SAINT-SAUVEUR, QUE. - The Canadian service delivery community is
so advanced in its "thinking and doing" it's hard to discuss its
success with counterparts in other countries, according to the
Citizens First 4, fourth annual update.
"(UK Prime Minister) Tony Blair, and his ministers, have pretty
well adopted the whole Canadian model," Brian Marson, special
advisor with the CIO Branch of Treasury Board Secretariat told the
10th annual Lac Carling Congress on Monday.
"They saw that Canada was getting results, but they have not
moved the yard sticks in the way that Canada has, so they keep
coming back to learn what we have done."
Citizens First 4 is a series of research initiatives designed to
provide managers with direct input from Canadians on their
experiences with public-sector service delivery, and their
priorities for improvement.
Some of the things that the UK has said they are going to copy
from the Canadian model include the creation of a Common
Measurement Tool, which they announced last August, and to design a
Citizens First for the United Kingdom, according to Marson.
"Their Service Transformation Board, about six weeks ago, gave
the green light for the project to replicate Canada's work to go
ahead," he said. "What we have been trying to explain to them it's
not just commissioning a study, and getting someone to do it.
"It's not the polling company that does the work, we do the
work."
When Canadians sit down to design something like Citizens First
4 or Taking Care of Business it is collaboration between 20 or so
people from across the country, he said. It's the CIO community and
the service community who do the planning.
"We drive, like crazy, the people who do the work," Marson said.
"We are not willing to accept if it's not a report that tells a
story."
One thing you won't see when you read this year's Citizen First
4 report is the blood, sweat and tears that went into it, he
said.
"It tells a story, and that's the magic of the research that we
do," Marson said. "More than anything else we do, or anything we
commission, this report is by us, for us, and we are able to
understand the main messages."
"That's why we get the results that we do."
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