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ARCHIVED - Summary Report on Service Standards


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1. Introduction

The Government of Canada is committed to modernizing government management and improving citizen/client satisfaction with the services it delivers. To this end, the government is moving forward on a number of important initiatives, including the Service Improvement Initiative. A key feature of this Initiative is the requirement for government departments and agencies to establish and implement service standards and then to monitor their performance against these standards, and to use these standards in managing client expectations as a means to improving client satisfaction.

In turn, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS) recognized that the development of service standards requires research to better understand "what clients expect in terms of service" and consultation with managers and employees about "what the organization is able to provide". Ultimately the organization has to design its standards in a way that (a) clients, as well employees, understand and (b) its level of service can be measured against an objective or target by establishing accurate performance measurement mechanisms.

To provide federal departments and agencies with accurate and useful information for the development of service standards, the TBS Service and Innovation Sector has identified the need to:

  • prepare a literature review of service standards, building on the research reported in Citizens First 1998[1] and Citizens First 2000[2];
  • create a compendium "databank" of service standards published by departments and agencies in Departmental Performance Reports (DPRs), Reports on Plans and Priorities (RPPs) and their websites. Such a compendium would cover the delivery channels, namely, over the counter, mail, electronic and phone service. As part of the compendium, a typology of service standard categories would be developed and applied to the published standards;
  • interview up to 15 government and up to 14 private sector managers who have successfully implemented service standards, and prepare brief case study write ups to cover the service standards in use, exemplary practices related to service standards, and lessons learned; and
  • prepare a summary report on service standards based on the findings from the literature review, the compendium of service standards and the case study write ups.

Consulting and Audit Canada (CAC) was engaged to carry out this work. In doing so, CAC contacted and interviewed a very large number of departmental and private sector managers to identify those who exhibited exemplary practices with respect to service standards and who were willing to let their organizations be included as case studies.

This document is the summary report on service standards. The literature review, the compendium of service standards and the case study write ups were prepared as three stand-alone documents.

Chapter 2 of this summary report discusses the role of service standards. The definition and how to go about developing and implementing service standards are presented in Chapter 3. Then, in Chapter 4, the typology for categorizing service standards, which was used in the Compendium of Service Standards, is presented. This is followed by a summary of the exemplary practices in Chapter 5, which, in turn, is followed by lessons learned in Chapter 6. Conclusions are presented in Chapter 7.