is represented on the team led by Oberle and Ross.
The existence of compatible reference models used to describe services at all levels of government is viewed as a key enabler of the national service inventory project. "For the first time we have a standard language to describe services, and that's what makes an inventory possible," says Oberle.
"If different providers across different levels of government can understand the common needs they are trying to fill, the common clients they are trying to serve, the common outcomes they are trying to achieve and the common processes they are using, those are the raw materials that drive service transformation."
As of mid-April, Oberle and Ross had almost completed their draft set of standards and a design for the service inventory. Once those are approved through the PSSDC, the initiative will be handed to Service Canada for conversion into a full-fledged project.
"Peter asked us if we could take it to the next level," says BC)langer, "and we've agreed to work with him to determine what it would take to develop, on behalf of the Government of Canada, an authoritative service inventory once national standards have been endorsed."
With a set of standards and the support of the PSSDC, Oberle is confident that other levels of government will develop their own compatible inventories.
"We have broad recognition from the representatives of different levels of government at the Council that it is important to have an inventory to make it easier for Canadians to access services and that we need to work together and make it happen," Oberle says. "That's the important milestone that we've reached."
Lawrence Moule is a freelance writer based in Toronto. He can be reached at lmoule@sympatico.ca
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