ARCHIVED - Service Improvement Initiative Learning Event

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Ottawa Congress Centre
March 8th, 2001

Transcript of Frank Claydon's Video
Secretary of the Treasury Board & Comptroller General of Canada

Hello everyone. Thank you very much for joining us here today. We want to learn and work together as we travel the road to improved government service delivery and, perhaps more importantly, citizen satisfaction.

As you know, one of the Treasury Board's key responsibilities for improving management practices is to act as a catalyst for change. We want to work with departments and agencies to develop integrated, accessible and citizen-focussed services across the government of Canada.

Our efforts to modernize government management practices are driven by four simple commitments: we want to be citizen-focussed, we want to be driven by values, we want to be oriented towards results and we want to be committed to responsible spending.

The work that we are in the process of carrying out is written in "Results for Canadians" and I hope that you have all had a chance to read and internalize "Results for Canadians". It is one of the key documents that we have to work with as we aim towards a more results-oriented management process in the government.

In the government, we must adopt a management method that will be more directed towards results. We must understand that it is citizens and their satisfaction with our services that will determine whether we are improving. So it is imperative that we manage client satisfaction as a way to manage results. Some of us are doing this very well. Three of the departments and agencies that have incorporated client satisfaction as some of their measures of success will share some of their experiences with you later today.

Although the public service is doing a good job, we need to do a better job at identifying goals, measuring our success – our success in meeting them – and then reporting to Canadians. I see this as part of what an effective government is all about, and I'm happy to say that we have made some great progress in goal setting and in measuring over the last few years. We have certainly improved our reporting mechanisms. Anyone who has read a departmental performance report lately has to admit that they're getting much more readable and informative.

We have also come a long way in improving our capacity to link resources with outcomes. But, as is true for everything, we must continue to improve. That is why the Service Improvement Initiative is a great source of enthusiasm for me. It will help us better direct our efforts to manage results and will improve the quality of the reports that we will submit to Parliament.

When the Treasury Board approved the Service Improvement Initiative, this committed the Public Service to achieving a significant and quantifiable improvement in client satisfaction in key government services over the next 5 years. This 5-year goal is an important one, not just for the Treasury Board Secretariat, but for all departments and agencies in the federal government.

In essence, the Service Improvement Initiative states that continuous and measurable improvement of client satisfaction is the most dependable indicator of improvement in service quality and service performance. And I can tell you from my experience at Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, I know first-hand the importance of measuring performance, setting targets and telling Canadians how we are doing in terms of improving our service to them.

That's the direction we have to take as managers in the public sector, in the Service Improvement Initiative, which will help us to do this. I participated recently in a round table with the Cabinet Office of the United Kingdom to compare the methods of reforming the civil service in our two countries. It was great to see how our British colleagues were impressed with our new approach to improve services and how they admired the rigour and the methodology of this initiative.

Now we don't have to go overseas to be convinced of the importance of the Service Improvement Initiative. We have here today with us, as you have just heard, Mr. Mel Cappe, the Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to Cabinet. And, as Ralph Heintzman has said, Mel has long been a staunch supporter of a results-oriented approach. And I'm not saying this just because he does my performance appraisal, either. But I think you would agree that Mel's speech this morning certainly sets a high tone and a high level of achievement that we have to work towards in terms of what it means to be a results-oriented organization.

In fact, throughout his career, and particularly as Deputy Minister of Environment Canada and Deputy Minister of Human Resources Development Canada, Mel has consistently championed the cause of improved delivery of government services. We all should follow Mel's examples; we owe it to Canadians whom we are serving. There is a great deal of support for this initiative and a great deal of expertise working on it in the Treasury Board Secretariat, but also across all of the departments of government. And when you put all of these elements together, I think we really have a recipe for success. Together with Service Canada and Government On Line, the Service Improvement Initiative puts Canada at the leading edge of service improvement policy in the developed world.

Service Canada addresses Canadian needs for easier and more convenient access to a broad range of government services. Government On Line is a key factor because it allows us to improve access and client satisfaction. These three initiatives together provide a global architecture for service improvement, which many other countries may envy, and other orders of government as well may envy them.

But policy is one thing; doing it is another. We have the architecture – now comes the real challenge, the challenge of implementation. And that's why you are here with us today. The Service Improvement Initiative goal is to achieve a minimum 10% improvement in Canadians' satisfaction with the delivery of our key services by the year 2005.

We have already made progress: in the "Citizens First" 2000 report, we see that satisfaction with the delivery of specific federal services has already risen from 60% to 61% over a two-year period. Now, that may not seem like much, just 1%, but at least it's moving in the right direction.

With regard to the rate of client satisfaction with government services in general, it climbed more quickly – from 47% to 51% over two years. We have the method and the tools that we need to reach this objective, which is to improve the satisfaction rate by at least 10% by 2005.

Today's event is designed to help us learn together, to learn how to use these tools to reach this key government objective. Meeting it will depend on each one of you and on the work of your teams. I hope that you will find the inspiration and the motivation that you need here today. It certainly looks like a great program.

So thank you for participating in this learning event today, and thanks in advance for all the hard work I know will be required over the months ahead. I look forward to working with you as we move together towards achieving this 5-year goal. Thank you very much.