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WHAT IS GOVERNMENT GOOD AT? author and policy expert Donald Savoie was interviewed this weekend by The Ottawa Sun to discuss government and the current state of the Canadian public service.
“We’ve created a big whale that can’t swim, that’s what we’ve done,” Savoie said in an interview with the Sun, touching on career politicians, the morale of the public service and the state of the bureaucratic “machine.”
Savoie knows a bit about the mechanics of the machine, too. He worked in high-level jobs for the feds, including assistant secretary of the treasury board an the deputy principal of the Canadian Centre for Management Development.
This interview has been condensed for space.
Many think the public sector should simply be run like the private sector. Is it that easy?
There’s no bottom line government. There’s no market share. There’s no tangible measurements. The private sector doesn’t have what you call Parliament. It doesn’t have a prime minister’s office. In the private sector you don’t manage blame, you get things done. If you don’t get things done, you’re out of business. In government, you don’t go out of business, you manage blame.
What’s your take on what it’s like to work in the federal public service today?
We have oodles of studies reporting the morale of the public service. It’s in very bad shape. We have report after report saying mental illness is rampant in government. The number of claims under mental health care has doubled since the early 1990s. Is it a happy place? No. It’s a demoralized place. Not because of salary or fringe benefits, they’re very generous compared to everyone else in the private sector. The problem is public servants don’t feel they own their work anymore.
How do you change the morale in the public service?
I think you have to get rid of so many oversight bodies. You wouldn’t want to work in a public service where every morning you go to work knowing there’s about 20 different agencies and oversight bodies looking over your shoulder. I think we have to simply government. The officers of Parliament are up to 13. Cut it back to four or five. Three thousand public servants working in central agencies — they go to work every morning (and) they don’t deliver programs and services. They go to work overlooking the work of public servants in nine departments. I think you have to make sure the public service has respect and that they own their work and they’re not over-managed.
Trudeau should tread carefully on lessening PMO’s power: Donald Savoie (The Chronicle Herald)
David M. Shribman: What can government do best? (The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Donald Savoie: Duffy trial reveals how public service ‘lost its way’ (CBC The Current)
By Donald J. Savoie
A thorough examination of where government succeeds and where it fails.
Recent decades have shown the public’s support for government plummet alongside political leaders’ credibility. This downward spiral calls for an exploration of what has gone wrong. The questions, “What is government good at?” and “What is government not good at?” are critical ones – and their answers should be the basis for good public policy and public administration.
In What Is Government Good At?, Donald Savoie argues that politicians and public servants are good at generating and avoiding blame, playing to a segment of the population to win the next election, and managing a complex, prime minister-centred organization. Conversely, they are not as good at defining the broader public interest, being accountable to Parliament and to citizens, and implementing and evaluating the impact of policies and programs.
With wide implications for representative democracy, What Is Government Good At? is a persuasive analysis of an approach to government that has opened the door to those with the resources to influence policy and decision-making while leaving average citizens on the outside looking in.
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