Putting "Public Interest" back into public policy development

Public policy, in its broadest definitions, is what governments choose to do or not to do. Public policy is formed by professional public servants providing advice through options or choice sets, and the elected officials (decision-makers) deciding.

This edition of “Fearless Advice” examines the alchemy of public policy formation including the current relationship between those building solution sets and those making the decisions; how solution sets are developed; and the potential impact of contracting out aspects of public policy formation.

Defining the Public Interest

In recent times, it appears decision-makers are both developing the choices (options) as well as deciding. Today, consultants are being employed in various parts of the policy process including 'what' government should do.  Donald Savoie describes the traditional “bargain” between elected officials and public servants generally this way: professional public service gives the best expert advice to elected decision-makers on how to advance Canada’s interests in exchange for anonymity and secure employment. Advice to the government is always in support of the Government’s Agenda, not to obstruct or counter.

Questions are arising as to whether in recent years, public servants have vacated aspects of the public policy development space. Are public servants more attuned to decision processes, accountabilities, and implementation rather than content?  Good policy or bad policy, policy continues to be made. The difference between the two is whether the public interest is being fully respected.

The political realm is a dynamic one. No one takes issue with a politician's need to differentiate themselves from one another during a campaign. Its expected. Fixed election periods mean its necessary often to take the 'short form' on ideas or proposals. Often this leads to overly simplifying complex ideas to provide contrast with their opponent.

Challengers, on the other hand, tend to react with equally oversimplified counterarguments to diminish their opponent's appeal and increase favor with their own proposals.

The public interest is hard to discern in a heated and often rhetoric-based debate during a short election campaign.

Determining the Agenda

However, once the government is formed, and citizens have decided who should govern, it becomes the role of the public service to "work with" those elected to advance their agenda.

Traditionally, this "work" involves helping the new government become acquainted with the tools, processes, and principles that relate to governing. This tends to be often dry matters including separation of powers, administrative delegations, security protocols, and the rules surrounding Cabinet Government decision-making. This is the more routine part during the 'transition period'.

Less known to the general public is that the public service also works quickly to determine how best to deliver on the new government's agenda. This is part of the transition phase and the nascent beginnings of the public policy development process.

This transition step - marries the forward technical thinking on trends and challenges identified by the public service before the election to those priorities of the incoming government.

Party platforms seldom provide a full picture or accounting of what a new governing party will need to tackle once in office. Ultimately, political calculations need to be made once the incoming government factors in advice from senior officials. Professional public servants take pride in presenting the incoming government with critical, objective fact-based information on matters likely to impact the public interest, government, and Country.

The outcome of this part of the transition process is an agenda.

Making Policy

Once the agenda is set, public policy development involves a series of preliminary questions:

• What public problem are you trying to fix?
• What public interests or stakeholders are impacted?
• What information are you relying on to understand the problem?
• What options are available to address the problem?
• What are the relative costs?
• If a matter of health and safety, how much time do you have?
• Who do you consult, when, and how frequently?
• What are the pros and cons? and when you're done...
• What do you recommend and why?

Good public policy development is structured adaptation involving hypothesis testing, exploration, institutional learning, risk-taking, and truth-telling. Your options set may change over time, hopefully, based on knowledge, evidence, and expertise accumulated over the period of the policy development phase.

The National Interest

The articulation of federal interests is also an important step in the public policy process and should be articulated early. Canada is a diverse federation. On matters that are exclusively federal, these can be more self-evident such as defense and air transportation. However, many matters tend to involve more than one order of government (federal, provincial, territorial, municipal, and Indigenous).

Federal interests are those of principal import to the federal government. While public safety is a shared responsibility between the federal government and provinces and territories, usually the federal aspects can be articulated in terms of national security, the application of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and National Unity. It is this clarity that helps focus on what federal actions will have the biggest effect on those interests. It also helps avoid unnecessary duplication of effort or being in conflict.

Articulating federal interests early in the policy development process also helps guide a whole government approach. Having departments declare how their mandate is impacted either by statute or policy direction provides a measure of due diligence to avoid outright conflicts and minimize unwarranted embarrassment. Public Servants are best placed to articulate federal interests based on knowledge of their mandates, tenure, expertise, and institutional memory.

Outsourcing the Public Service?

The United Kingdom often describes its public service as "permanent" and non-partisan. The recent use of consulting firms raises questions as to whether the Canadian public service is outsourcing essential elements of the public interest assessment in the public policy process. Are consultants equipped to articulate or advise on federal interests over members of the permanent public service?

It falls to the Privy Council Office to referee departments operating within their own policy lanes and to do their own public policy due diligence. Through a process of coordination, debate, analysis, articulating, advancing, and protecting federal interests - Privy Council can be reasonably assured that Ministers are equipped and informed to choose among robust options brought forward.

It's unclear to what extent external consultants have captured important steps in the public policy process. This question goes well beyond the current preoccupations of the Government Operations Committee and is arguably much more fundamental to how elected and unelected officials serve Canadians now and into the future.