We are not alone. Governments all over the world are struggling with the same issues…   Wayne Wouters   Wayne Wouters is Stephen Harper's deputy minister, though you'd hardly guess it from reading Destination 2020, which is Wouters' action plan to renew the public service. It is a clarion call for 21st century governance. His boss might want to read it sometime. Not that 2020 is especially provocative or political. Rather, it reflects a broad international consensus on governance that has been forming for a couple of decades. While 2020 is cautious about how it says what it says, the implications are clear. This is about preparing the next generation of public servants for a more bottom-up and collaborative style of governance. So if the plan is supposed to be implemented, does that mean the political level agrees with it? Well, actually, no. Notoriously, the Harper government doesn't share these views on policymaking, and so the report is widely expected to die a quick death. Yet the Clerk persisted. Why? Wouters is old enough to remember a time when things were very different. The public service provided the government of the day with expert advice on policy. The government then made policy choices based on this advice and, finally, the public service implemented these decisions. Somewhere along the way, things took a wrong turn and the two sides began to lose touch. Wouters apparently thinks it is time to fix the relationship and the report is trying to say how. Some context is helpful. Tensions around governance go back at least to the '80s and '90s when there was a sudden explosion of growth among advocacy groups. They became deeply involved in the policy process, leaving MPs of the day feeling resentful and under siege. From a political perspective, things have only gotten worse since. Today, many MPs regard the policy process as little more than a circus in which interest groups are free to disrupt political debate and obstruct the government's right to make decisions. Social media is adding to the frustrations. The 24/7 news cycle has killed the old strategies for “controlling the news” so the government often finds itself scrambling just to keep up with events. Finally, all this is aided and abetted by an endless stream of controversial studies, information, facts and data that confuse the public and provide ammunition for opponents. In short, the writing appears to be on the wall. You don't have to be a fan of Big Government to see a pattern of increasing withdrawal from big policy issues. 2020 reads like the antidote to this malaise. If it has an overarching message, it is about the need to rediscover and re-engage in policy. This will require a fundamental change in outlook—a "culture change"—and a whole new set of tools and skills. But it can be done. Moreover, the basic principles for a new approach now appear to be in place. Destination 2020 incorporates at least four such goals:  

• Build New Governance Relationships: Engagement and collaboration are integral to the future and the public service must build the skills to help politicians make them work.

 

• Change the Organizational Design of Government: The public service must become more “networked” so it can share information, deliver services and work with stakeholders in new ways.

 

• Adopt New Tools: Open access to social media and other online tools is critical to the new approach.

 

• Set New Standards for Decision-Making: As huge amounts of data become available, evidence must become the new gold standard for policymaking.

So what does this mean for the relationship between politicians and public servants? In the old model, policymaking was based on a partnership between politicians and the public service. Most experts agree that relationship is now gone forever. But this doesn't make policy the private property of a few elected officials acting alone. In a world with an increasingly informed and demanding public, this kind of governance is not sustainable over the long-term. Rather, the new paradigm calls for a tripartite model that includes the public as a partner, along with politicians and public servants. The relationship between these partners will be mediated through dialogue and constantly tested against evidence. But let's be clear, nothing in the model says cabinet can no longer make decisions on its own or that the public now gets to tell it what to do. Rather, collaboration is a way of recognizing that solutions to big complex issues, such as healthcare reform or climate change, require a more engaged public to help legitimize the choices. This is the dynamite needed to break the policy logjam. So Wouters may be the PM's deputy, but he is also the head of the public service. 2020 lays out his legacy as the steward of that institution. Reading it leaves little doubt that he went looking for a new generation of voices—and found them. To his credit, he was then willing to stand aside and let them speak out on the public service of the future. As a result, the report is studded with calls for new tools, innovation, collaboration, evidence-based policy, networking, openness, process-busting and empowerment. Prime Minister Harper may or may not agree with this, but the Clerk evidently does—and so in his report he does what all good public servants do: he speaks truth to power. Dr. Don Lenihan is Chair of the Ontario Open Government Engagement Team and Senior Associate at Canada's Public Policy Forum in Ottawa. He is an internationally recognized expert on democracy and public engagement, accountability and service delivery. Don's latest book, Rescuing Policy: The Case for Public Engagement is an introduction to the field of public engagement, a blueprint for change, and a sustained argument for the need to rethink the public policy process. The views expressed here are those of the columnist alone. Don can be reached at: [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at: @DonLenihan