Showing posts sorted by relevance for query savoie. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query savoie. Sort by date Show all posts

12 June 2008

From the G&M: "The broken chain of answerability"

By one definition, a gearhead is a person who is extremely interested in computer hardware and software and they work.

Well, if that's the case, then Donald Savoie could be called a govhead. He's got an extraordinary interest in and knowledge of the hardware and software of government.

Savoie holds the Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance at the Universite de Moncton. He's an accomplished public servant and academic with a resume that would make even the highest achievers feel inadequate.

His most recent book - Court Government and the Collapse of Accountability in Canada and the United Kingdom - won't make the national best seller list, but among academics and others interested in how government runs, Savoie's writings will become required reading.

Savoie condensed part of his recent book into a two page article last month in the Globe and Mail. His observations should startle Canadians into re-examining the federal and provincial government sin the country. Likely, Savoie will go unnoticed, not just unheeded.

Let's hope not:
The relationship among Parliament, the prime minister, ministers and public servants is in need of repair, and we are ill served by pretending that all is well. We should no longer tolerate court government, by which a political leader with the help of a handful of courtiers shapes and reshapes instruments of power at will. Those with the power to introduce change for the better are reluctant to do so because they enjoy being able to wield tremendous power.

We need to define, preferably in law, the role of the prime minister, cabinet and the public service and give public servants an administrative space of their own to manage government operations, while recognizing that the prime minister and ministers must always have the authority to override public servants in all matters not covered by statutes.

...

What is to be done? The time has come to engage Canadians in a debate on the role of Parliament, officers of Parliament, the prime minister, cabinet and the public service, and for Canadians and public servants to tell Parliament, "Heal thyself." Political parties need to take the lead and launch a meaningful debate on the state of our national political-administrative institutions. The issue is vitally important, and parties should engage their members in the debate. It provides an opportunity for political parties to be more than election-day organizations, to offer meaningful opportunities for involvement and to become effective vehicles for promoting thoughtful debates and change.

-srbp-

15 June 2009

Freedom from information: lack of briefing notes for minister called “bizarre” by senior government official

An unnamed senior public sector manager has termed a move by government to eliminate briefing notes for ministers “bizarre”.

The official is quoted in a post by Telegram blogger Geoff Meeker.  The unidentified official spoke only on condition of anonymity.

“I don't think it's possible to keep up to speed without a briefing book,” said the person, who has worked at some of the highest levels of the public service.

“It will make it very difficult to understand, in retrospect, why certain decisions were made - very dangerous for the staff who must execute them and very problematic if one needs to retrace and do a course-correction on something that's gone off the rails. Without briefing books, corporate memory is very much reduced and future government decisions rendered more difficult.”

The comment came after another Telegram story (not online) in which Joan Burke, government house leader and minister of a newly created child, youth and family services department, said that she had received no briefing notes when taking over her new portfolio. Burke told the Telegram’s Rob Antle that

“I didn’t want to be handed a binder with 500 to 1,000 sheets of paper to try to determine what’s important and what’s not, and what’s current and what I need on my radar.”

As Meeker points out, Burke’s attitude may have little to do with what she described as her desire to get down to work.

Burke was embroiled in a controversy last year over the hiring of a new president for Memorial University.  Details of the minister’s involvement became embarrassing when the Liberal opposition office obtained copies of government records through the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act and provided them to local media.

The documents including e-mails and briefing notes that included questions for Burke to use during her screening interviews with the two finalists selected by the university’s hiring process.  Burke rejected both candidates.

Briefing notes have also proved embarrassing for other cabinet ministers.

A note prepared for Burke’s successor in November 2008 on financial implications of “autonomy” for Grenfell College from Memorial University, another controversial policy from Burke’s tenure in education, was virtually completed deleted before being released under the province’s open records laws.  While promised two years ago, there is still no sign of the enabling legislation.

During the Cameron inquiry into the hormone receptor scandal, health minister Ross Wiseman stated under oath that he had not read briefing notes on the issue when he took over the portfolio.  As CBC reported,

… Wiseman said he did not have the opportunity to read briefing notes about the cancer testing after he was sworn in as health minister, because he was busy tackling other pressing issues and preparing for the annual budget.

Opposition politicians have also claimed that ministers apparently no longer receive briefing notes to use in preparation for the House of Assembly.

Meeker’s public sector manager also described some of the concerns about the new policy which would see the elimination of any paper trail of documents and backgrounders for ministers. 

“Without briefing documents, the public can never really know what grounds decisions were made on - cutting the foundation out from under transparency and accountability, not to mention history - how will future generations understand the story of this government and this time without primary research sources?

“This puts a great burden on senior and mid-level public officials to keep good records in their own briefing books and black books. These would be accessible under ATIPP, but that leaves the paper trail with the officials, not the Minister. And if they don't keep good records, well - we all heard during the Cameron inquiry how difficult it is for these busy, busy people [cabinet ministers and political staff] to recall details from 6 or 12 months ago.”

That last point is particularly cogent:  at one point during the inquiry, an exasperated commissioner Justice Margaret Cameron commented that many of the witnesses seemed to have difficulty recalling anything at all. 

The premier's chief of staff, Brian Crawley, was sent an e-mail in July, 2005 that warned of a major story about to break involving breast cancer testing mistakes.

But Crawley testified he can't remember getting the e-mail or even talking to anyone in the premier's office — including the premier — about it.

"I really don't remember anything about those early days at all," he said.

Judge Margaret Cameron asked Crawley whether he remembered any of the events of July and he responded, "No."

"You don't remember seeing anything about this until the story broke in the Independent [Newfoundland & Labrador Independent newspaper] and you don't even really remember reading the Independent story," she said.

Crawley was not alone and that exchange prompted an angry premier Danny Williams to criticise Cameron over the remark, as cbc.ca/nl reported:

When Crawley answered one question about what he would have done in a situation, Cameron replied, "Well, I'm getting a lot of that, 'This is what I would've done,' but nobody ever remembers seemingly having done much."

On Friday, Williams fired back.

"I have to say I was disappointed. I was disappointed as I watched Madame Justice Cameron show disdain for a professional witness who was before her, giving testimony, honestly, forthright, under oath, to the best of his or her ability," Williams told reporters.

Meeker’s post and the comments by the unnamed official echo concerns identified in Donald Savoie’s recent book on the erosion of accountability at White hall and in Ottawa.

In Court government: the collapse of accountability in Canada and the United Kingdom, Savoie documents a similar practice of eliminating briefing notes and other official written documents in order to avoid the access to information laws.

In addition to the move to eliminate a paper trail, Savoie also notes concerns among politicians with whistleblower legislation as part of a larger trend away from government openness and internal and external accountability.

Savoie also points to the appearance of unofficial practices within the administration of government that are also designed to avoid disclosure under access to information laws.  For example, one study cited by Savoie found that requests from politicians and the media took longer to process than those from others even though there did not appear to be any particular difference in one request from another.   

Similar efforts by officials to skirt open records laws have already been noted in Newfoundland and Labrador.

For example, officials have invented a concept called non-responsive records to refer to documents which are apparently covered by an access request but which are not  released. One of the Burke e-mails on Memorial University, for example, includes a deletion marked “non-responsive” rather than use the official requirement to cite a specific section of the access law under which a deletion is made.

Perhaps the most notorious example was a claim that records did not exist even though the Premier and other officials acknowledged that they did.

In another case, access to documents was denied on the grounds that the review was ongoing.  The request had not been for a final report but for documents relating to the study and an accounting of its costs.

Officials have also been able to avoid disclosure based on questionable claims about the scope of the request.

-srbp-

26 March 2014

Principle, Parliament, and Money #nlpoli

The House of Assembly unanimously voted in favour of a bill on Tuesday that gives the government permission to spend $2.8 billion as part of next years budget. 

Officially, it is called interim supply.  It’s “interim” because the bill fills in the period between the 2013 budget – the last time the House gave the government permission to spend money – and the 2014 budget bill that will give government permission for the next year.

Incidentally, on that basis, you can expect that the 2014 budget  will be something like $8.4 billion when finance minister Charlene Johnson reads the budget speech in the House on Thursday.

“Permission” is likely not a word you are used to hearing when it comes to the House of Assembly and budgets but in the Westminster legislatures like the one in Newfoundland and Labrador that’s exactly what the House does.  It gives government permission to spend public money.

24 June 2014

Summer Political Reading List #nlpoli

If you are looking for some political reading over the summer, here are a few books worth checking out.

Tragedy in the Commons by Alison Loat and Michael MacMillan. Here’s the whole Random House blurb: 

In Tragedy in the Commons, Alison Loat and Michael MacMillan, founders of the non-partisan think tank Samara, draw on an astonishing eighty exit interviews with former Members of Parliament from across the political spectrum to unearth surprising observations about the practice of politics in Canada.

Though Canada is at the top of international rankings of democracies, Canadians themselves increasingly don’t see politics as a way to solve society’s problems. Small wonder. In the news, they see grandstanding in the House of Commons and MPs pursuing agendas that don’t always make sense to the people who elected them.

23 June 2008

The disproportionate growth of central agencies

Going through Change and Challenge and working up the slides to accompany it prompted your humble e-scribbler to do a little comparison with the current day situation.

For example, there's a chart in Chapter Three (still in the works because of the slides) which shows each department as a percentage of overall capital and current account spending in the provincial budget.

A quick flip to the current budget showed the same break down of information. Make some minor adjustments for changes in some departments over the past 16 years and - vie-oh-la - there is a chart.

Bear in mind that in 1992, the provincial government's total budget was $3.5 billion. This year the combined capital and current account budget is over $6.5 billion.

For those who don't want to click and see a larger version, the chart shows figures - from left to right for - Education, Health, Justice, Social Services, Consolidated Fund Services (debt management), Executive Council, Finance, House of Assembly, Works, Services and Transportation, Development, Environment and Labour, Fisheries and Natural Resources.

Right away, you can see some fairly obvious things. Education takes up a relatively smaller portion of the budget today than it did 16 years ago. Health, on the other hand is obviously a larger share. Development - which from the current budget includes Business, INTRD and Tourism has dropped as a share of the budget. Natural Resources - mines and energy, forestry and agriculture has a larger share of the budget today than it did 16 years ago. CFS is significantly lower today as a share of the budget than it used to be.

Let's put some values on those numbers. CFS took up 15.3% of the 1992 budget; today it's 8.3%. health has gone from 25% of the budget to 36.2%. Development spending is half what is used to be, as a percentage of total budget spending. Fisheries is about one third what it used to be.

Take a look, though, at the two in the middle: Executive Council and Finance, the latter including Treasury Board. Those two are so-called central agencies. They co-ordinate or oversee the others.

Executive Council has gone from taking up one half of one percent of the 1992 budget to 1.8% today. Finance has gone from 1.5% to 4.0%. The growth in those two agencies dwarfs the relative growth of the others.

At this point, there's no way of determining what this means. It just becomes an interesting artifact; something to provoke further examination.

If the provincial government were following trends supposedly taking place elsewhere, such as in Saskatchewan by one account, one might expect to see something other than a trebling of spending on the Executive Council. Allowing line departments and deputy ministers to manage departments, co-ordinate with other departments on related issues and resolve inter-departmental disputes among themselves would require additional resources than what was available 16 years ago.

By the way, at this point you can pretty much rule out annual inflation as the cause of the growth here. Normal inflation wouldn't account for the change as a percentage over overall spending. Esecially in a situation where the budget has doubled, you'd pretty much have to increase spending on that particular agency to drive the share from 0.5% to 1.8% in 16 years. As a test, consider that the House of Assembly today has more statutory offices reporting to it directly than it did 16 years and yet its share of the budget is virtually the same.

On the face of it, the disproportionate growth of central agencies demonstrated by the table above does conform to Donald Savoie's description of government trends in his most recent book Court government and the collapse of accountability. Savoie contends, among other things, that since the 1970s the size of and influence of central agencies has grown. There are several reasons for the growth including increased centralization of decisionmaking in the first minister's office and the related cabinet office.

Leaving aside Savoie's provocative title, there seems to be some confirmation of his argument. The other point of view, from former Saskatchewan Premier Alan Blakeney (link above), doesn't match with what the table here appears to suggest.

-srbp-

28 May 2014

Coleman, Marshall, and the Broken Chain of Accountability #nlpoli

The Telegram’s James McLeod started a story that appeared on 26 May with the following sentence:

Premier-designate Frank Coleman says he wants to run a premier’s office with fewer people, and he’s starting that already — six weeks before he becomes premier.

What neither McLeod, nor his editors, nor anyone else in the province’s news media seemed to wonder is how Coleman did that.  They’ve all treated events last Friday evening as normal.  They’ve reported it as routine.

According to NTV’s Mike Connors Frank Coleman said that he and Tom Marshall agreed to Friday’s events.  That is, they both agreed to sack all but a couple of Tom’s staff members and replace them gradually with people of Coleman’s choosing.

For his part, Tom Marshall insists that he appointed Coleman’s people and that there is only one Premier in the province.  That’s all beside the point, though, as Marshall well knows.

22 September 2014

Edges #nlpoli

The Premier’s Office issued a couple of news releases last week about what someone they called the Premier-Designate would be doing. 

The first release was a curiosity.  The second one made the whole thing very strange since it was plain that Paul Davis would be attending these events as a sort of Premier-in-waiting,  replacing Tom Marshall. 
Paul Davis is a member of the House of Assembly.  He’s also just been elected the leader of a political party.  But in terms of the provincial government itself, Paul Davis is an outsider.  The news releases issued by the Premier’s Office called Davis Premier Designate, but that’s really just a name people have stuck on him because they don’t know what else to call him.  It isn’t an official title by any means

What’s more, there’s never been a government of the type we’ve had since 1855 anywhere in the world whose been in Davis’ spot.  It’s highly unusual, to say the very least. But when it comes to the crowd currently running the place this is very familiar.

17 August 2009

Freedom from information: a symptom of ponocchiosis

That would be an inability to recognise realise that what one is saying is humourous because it contradicts the claim:

Oram said verbal briefings aren't an attempt to avoid putting anything in writing.

He said he can't remember if he was supplied with written briefing documents when he took over the business department in 2007.

But of course, not having any written briefing notes is exactly intended to avoid having anything in writing.  That way, there is nothing to contradict cabinet minister Paul Oram’s faulty memory.  In this instance, Oram cannot remember what he did less than two years ago in taking on the single most important job of his working life.  His mind is a complete blank slate.

Yet…

He would have us believe  - despite having an evidently sieve-like memory - he can successfully administer $2.6 billion in public money and account for his actions when needed.

Paul Oram is not alone.  Joan Burke and likely most of their cabinet colleagues  - update:  the Aural Majority - have adopted the paperless office approach.  The tendency to a paperless ministry is nothing new nor is it confined to Newfoundland and Labrador.  Donald Savoie, among others, has documented the trend and they have also firmly fixed the reason: avoiding accountability.

In itself, that’s a pretty dramatic development for a government that sought office in 2003 on a platform that included accountability and transparency as a cornerstone.   It would also pretty much make a mockery of former deputy minister Doug House’s claim in 2005 that the “Williams government is exceptional in the extent to which its electoral platform, Our Blueprint for the Future (commonly referred to as "the Blue Book") is actually being adhered to in implementing government policies.”

Now, one of the possibilities unexplored by either CBC or The Telegram – both have covered this same issue based on separate open records requests – is that the response from government is actually not completely in accord with the facts.  One of the other tendencies noted over the past couple of years is for government officials to respond to certain access to information requests in a way which is false.

For example, the now infamous case of the purple files, every knows that purple files exist.  The person requesting them saw them.  Both premier and an official of his office have confirmed they exist.  Yet, the official written response was that there were no such records. 

In other instances, officials have invented a category of documents simply to avoid releasing them.

Now at this point, no reasonable person in the province should need convincing that a problem exists and that it needs a solution.  We don’t need to see another story of another cabinet who claims to have a decent memory but who mysteriously can’t recall anything when asked about it.

The only real question is what, if anything, the current administration will do to correct the situation.

They started out with a platform that would have put this province in the forefront of public accountability, openness and government accessibility.  Where they’ve wound up is significantly less accountable, less open and far less accessible to voters than the government they attacked in 2003 with their pledge of 23 positive actions.

The only question right now is:  will they do what they promised six years ago?

-srbp-

11 October 2016

The Bigger Picture #nlpoli

Whatever the provincial government is doing about its own spending or the provincial economy generally or whatever it is up to starts at 9:00 AM.

They announced an invitation-only event by Twitter a week or so ago that made it sound like the Premier would be the key player all day.  On Friday, the official announcement made it plain Ball is showing up for the kick-off and wrap-up. Another announcement had him with another minister doing a funding announcement at 10:00 AM.

Oh yeah, and that invite-only thing had transmogrified into a case where "the general public" can participate by live video using social media.

There you have it:  can't tell you what they are doing because they do not know what they are doing, otherwise known as "making-it-up-as-they-go."

No encouraging at all, but let's skip over that sort of eye-roll inducing stuff and think about some of the bigger issues.  We can then keep an eye open to see how they turn up - *if* they turn up - in this stunt at The Rooms.

01 November 2008

One man band

Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard liked to go-it-alone on major policy decisions, according to a new documentary on his administration.

Howard adviser Arthur Sinodinos made it clear the office knew how radical a GST was.

According to a colleague, Mr Sinodinos said: "We've taken a boat, we've sailed it down the coast of Africa and we've gone into the jungle and pulled out the meanest, nastiest gorilla we could find, sailed back to Australia and let it loose on the streets."

That same lack of consultation is clear regarding Mr Howard's historic letter of December 19, 1998, to then Indonesian president BJ Habibie telling him Australia was changing its policy and backing for the first time an act of self-determination for East Timor. Says then deputy prime minister Tim Fischer: "Let me tell you something: the most important letter ever written during the Coalition government's period of office, leading to the creation of East Timor, never went to cabinet."

Given current trends, one wonders how much of this approach applies in parliamentary democracies. 

In some instances, it might appear that the first minister is clearly the one directing things. 

In other instances, the first minister's staff appear to have a hand in the ongoing management of government including extremely serious policy issues, sometimes without apparent adult supervision.

There are certainly parallels in the Australian experience to trends Donald Savoie identified in his recent book on the Canadian and British experience.

One-man band's appear popular.

Being popular doesn't mean they are either effect or - from a constitutional perspective - desirable either.

-srbp-

15 June 2008

It's all about control

You can read a profile of the Premier, this week in the Toronto Star.

You've heard it before but you can read it if you want.

Or you can skip to something really interesting: a series on how the Prime Minister's Office is clamping down on public communications from the federal government in a way that some veterans inside the Queensway are saying is unprecedented.
Public appearances by cabinet ministers – whether it's a speech or an interview – are carefully staged, starting with a "message event proposal" vetted by the Privy Council Office, the bureaucratic wing of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO).

And in a marked change from previous governments, now even basic demands for information from reporters, once easily fielded by department spokespersons, are sent to this office for review – and often heavy editing – before they are okayed for public release, government insiders say.
It's a series so you can see different things. Like the member of parliament who paid dearly for speaking out of turn. Like the policy of having everything vetted by officials in the communications and consultation branch.

Donald Savoie couldn't have written a more timely book. Too bad that of the three copies at Chapters locally, only one was bought up to yesterday evening when your humble e-scribbler bumped and jostled with the crowds picking up Father's Day stuff. That would be the one said scribbler bought last week.

-srbp-