Administrative burden is red tape - mandatory processes that continue to exist that have nothing to do with an internal policy's intention. It is experienced not only by citizens trying to access a service, but also public servants trying to deliver it. The Government of Canada is looking at streamlining its administrative policies relating to Service and Digital by applying an administrative burden lens to it.
Innovation Summary
Innovation Overview
In order to launch a service in the Government of Canada, there is a complicated web of policy rules and committees that government teams must follow. This results in teams spending more time navigating approvals rather than improving or delivering services, and in team members leaving government out of frustration.
The review of policies from the perspective of teams trying to implement them is not a new concept, but measuring the administrative burden with a view to reduce or eliminate it for teams is. In updating the Policy on Service and Digital, the team worked with another government team to better understand internal administrative burden and how best to track and measure it.
The result of this innovation is the removal of 100+ policy requirements identified that would, in the future and a further rationalization of governance committees so that teams can focus their time and energy on service delivery.
Innovation Description
What Makes Your Project Innovative?
Taking a delivery-driven policy approach is innovative because:
1 - It requires applying new disciplines in the policy development process. Getting to understand administrative burden meant applying user-centred design, service design and lean - disciplines and approaches typically associated with digital government - to the policy-development process.
2 - It requires government to think about administrative policy not as a static set of rules but as one that is constantly reexamined and challenged based on on-the-ground realities of teams trying to implement them.
3 - It incentivizes public servants to think of policy, delivery and evaluation concurrently rather than consecutively, which then leads them to work collaboratively at all stages.
What is the current status of your innovation?
At the time of this submission, the list of proposed policy requirements to be removed from the administrative policy suite for service and digital is being assembled for approval by the Treasury Board. In the meantime, exposure of the onerous bureaucracy (committees, processes and process artefacts) has resulted in a more conscious effort to streamline committees and processes.
Innovation Development
Collaborations & Partnerships
The team worked with Service Canada to pilot measurement of administrative burden for one of the services being delivered.
Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries
When scaled, public servants will be able to spend more time on service delivery and improvements, resulting in more public-facing benefits. Time to launch services would be quicker.
Innovation Reflections
Results, Outcomes & Impacts
To date, the team has reduced its time to launch from an additional 7 months navigating approvals to 3 weeks, and has gone from requiring two dedicated teams (one for approvals, another for service delivery) to just one integrated team.
Challenges and Failures
In the beginning there was no written information on processes to navigate, central list of applicable policies, or set of required governance committees. Each team needed to learn this from scratch, which added to the time required to launch any service.
Conditions for Success
The main condition for success is a commitment to actually empowering teams to deliver services that have an impact on the public, and for governance and other supporting teams to see their roles as enablers/rather than gatekeepers.
Replication
Other governments can replicate the mapping of administrative burden and the policy approach.
Lessons Learned
The team learned that unusual data sources (employee attrition) also present feedback and insight into the impact of administrative policies on public servants.
Status:
- Developing Proposals - turning ideas into business cases that can be assessed and acted on
- Implementation - making the innovation happen
Innovation provided by:
Date Published:
2 July 2024