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Canada must learn to collaborate
As the scope of service offerings and organizational complexity rises accordingly, national governments too are increasingly turning to private-sector partnerships as key enablers of service transformation. The British Government, for instance, has recently formed a joint panel of senior politicians and officials from the public sector to work with industry executives to improve collaboration.
In both the U.K. and Australia, the highly complex (and equally controversial) identity card projects - foundational to furthering integrated service delivery efforts - are likewise being built on innovative partnerships with industry.
The Irish Government's deployment of a "broker" model to integrate services across departments also came about through an innovative public-private partnership model.
The message for Service Canada is thus unmistakable: realizing the new citizen-centred business model requires expanded and more collaborative relationships with industry.
Despite this growing movement, both internationally and domestically, the Government of Canada's relationship with the private sector falls short of genuine collaboration. Contracting and insourcing, often undertaken to supplement internal resources in a highly specified and incremental manner, remain in good currency.
The need to address this reticence is now widely acknowledged. For example, the federal government's most recent procurement review underscored the gap separating Canada and other jurisdictions in terms of partnership deployment.
The Auditor General has exposed the shortcomings of existing internal capacities with respect to the management of large information technology projects, and the most recent Crossing Boundaries report on government transformation further highlights the necessity of better cross-sector collaboration.
Although the current Government has expressed support for private-public partnerships as a principle, the focus has by and large encompassed traditional forms of hard infrastructure as opposed to the operations and service architecture of the public sector. A wider exploration of collaborative opportunities must be embraced.
In pursuing such a path, the most overarching and urgent requirement federally is a renewed dialogue between industry and government. In recent years, discussions have been strained due to scandals and a resulting emphasis on cost and control. A reframing of this relationship toward one predicated on shared interests and better outcomes is a prerequisite to fostering the trust that enables partnerships to emerge and flourish.
Since partnering is so fundamentally different from traditional procurement in both purpose and execution, new organizational mechanisms are also required. It makes little strategic sense to ask procurement authorities to lead on the partnering front as well: both may well be required, but government leaders must first recognize that each one is distinct in terms of organizational structure and culture.
Governments that have enjoyed the greatest success from partnering have therefore established new policy venues exclusively devoted to crafting a collaborative agenda.
Collaboration lies at the heart of the new Service Canada business model B-focused on better outcomes for people. A flexible and innovative service architecture - with the capability of responding to both the individual and integrative needs of the citizen - demands a transformation of governance.
In order to fulfil this mission, Service Canada will require significant financial, technological and human investments that can only be found and fully optimized by working in concert with the private sector.
In sum, public-private partnerships predicated on new and workable governance models and relational mechanisms that share ownership, risk and accountability for results, are crucial elements of transformational success.
John Langford is a professor at the School of Public Administration, University of Victoria, and Jeffrey Roy is associate professor at the School of Public Administration, Dalhousie University. This article is based on a recent report commissioned by Service Canada on the opportunities and challenges for service transformation partnerships between government and industry.
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