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The Canadian Service Delivery Journey

Guy GordonExecutive Director, Institute for Citizen-Centred Service

November 2009

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Canada

• Second largest country in the world, with an area of almost 10 million square kilometres.

• Population (Oct. 2006): 32.7 million

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ManitobaGeography

• Land Area: 548,000 km2

• 100,000 lakes

• Vast fertile agricultural plains

• Abundant minerals & forests

People

• Population: 1.178 million

• Capital City: Winnipeg (pop. 706,900)

• Multicultural – over 100 languages spoken

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Service Delivery Transformation in Canada

A story in three parts:

The power of community collaboration and action based research

Manitoba's unique path to Service Transformation

Institutionalizing the “Canadian Way” via the Institute of Citizen-Centred Service

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The Canadian Context

• Over the past ten years, the Canadian public sector has undertaken a remarkable journey in service improvement, from research to results

• Governments in Canada have made dramatic gains in service results - the service performance of many Canadian public sector organizations now surpasses private sector results and benchmarks

• Canada has been identified as a world leader in public sector service delivery, and other countries are now looking to Canada as a best practice in public sector service delivery

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The Canadian Context - Lessons• Lessons learned:

– Public sector reform initiatives should be rooted in research

– Building communities of practice can establish platforms for change across the public sector

– A results-based, “citizen-centred”, “outside-in” approach to public management can transform the performance of the public

– ICT (technologies, frameworks, disciplines) will increasingly serve as catalyst and enabler of Service Transformation

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Success Built on Platform of ICT Enablers

Connectivity Increasing broadband National phone network Rapid and widespread usage and adoption of internet by Citizens

and Business (80% penetration) Canada’s Federal system – supporting investments in infrastructure

and opportunity for innovation and experimentation Culture of collaboration and partnerships Recognition that services will need to be multi-channel but

information will be provided from single source - “spin the terminal”

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From Best Efforts to Action Research

• Efforts to improve public sector service delivery began decades ago - almost as long as governments have been delivering services to citizens

• As Canada began its service delivery transformation in the early ’90’s, similar service improvement initiatives were undertaken in Canadian provincial governments

• Some of the most comprehensive and earliest service improvement initiatives were undertaken by B.C., Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Manitoba, beginning as early as 1990

• Municipalities across Canada also launched similar initiatives, such as Montreal’s early one-stop access initiative, Accès Montréal, launched in 1987

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Drivers of Service Satisfaction• The inaugural national “Citizens First” survey in 1998 sought to determine

what drives citizens-satisfaction with public sector services and identified five main drivers of satisfaction with government service

– Timeliness

– Knowledge and Competence

– Courtesy (extra smile, extra mile)

– Fairness

– Outcome

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Service Organizations in Canada (Examples)

• Beginning with New Brunswick, governments at all levels have turned to multi-channel service delivery organizations to meet the needs of Canadians for improved access, and integration of government services

• Similar organizations now exist in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and Government of Canada

• Service Canada provides one-stop access to federal government service and integrates service delivery across all three channels: internet, telephone, in-person

• Service Canada’s mandate is also to build integrated, seamless service delivery for Canadians, by partnering with provincial and municipal single windows

• The Service Canada vision of multi-channel one-stop access was supported by three pillars: electronic service (Canada site), telephone service (1-800-O-CANADA) and in-person service access centres

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Research and Action at the Inter-governmental Level

• Since being formally created in 1998, the Public Sector Service Delivery Council (PSSDC) has undertaken three major leadership roles:

– collaborative research– collaborative learning– collaborative service improvement

• The Research Committee makes recommendations for major collaborative research projects, surveys and studies, and oversees development and implementation

• Collaborative learning includes Council-sponsored learning events around emerging service issues, and visits at best practice sites within the jurisdictions hosting Council meetings

• This is an important element of the Canadian model of service improvement, because this interactive “community of practice” means instant communication, learning and adoption of innovative service improvement initiatives across jurisdictions

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Expanding Community to Involve CIO's

In 2002 the PSSDC and national CIO community (Public Sector CIO Council) agreed to formally collaborate on the service delivery agenda

Together the Communities support the development of critical enabling building blocks of modern citizen centred service delivery:

• Research• Privacy and Security• Identity Management • Information Management• Service Mapping

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Measuring Success

• Citizens First 4, published in the fall of 2005, showed that the Canadian public sector continued to make significant gains in service improvement, in the eyes of Canadians

• The gains over the previous two years were greater than those of many private sector services, and, in many cases, specific public sector services such as library services, pension services, park services and postal services outperform specific private sector services such as banks, department stores and telephone companies

• Citizens First 4 showed that the Government of Canada had achieved and even exceeded its five-year target of a 10% improvement in citizen satisfaction

• All three levels of government in Canada had consistently improved service results since 1998

• No other country is able to demonstrate results in this way, or to show such consistent progress in service improvement results over almost a decade

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Ratings of Government Service Reputation are Improving

Service reputation scoresCitizens First 1 to 4

"What was the quality of the service for your… government in general?"

50 47 4754 53

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6056 58

6257 57

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20

40

60

80

100

Municipal Provincial/Territorial Federal

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CF1 CF2 CF3 CF4

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Conclusion

• The key to Canada’s success has been the implementation of:

– Communities of practice – networks, councils and an inter-governmental Institute – to provide the necessary organizational platforms for collaborative work

– Action research focused on obtaining feedback from citizens that can be quickly translated by public managers into service improvements that citizens want and notice, including single windows, electronic gateways and service clusters

– Service improvement methods that focus rigorously on the “drivers” of citizen satisfaction with government service delivery

– Common measurement tools and surveys that facilitate comparative benchmarking and results measurement

• Source (whole section): From Research to Results: A Decade of Results-Based Service Improvement in Canada, Brian Marson, Ralph Heintzman, 2009

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The Manitoba Experience

• eGovernment

– The transformation of public sector internal and external relationships through the use of information and communications technologies to optimize government service delivery, constituency participation and internal government processes

– It is more than ‘online” or “Internet” services

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Evolution Innovation Framework (2003)

At Your Service Manitoba Modernizing Government (2006)

Simplicity Technology Partnerships Innovative Organizational Structures

Single Window Service to Business Common Systems Creation of Service Transformation Manitoba

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At Your Service Manitoba At Your Service Manitoba is an access

point strategy bringing together three keyservice channels:

Level 1 Gateways, Basic One Stop Shopping & limited CRM Next steps – Expanded CRM, cross training, agent routing, spin the

terminal re common transactions, and brand promotion

Telephone Internet In-person

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Manitoba’s Performance

• Citizen Satisfaction with Government Services:

Manitoba’s score has been consistently higher than the average of provincial services across the country (62 in 2000 and 64 in 2002)

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E-Government Strategy Going Forward Leverage the power (ROI) of IT to do common basic transactions

• Revenue (e-commerce)• Grants• Permits and Licenses• Applications (forms)

Centralize Servers and Infrastructure

Mobile Government - put real time data in hands of government employees (nurses, social workers, inspectors)

Integrate Service Delivery - Key Clusters/Functions Service to Business (registration, permits and licenses) Post Secondary Training (registration,case management, scheduling) Leverage Common Systems as enterprise tool (registration, CRM,

licensing/permitting, revenue management, grants management)

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Coming Soon• Web 2.0

– Government adoption and application of various Web 2.0 tools

– Web 2.0 is accelerating citizen expectations for engagement in design, delivery and consumption of services.

– Trust and confidence in government will be dependent upon success

• My Government – Ability to manage my

individual relationship with government as a citizen or business

– Mix of transactional capability, transparency, efficacy and efficiency

– Requires major transformation

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myGovernment: anytime, anywhere, anyway

• Expanding the impact of technology via multi-channel services for a:

• High performance• Personalized• Services-on-demand and• Superior

public service delivery model

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myGovernment: What it means?

• The expectations of the citizens and businesses of their government are changing

• Citizens and businesses are demanding flexible, personalized and just-in-time information access and content collaboration in a secure and private environment

• The rising expectation from the government is the delivery of efficient and swift public services - anytime, anywhere, anyway

• Government will have to adapt faster to these demands through improved processes, policies and technological advances

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Applying the Lessons

The Public Sector can compete with the private sector but it takes effort

You have to be able to measure service delivery to know if you are making progress

Research is critical to understanding needs

Citizens do not differentiate between levels of government so all levels of government must work together

Building communities of practice is critical to share knowledge, best practices, and to facilitate progress

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Government Transformation

Citizen centered service delivery must be coupled with internal government transformation

Common systems Common processes Customer focus Service culture Shared data

ICT (technologies, frameworks, disciplines) will increasingly serve as catalyst and enabler of Service Transformation

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Key Enablers Willingness to invest in systems

Robust infrastructure

Top level leadership

Measure Results

Web 2.0 technologies will play an increasing role

Robust security and privacy protection

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Thank You

Guy Gordon

Executive Director, Institute for Citizen-Centred Service

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Contact Us

Institute for Citizen-Centred Service (ICCS)

Website: www.iccs-isac.org

Email: info@iccs-isac.org

Telephone: 416-327-0786