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Quality of Life A Concept Paper: Defining, Measuring and Reporting Quality of Life for Canadians

President's Message

In the 1999 Speech from the Throne, this government outlined an ambitious plan for the future. It is based on investing in areas such as youth, jobs, health, the environment and technology - the areas that matter most to Canadians. It reflects the Government's firm commitment to Canadians to take action that will improve and safeguard the quality of life in our country.

"Quality of life" is a broad concept and can be defined in many different ways. It is not merely a question of economics. It is, instead, the interaction of a number of factors - social, health, economic and environmental. It is important for policy makers in all orders of government to have a clearer appreciation of the things Canadians value in terms of the quality of their lives. This is essential to the development, implementation and evaluation of citizen-focused programs and services.

In October 1999, I tabled the report Managing for Results, 1999. Chapter 3 of this document addresses issues around the use of societal performance indicators and possible approaches to comprehensive reporting with a quality of life dimension. The Treasury Board Secretariat has committed to consulting with our many different partners on this important and complex subject. This document, Quality of Life, is part of this process, and is intended to help stimulate discussion and ideas around how to define, measure and report on quality of life for Canadians.

I encourage you to read this paper and reflect on the issues it raises and provide us with your comments. They are issues that are very relevant to good governance both today and in the years to come.

Lucienne Robillard
President of the Treasury Board

Executive Summary

This concept paper discusses three issues related to Quality of Life: defining, measuring, and reporting on Quality of Life or QOL. It then suggests a framework for a federal performance measurement and reporting process which could include QOL reporting.

The interest in QOL reporting is grounded in three recent developments in modern public management. First, the interest in societal indicators is picking up again after a decline in the 1980's that followed some fifteen years of development. Governments at all levels as well as international organizations are releasing reports on societal indicators. The OECD will begin releasing societal indicator reports in the year 2000, but the most well-known report is the UN Human Development Index, which has consistently ranked Canada first in an index popularized in the media as a ranking of QOL.

Second, there is a growing trend to government reporting to citizens on performance. This reporting is shifting the approach to "accountability" away from simplistic finger-pointing towards a new approach in which governments are accountable for articulating the intended results of programs and how these results will be measured in a transparent way, and then learning from the failure to achieve intended results and modifying programs accordingly.

The third trend is the increasing demand by citizens to be engaged in the agenda setting and policy making process. QOL reporting can help inform processes for involving citizens in policy making.

There are a number of linkages between the proposed QOL reporting and related federal initiatives already underway, such as the Departmental Performance Reports and the Treasury Board President's Managing for Results report which are submitted annually to Parliament, as well as the accountability and reporting commitments made by the federal government in the Social Union Framework Agreement (SUFA).

This paper proposes a comprehensive federal performance measurement and reporting process. The process proposed integrates three streams of reporting: reporting on societal trends, e.g. QOL; reporting on the outcomes achieved on shared societal goals, such as those encompassed by the SUFA; and reporting on the program results and service delivery performance of federal programs, which is the purpose of the Departmental Performance Reports. Each of the streams serves different objectives and are at different stages of development. An integrated report would not replace or alter the development of these existing initiatives, but rather would build on them to serve a broader purpose.

A comprehensive report would indicate that the purpose of each type of reporting is different. QOL reporting on trend data is intended to provide information to citizens in a way that can inform broad policy direction and agenda setting. Given the difficulty in attributing changes in these kinds of indicators to specific government actions, this type of reporting cannot be considered an instrument for holding governments accountable, although some may seek to use it in this way. Reporting on the outcomes achieved on shared societal goals is intended to provide information to citizens in order to engage them, as well as other players such as governments and non-governmental organizations, in the identification and achievement of shared goals. Reporting on departmental program results and service delivery is intended to allow citizens to hold governments accountable, ideally from the perspective of transparency and learning rather than simply to blame or criticize.

The series of Managing for Results reports over the past four years have called for reporting on societal indicators, and Parliamentarians have indicated that such reporting would provide a context for their review of the Departmental Performance Reports.

As a starting point to stimulate debate and discussion, Chapter 3 of Managing for Results 1999 presents one approach to comprehensive reporting that would include a quality of life dimension and includes an illustrative set of societal indicators, which have been developed in some detail by Statistics Canada. Any process such as the one discussed in this paper would need to be citizen-based. The final QOL indicators agreed upon must be relevant to citizens and reflect their values about what contributes to QOL. Citizens would have to be involved in the identification of the indicators and the actual measures used to assess performance. Experts would have to be engaged to ensure that the methodology behind the reporting is credible. Other governments already releasing societal indicator reports, such as the Alberta government which includes societal indicators in its annual performance measurement report, would also need to be engaged in order to share best practices.

Implementing a comprehensive reporting framework would benefit from an evolutionary, step by step approach that would build support for such a report. At the same time, considerable expertise already exists in some departments and particularly in Statistics Canada; relationships with experts and Parliamentarians have already been built through the Managing for Results reports; and there are ongoing discussions with provinces on performance measurement for joint initiatives such as the National Child Benefit and the National Children's Agenda. The ability to build on this work and the support that already exists for such reporting would help to advance the concept and implementation of a comprehensive reporting framework.

1. Defining QOL

There does not appear to be one generally accepted definition of QOL in the extensive literature which has been generated on this subject over the past thirty years. Moreover other terms, such as social well-being, social welfare, and human development are often used as equivalent or analogous terms. For example, as noted, the UN Human Development Index is often described as measuring QOL. Generally, however, QOL is seen as the product of the interaction of a number of different factors -- social, health, economic, and environmental conditions -- which cumulatively, and often in unknown ways, interact to affect both human and social development at the level of individuals and societies.

The literature acknowledges that such a concept has both a subjective and objective dimension. "Subjective quality of life is about feeling good and being satisfied with things in general. Objective quality of life is about fulfilling the societal and cultural demands for material wealth, social status, and physical well-being." (QOL Research Centre, Denmark).ⁱ This presents a challenge to the measurement and reporting of QOL. For example, a subjective indicator, such as a satisfaction survey, might demonstrate that a group of people reports a high level of QOL, while objective indicators of health, housing, income, and education for the same population might suggest a lower level of QOL, perhaps as compared to other people. Which is the most relevant measure of QOL and which should guide agenda setting and policy making?

It is important to consider how the concept of QOL is currently viewed by Canadians, and what the term actually means to them. Interestingly, the term does not appear to be equated with "standard of living", since both the literature and the general public clearly differentiate QOL and "standard of living". The International Society for Quality of Life Studies describes standard of living as a measure of the quantity and quality of goods and services available to people, such as GDP per capita, number of doctors per 1000 people, % GDP spent on health and education, and the number of televisions and telephones per household. It defines QOL in very different terms as the "product of the interplay of the social, health, economic, and environmental conditions which affect human and social development."ⁱⁱ In fact the concept of QOL was developed in the mid-1960's as an alternative to the concept of the "affluent society" which was increasingly being questioned as a measure of society's wealth. This is reflected in President Johnson's 1964 characterization of the "great society" as being "concerned not with how much, but with how good: not with the quantity of goods but with the quality of lives."

Recent EKOS public opinion polling on the concept of productivity found " a profound gap between the resonance of 'standard of living' and 'quality of life' " and that Canadians did not equate the two terms. For example, in response to a question about which overall national goal for Canada to achieve by 2010 they would choose if they were Prime Minister for a day, the top ranked response (at 66%) was "the best quality of life in the world" compared to the second lowest ranked response (at 30%) of "highest standard of living of industrialized nations." ⁱⁱⁱ

EKOS also found that for the general public, the term "quality of life" appeared to represent the explicit linkage of economic and social policies and objectives, which is the how the majority think the policy agenda should be developed. It appears that increasingly, Canadians recognize that "good social policies and programs are a necessary ingredient to economic growth and increased living standards." ^iv EKOS concludes that the respondents in the poll who overwhelmingly rejected "the highest standard of living" as a defining goal for Canada do not view either themselves or their society in simply monetary terms but are concerned about what is often called "human investment", e.g. health, education, skills development, and children's outcomes.

The term "quality of life" might also represent to Canadians the longstanding and ongoing balancing of economic and social objectives which differentiates Canada from many other countries, in particular the United States. Many have argued that the Canadian identity is in fact founded on this explicit differentiation of Canada and the United States, particularly with respect to social programs such as health care. Some have theorized that this approach could be defined as "the Canadian way", and others have pointed out that a quality of life agenda could be characterized as a Canadian version of Prime Minister Tony Blair's "third way" in Britain.

A meeting of government, business, and voluntary sector participants held by the Public Policy Forum in June 1999 surfaced yet another meaning for the term "quality of life." The objective of the meeting was to examine ways to improve the three-way partnership amongst the three sectors in "building a healthy society." The participants decided to pursue a major project to help the three sectors work together and create a shared vision of such a society. The project they chose was the development of quality of life indicators, in part because they saw "quality of life" as potential common ground on which all sectors could agree, despite disagreements on specific issues such as brain drain and productivity. They identified it as common ground because they all could agree on the importance of linking economic and social objectives, which the term "quality of life" again appeared to represent.

The various but consistent meanings that appear to be attached to the term "quality of life" by Canadians present a compelling argument for its use as a guiding theme for government action. It must be more than just a slogan, however, if it is to be seen to guide agenda setting, and particularly if it is a way to define and articulate the Canadian identity in response to the pressures of globalization and increased economic integration with the United States. The approach taken to measuring and reporting on QOL will be critical to its articulation and evolution as more than just a slogan.

More importantly, the government would have to be clear about the purpose of government reporting on QOL, and be in a position to respond to the expectations of citizens. In particular, the government would need to distinguish between using such reporting to "inform" broad policy processes and making an explicit linkage between QOL reporting and priority setting.

2. Measuring QOL

There are a number of methodological challenges associated with measuring QOL. In fact, measurement issues have been central drivers in the development of the concept of QOL. Methodological critiques of the field of social indicators, such as its inability to demonstrate how different variables interact to produce a given QOL and its failure to integrate subjective data, led to its decline in the early 1980's after some fifteen years of development. Perhaps this decline was inevitable given the initial somewhat pretentious assumption that societal experiences and processes could be quantitatively modelled and reported on in a way that might directly translate into government action. Having defined such an objective, the eventual outputs of social indicators research were unable to meet expectations.

Since the mid-1980's, the objectives of social indicators research and applied work have been more modest. At the same time, information technology has provided the databases and data processing infrastructure which make these objectives more attainable. Proponents do not suggest quantitative models of social indicators can be used to rationalise planning processes or establish priorities. Instead, they promote social indicators as data that should inform and be integrated into policy processes and can be used to measure progress towards agreed goals. In particular, it has been argued that one of the most significant functions of social indicators has been to raise the profile of social issues in the public policy debate dominated by more easily accessible economic indicators such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Scandinavian researcher Joachim Vagel argues that "social reporting belongs to the democratic infrastructure and has a special political function. To put it simply, social reporting places welfare issues on the political agenda." ^v

There are a range of QOL models already in place. A number of indicators such as life expectancy, quality of physical environment, crime rates, poverty rates, and economic statistics such as per capita GDP tend to be found in most QOL models. At the same time, after three decades of work in this area, a theoretical or methodological consensus on QOL measurement has not yet emerged. An example of this can be found in the debate about summary indices, an area of QOL measurement in which there is currently a revival of interest. A number of QOL models attempt to provide a summary index, although a key issue from a policy perspective is whether such an aggregation of data can be useful in informing the policy debate. More importantly, as Lars Osberg has argued, a single index tends to blur issues of fact, analysis, and values. One solution, which is reflected in the Index of Economic Well-Being developed by Lars Osberg and Andrew Sharpe, ^vi is to provide data to explicitly trigger a debate about the weights attached to each component of the Index.

The selection of indicators is both science and art, since it inherently involves decisions on statistical questions as well as judgements about values. The challenge of determining solutions to statistical questions can be addressed by engaging experts in a debate on methodological issues, but the necessity of making value judgements in QOL reporting argues for engaging citizens at a number of points in the process, including: selecting, defining, and assigning value to the indicators, receiving and interpreting the results, and monitoring and fine-tuning the indicators over time. A QOL measurement and reporting system must involve both experts and citizens in its development and evolution if it is to be credible and relevant, and if it is intended to influence the policy agenda.

Further consideration of these methodological issues could be informed by an illustrative QOL report. Such a report would require the most relevant indicators in each domain to be identified, including both subjective and objective data. Trend analysis for each indicator would have to be undertaken, since the most useful QOL measurement is not a one-time snapshot but rather an analysis of the change in the data over relevant time frames. The analysis could be informed by the inclusion of bench-mark data, in the same way, for example, that bench marks are evident in the UN Human Development Index. A starting point could be to include comparable data for indicators from the United States where they are available.

The illustrative set of QOL indicators in the table below were identified by officials from Statistics Canada and the Treasury Board Secretariat and included in Managing for Results 1999, tabled by the president of the Treasury Board in October, 1999. Additional information for each indicator can be found at: http://www.statcan.ca/. This information includes a definition of the indicator, presents trend analysis in a graphical form, provides some interpretation of the data, and outlines relevant international comparisons, in particular comparable data from the United States where available.

Health, Environment and Public Safety	Economic Opportunity and Participation	Social Participation and Inclusion
Air/water quality Life expectancy Infant mortality Health status Crime rates Violent crime	Educational attainment Literacy rates Employment rates Per capita Gross Domestic Product Discretionary income Research and development/innovation	Measures of racism and discrimination Voter turnout Voluntarism Cultural activity and outputs

The potential indicators presented above are intended to stimulate discussion on issues of substance and format, since a great deal of further work would be required to develop a credible QOL report. In particular, more consideration needs to be given to the criteria that would be used to identify QOL indicators for a federal QOL report. These include relevance to the current policy agenda, relevance to citizens, and the availability of data or the cost of generating new data.

Another issue for consideration is whether only national data should be presented or whether the report should include the relevant breakdowns by sub-group. For example, the story on Canada's life expectancy data is a positive one at a national level, but life expectancy data for aboriginal persons tells a very different story. A related issue is whether data should be provided on a regional basis in order to be more relevant to citizens. This is technically feasible through designing a web-site on the broad indicators allowing users to drill down to get more detailed information.

Another key issue is what the balance should be between quantitative data and qualitative analysis and interpretation of the data. The real issues relate to why certain indicators go up and down over time, and whether all Canadians are affected in the same way by these trends. How much of this analysis should be provided in a government document and how much analysis should be left to interested academics and Non- governmental Organzations? How would this affect the credibility of the report?

3. Reporting on QOL

A QOL report should be a public report rather than an internal report, which could be released by the federal government and perhaps tabled in Parliament, building on the model of the Managing for Results report which is tabled annually in the fall. The objective of the report would have to be clearly articulated and the linkages between a new initiative on QOL reporting, the existing Departmental Performance Reports, and other reporting commitments of the federal government would have to be clarified.

There are a number of trends in modern public management which provide the context for QOL reporting by the federal government.

First, national and international statistical organizations are compiling and releasing more statistical data on an increasingly wide range of subjects. This trend is driven by many factors, including improvements in information technology, the increasing complexity of public policy issues which necessitates the compilation of more and better data, and the need to provide data to the private sector to maintain its ability to compete in an increasingly globalized economy. Key players in this area include statistical agencies such as Statistics Canada which publish national data, but also international organizations such as the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development which release reports providing comparable data for a number of countries. The latter reports are increasingly perceived as setting out bench marks for the performance of individual countries.

A classic example of this type of report is the United Nations Human Development Index. While Canada is rightfully proud of achieving the highest ranking on this Index over the past few years, questions have been raised about whether a "made in Canada" report on our quality of life might not better reflect our own priorities and values, and therefore be more relevant to the policy agenda. Second, there is a growing trend in modern public management towards government reporting to citizens. This represents a significant evolution in the traditional government function of information sharing because it means that governments are becoming more transparent about what they are trying to achieve, why they believe specific government activities or programs will achieve those objectives, and how they (and citizens) will measure whether they are achieving their objectives. Reporting in this way also allows governments to demonstrate how they are learning from this process of measuring results, and modifying their activities to ensure that the desired results are achieved. This kind of transparency supports a new perspective on accountability in which governments are held accountable for:

Understanding and clearly articulating what results are intended, how programs and policies are designed to achieve these results, and how achievement will be measured;
Achieving these results in a manner consistent with traditional public service values of due process, equity, and fairness, while meeting service standards of timeliness, quality, and accuracy, and where appropriate, providing appeal and redress mechanisms; and
Learning from the failure to achieve intended results and modifying programs.

This kind of transparency and accountability is the objective of the movement towards a values and results based, learning approach to modern public management which is increasingly reflected in the Departmental Performance Reports. QOL reporting could also be a component of modern public management, but in a way that clearly reflects governments' often limited ability as one player to directly affect selected QOL indicators. Thus, QOL reporting should not be seen as an instrument for government accountability (although some will choose to use it this way) but rather for informing the policy agenda. For a comprehensive approach to reporting, however, it could be complemented by program results and service delivery reporting by governments that does provide citizens with information on the specific actions of government which are ultimately intended to affect Canada's quality of life.

The third feature of modern public management that is relevant to QOL reporting is the further evolution beyond transparency and accountability to actually engaging citizens in the agenda setting and policy development process. Some have described this as an evolution in thinking about citizens not just as voters or consumers of public services but as partners in governance. Public opinion polling has clearly demonstrated that citizens want to participate in discussions about public policy issues of importance to them, particularly those involving fundamental values and tradeoffs among values, and that they are not satisfied with the traditional vehicles of information sharing and consultation that governments have used to involve citizens in the policy process.

Moreover, they believe that the resolution of many public policy issues will increasingly require the involvement of a number of players and not just any one government. The focus will be on engaging a number of players to agree on shared goals and desired outcomes, identifying the contribution that each player can make to the achievement of those outcomes, and measuring and reporting on each player's contribution. This kind of process is evident in recent initiatives such as the National Child Benefit (NCB) and the National Children's Agenda (NCA), and is reflected in the commitments to accountability recently agreed to by the federal, provincial, and territorial governments in the Social Union Framework Agreement. QOL reporting could complement reporting on shared goals such as the NCA by providing trend analysis on key indicators of children's outcomes such as infant mortality and educational attainment.

This analysis of the modern management environment in which QOL reporting would be implemented by the federal government suggests that the objective of such reporting must be clearly articulated and should be clearly differentiated from other government reporting, but ideally be complementary to other reporting objectives. It also suggests that to implement a QOL reporting process the federal government would need to engage a number of other players, such as experts on methodological issues associated with QOL, citizens on the values which should underpin a "made in Canada" QOL report, provincial governments on the implications of such a report for their public reporting initiatives, and Parliament on the role that it could play in such a process.

In addition, there are other critical issues associated with QOL reporting that would need to be addressed. A key issue is whether the report would be released by the federal government itself or by an agency such as Statistics Canada. Would it be an annual report which provides data on the same set of indicators each year or would it focus on different domains of indicators each year? What linkage if any would be made to QOL reports released by other groups, such as the Conference Board of Canada, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and the Canadian Policy Research Networks? How, when, and by whom would citizens be engaged in the process?

The next section of the paper attempts to address some of these questions by laying out a framework which positions QOL reporting as one of three streams of reporting which could make up a comprehensive national performance measurement and reporting process. The proposed framework differentiates QOL reporting and its purpose from the other two streams while at the same time showing the linkages among them.

4. Proposed Framework for Measuring and Reporting on QOL

The diagram below illustrates a framework for a comprehensive national performance measurement and reporting process which would include reporting on QOL.

The framework suggests that QOL reporting be considered as part of an integrated and comprehensive performance measurement report that would offer Canadians a comprehensive synthesis of performance in areas of interest to citizens - improvement in our quality of life, the achievement of shared societal goals, and the specific results achieved by national programs and services.

A comprehensive and integrated performance report of this kind reflects an evolution in the approach taken in the past four years in the annual Managing for Results report tabled in Parliament in the fall. The report would integrate three types of reporting - reporting on societal trends, reporting on the outcomes achieved on shared societal goals, and reporting on the program results and service delivery performance of federal government programs. Each of these reporting tracks would have distinct but complementary, even somewhat overlapping, objectives. Reporting on trends is intended to inform broad policy direction and agenda setting; reporting on outcomes on shared goals is intended to engage citizens and other players in identifying and moving on shared societal goals; and reporting on program results and service delivery is intended to increase government transparency and accountability. The linkages across the three areas of reporting would also be clear. For example, the results achieved by a specific federal program, such as pre-natal care, contribute to the achievement of a shared goal articulated in the National Children's Agenda, and are intended to reduce infant mortality rates which is an indicator of QOL.

Trend Reporting

The objective of QOL reporting in the proposed framework is to provide trend data on key indicators of quality of life in order to inform the broad policy direction and agenda of governments. Such trend analysis would tell citizens whether performance on indicators of importance to them was improving or not. It could include analysis of why performance on certain indicators had changed, and in the case of a decline in performance would certainly signal the need for some attention. QOL data would be provided on a national basis, but could also be broken down by region, by gender, by a wide range of subgroups such as age cohorts, or by specific populations such as aboriginal peoples.

A QOL report could provide trend analysis for key indicators identified by Canadians as most relevant to them in defining and measuring their quality of life. The indicators should also reflect the public policy agenda and areas where government action can have an affect. The mock-up of QOL indicators in Managing for Results 1999 provides a first cut at identifying relevant indicators, but it would have to be tested with citizens for relevancy. However, relevancy for citizens would have to be balanced against other variables such as the availability of data or the cost of generating data. Format issues such as how much interpretation to include in a government report and whether international comparisons should be included would also have to be addressed.

A preferred approach might be to allow the QOL reporting process to evolve over time as citizens and governments learn about the process. A first report could describe the proposed process and lay out some illustrative indicators to stimulate discussion and debate among citizens and experts. Early reports could focus on simply tracking agreed upon indicators, learning from the trends, and modifying the indicators accordingly. Once it was felt that an acceptable set of indicators had been developed, the report could then introduce the concept of bench marking against other countries. The need to respond to citizens' concerns about trends in the indicators and the reaction of citizens to the results of bench marking might well lead governments to identify specific policy directions to address gaps in Canada's performance, particularly in comparison to other countries. QOL reporting could also influence broader public debates about levels of taxation or the size of government.

Outcomes Reporting

The objective of the outcomes reporting section of an integrated performance measurement report would be to provide information to citizens in order to engage their involvement in the identification of shared goals and the monitoring of progress in the achievement of these goals. It would support efforts to identify shared goals which require the involvement of many players, to define each player's potential contribution to achieving the shared goal, and then to measure progress. It would therefore be a particularly useful and timely vehicle for reporting on shared goals identified by federal, provincial, and territorial governments through their discussions on the social union.

For example, these governments are already working together on performance measurement and reporting initiatives in the National Children's Agenda and the National Child Benefit, as well as in ongoing work in other sectors such as health and programs for persons with disabilities. Since these initiatives already contemplate the joint release of annual reports, they would simply be synthesized in the proposed national performance measurement report and readers would be told how to access the complete reports. This format would make it easier to inform citizens of the results achieved across the many sectors of the social union. The federal report need not be the only one that synthesizes this information since provincial governments could also choose to include this kind of reporting in their own performance measurement reports. Outcomes reporting would not be limited to reporting on social goals, however, but could include economic goals, such as improved productivity, and environmental goals, such as sustainable development.

In addition to the work already underway on reporting on specific goals such as the National Children's Agenda, work is also underway to enable governments to report to citizens on the performance of key systems in Canada, in areas such as health care and education. The 1999 Federal Budget committed the government to annual reporting on health care in Canada, and the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada is working on developing a framework for reporting on the performance of education systems in Canada. Again, these reporting activities could be synthesized in a national performance report so that citizens have a comprehensive overview of the performance of both key systems as well as progress in the achievement of desired outcomes around shared goals.

The need to develop comparable indicators across jurisdictions as discussed in the Social Union Framework Agreement applies specifically to systems reporting of this kind. Comparable indicators are already being identified for shared goals such as the National Children's Agenda and the National Child Benefit. The development of comparable indicators and systems reporting requires significant investments in designing information systems. For example, the federal government is making a major investment in the design of information systems to support reporting on health care. Such investments by all orders of government need to be expanded to other areas such as education, social assistance and social services, and the environment.

Program Results and Service Delivery Reporting

Federal reporting on program results has evolved significantly over the past few years to ensure that federal departments focus on the results of their activities (why they are doing something) and not simply focus on their inputs and outputs (what they are doing) or service standards (how they are doing it). This change in reporting is key to the implementation of results-based management in government.

As discussed earlier, however, public sector results-based reporting itself is evolving to ensure that in its focus on results it does not lose sight of public service values such as due process and fairness, responsible spending and the objective of improving service delivery to Canadians. An integrated approach of this kind permits governments to use results-based reporting so that they can learn from the results achieved by programs and modify the programs accordingly. Such reporting also permits departments to clearly articulate a "theory" about why their activities are designed to achieve specific results, how they will measure the achievement of results, and then report on whether and how they have to modify their theory to respond to the failure to achieve expected results. Reporting of this kind to Parliament and to citizens would engage Members of Parliament through Standing Committees, as well as citizens, in substantive discussions about government expenditures, and thus significantly increase transparency in government.

Through program results and service delivery reporting, departments would use a wide range of performance indicators, including input/output measures, service standards, and outcome measures to demonstrate the achievement of their results. Where appropriate, they would also report on the use of appeal and redress mechanisms by citizens and the results.

5. Conclusion

This paper reviews some of the issues around quality of life, and proposes one approach to a comprehensive federal performance measurement and reporting process. It is hoped that the ideas presented here and in Managing for Results 1999 will stimulate discussion among Canadians on these important issues. Ultimately, what we learn from these discussions will support the Government's efforts to improve the quality of our decision making, the relevance of our policies and programs and our reporting to Parliament and to Canadians.

References:

i	Noll, Heinz-Herbert, 1998: Societal Indicators and Social reporting: The International Experience. QOL Research Centre, Denmark [Return]
ii	International Society for the Quality of Life Studies, University of Virginia, Blacksburg, Virginia. See also website http://www.isqols.org/index.htm. [Return]
iii	Ekos Research Associates, Inc. 1999: Economic Opportunity, Productivity and Social Policy [Return]
iv	Avrim Lazar, Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy, Human Resources and Development Canada, April 1999 Horizons [Return]
v	Noll, ibid. [Return]
vi	Osberg, Lars, Department of Economics, Dalhousie University and Sharpe, Andrew, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, 1998: An Index of Well-being for Canada, Presented at a Conference on the State of Living Standards and the Qualtiy of Life in Canada, October 30-31, 1998, Chateau Laurier Hotel, Ottawa, Ontario [Return]