You Can't Have it Both Ways -- Or Can You?

The Op-Ed page in today's Star has an interesting juxtaposition. Back to back pieces by former Ontario cabinet secretary Tony Dean and columnist Carol Goar both look at the performance of public servants both federal and provincial.

Dean is very positive, suggesting that government has made huge strides in serving the public. Key quote

My research compared the achievements of Canadian public service and political leaders with their U.K. counterparts, and the results are very favourable to Canada. It was rewarding to hear so many U.K. public service leaders ask about Canadian reforms. It seems that public service managers around the world are looking carefully at leading practices emerging in Ottawa and the provinces, especially Ontario.

Carol Goar, on the other hand, is quite critical. She notes how it is often non-profit organizations that deliver government funded and mandated services that coordinate and fill in the gaps and that bureaucrats are often isolated and insensitive. Thus she argues that

[g]overnments . . . lock their programs in place with rigid rules. They demand conformity. they manage change by imposing limits and off-loading responsibilities.

More damning still

More money would help in the battle against poverty . . ..But policy-makers could accelerate the process just by untangling their regulations, ending their turf wars and encouraging innovation.

So who is right?

In one sense, Goar is. As Donald Savoie argues so persuasively in Court Government, as the centre -- i.e. the premier or prime minister's office has become more powerful, government has become more inward looking and self-referential. The incentive is to deliver good news to the centre rather than serve the public. My own experience in government is that the public service has an astounding capacity to convince itself of its virtue even while ill serving the public.

In another sense, Dean is right, if looked at from a middle or upper-middle class perspective, dealing with government has become much easier and services are delivered much more efficiently. Front line staff are accesible and impediments are seen as a problem to be solved rather than immutable fact.

And what of the poor? Here we return to old-fashioned impenetrable bureaucracy far more concerned with rules and procedures than with service. And this I think is why Goar and Dean can, in all honesty, say such contradictory things.