Transcript Digital State at the Leading Edge

Class of March 9
• Debrief of budget simulation
• Debrief on Ontario Throne Speech and federal
Throne Speech and budget
• Student presentation on Service Canada
website
• Managing information technology and new
media in government
Debrief of Budget Simulation
• The outcome:
-- LCBO partial privatization: $1.5 B (50%)
-- user fees (mainly hydro): $ 541 M (18%)
-- budget cuts (health, education, MTO biggest, $ 22
M admin.): $ 939 M (32%)
• Conclusion: budget cuts are painful, especially for a
Liberal government, so try to increase revenue first
Premier and Chief of Staff Smart
Practices
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Meeting management: send out agenda and context message in advance
Room logistics: blinds down, place cards, effective Powerpoint
State of Nation discussion while ministers arriving
No daylight between Premier and minister of finance at meeting
Premier sometimes flexible (rationalization of school buses)
Take straw votes
Focus on key issues (biggest proposed cuts) rather than every proposal
(especially the small ones)
Need not go department-by-department
Make tradeoffs among departments
Premier reserves right to final decision
Set clear priorities in final decisions
Minister and DM of Finance Smart
Practices
• Establish criteria (speedy implementation, fit
with priorities, political impact, redundancy,
consistency)
• Do your homework, i.e. checking proposals
carefully and looking for alternative sources of
information
• Analysis: look for supporting information,
challenge departmental calculations
Spending Department Smart Practices
• Go carefully through the estimates and supporting material
• Look for questionable programs (ROOF at Municipal Affairs and Housing)
• Look for pilot savings (school bus merger in Peterborough area) that could
be applied to the whole department
• If you believe strongly in your department’s programs and their
consistency with government priorities, offer only minimal cuts
• “Musical ride cuts”
-- merger of public and Catholic school boards?
-- children’s programs: healthy babies, early learning, children with
disabilities, children at risk, Ontario child benefit
• PIMBY syndrome: Windsor –Essex Parkway, Thunder Bay courthouse
• Be bold in user fee proposals
• Summarize your proposals at start or end
• Show references
Ontario Throne Speech
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Attempts to be inspirational and uplifting, not detailed
Big theme: Open Ontario (5 year) Plan
“the world needs Ontario”
Export clean water technology
Develop chromite mining in North
Expand post-secondary education, esp. foreign students
Ontario Online institute
Contain growing health care cost through patient choice
(money will follow patient) and health care provider
accountability
Ontario Throne Speech
• Plan to balance budget
• Will not cut too much, too soon
• Government plans to reduce its own size by 5
%
• Welcomes federal decision not to reduce
transfer payments
• Details will be in the budget (March 25?)
Federal Budget 2010
$ billions
2009-10
2010-11
2011-2012
Revenue
214
231
249
Program expense
238
249
241
Debt charges
30
31
35
Total expense
268
280
276
(deficit)
(54)
(49)
(28)
Total federal debt
518
567
594
Debt/GDP
34 %
35 %
35 %
Average Private Sector Forecast
(Budget Assumptions)
Item
2010
2011
2012
Real GDP growth
2.6 %
3.2 %
3.0 %
US real GDP growth
2.7 %
3.0 %
3.4 %
Cdn unemp. rate
8.5 %
7.9 %
7.4 %
Consumer price
inflation
1.7 %
2.2 %
2.1 %
Cdn dollar (cents
US)
95.5
98.3
97.7
Second and Final Year of
Economic Action Plan
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$19 billion stimulus
$3.2 billion personal income tax cuts
$1.6 B unemployment benefits
$ 1 B training programs
$7.7 B infrastructure and housing
$ 1.9 B post-secondary education (infrastructure, research)
New: Cdn Youth Business Foundation ($10 M)
New: Pathways to Education ($20M)
New: First Nations Education ($30M)
New: post-docs, over 5 years ($ 45M)
Strategy to Return to
Balanced Budgets (by 2014-15)
• Complete Economic Action Plan Stimulus in 2010-11
• No new taxes (user fees?)
• No cuts in transfers to individuals (Employment
Insurance, Canada Pension Plan, Universal Child Care
Benefit)
• No cuts in transfers to provinces (funding for health,
social services, equalization)
• Depend on economic growth to increase revenues
and reduce transfers
Cost-Cutting in Government
• In 2010-11 no increase in departmental budgets despite prior
commitment to increase salaries by 1.5 %
• Freeze departmental budgets at 2010-11 levels in 2011-12
and 2012-13 => 0 salary increases (tough bargaining), eat
inflation
• Review of departmental programs to identify 5 % savings (low
priority) but no internal reallocation of savings
• Review of administrative operations to identify savings and
improve service delivery (use of information technology,
shared services, contracting out, rental of office space)
Managing Information Technology
in Government
• Based on Borins et al, Digital State at the Leading Edge
(www.digitalstate.org), from 2000 to 2005 (not required) and
Borins, Digital State 2.0 from 2006 to 2009 (on website).
• IT provides a new channel of interaction between government
and society (campaigning and voting, policy discussion and
lobbying, service delivery, procurement)
• Channel choice: use of the e-channel will depend on
convenience and cost relative to other channels
• Cost versus visibility a consideration for the government
• Demographic factor: younger Canadians have strong
preference for the e-channel, older and low-income
Canadians have less access to e-channel
IT and Collaboration
• IT facilitates collaboration within government
• Integrated front-line service delivery (e.g. Service
Canada, Service Ontario)
• Shared internal services and procurement intended
to reduce cost
• Collaborative policy development often using shared
data bases (homelessness and urban poverty;
security, foreign policy, trade, and development)
IT Procurement
• Procurement of complex specialized software
systems (complex, asset specific, few bidders)
• High probabilities of project problems (recent
example Ontario eHealth)
• Skilled IT workers in short supply, widespread use of
expensive consultants
• Commodification of some aspects of technology (e.g.
basic hardware)
Digital Leadership
• Tech-savvy politicians: start with campaigning, then
bring their skills to governing (Barack Obama)
• Front-line digital leaders (younger employees at the
leading edge, hired for new media positions)
• Corporate and departmental chief information
officers (keep the electronic plumbing working, e.g.
virus protection, manage procurement and IT
workers)
Evolution
During the Last Four Years
Online politics
• Most politicians, especially younger ones, on CrackBerries
Obama campaign and presidency leading edge
• Rally registration => email list of 13 million
• Online fundraising => 50% of $750M US
• Mybarackobama.com: tools for activist supporters
• WhiteHouse.gov de facto consultation portal
• Recovery.gov: tool for tracking implementation
• Use of video, especially on YouTube (Saturday morning
presidential address)
Canadian Politics Online
• Websites used for media relations, showing ads, attacks on
other parties, humanizing the leader
• Federal Conservatives’ “my campaign”
• Vetting of candidates’ digital footprints
• Gaffes shown on YouTube
• Blogs by leaders and activists (“blogging Tories”)
• Advocacy groups using Facebook and YouTube: copyright law,
strategic voting in federal election campaign, Ontario
referendum, Ontario motor vehicle licensing for new drivers
Government Home Pages
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Lots of political content
Colour palette: red (Liberals) or blue (Cons.)
News stories about first minister front and centre
Buttons for advocacy sites about government
priorities (speech from throne, budget, Economic
Action Plan, Olympics, Haiti relief, H1N1, armed
forces recruiting)
• Netiquette with public service about political use of
government websites
Web 2.0
• Citizen use of popular web 2.0 social networking
sites for policy discussion and advocacy (e.g.
Facebook, Twitter)
• How does government respond to 15,000 wall posts
on Facebook about motor vehicle licensing ?
• Some departments embrace social networking,
others ignore it
• Development of internal wikis for practitioners
• US initiative to make government data available to
users, developers (data.gov) => use of public data for
economic development
Online Service Delivery
• Considerable increase in use of e-channel, but complementing
not displacing traditional channels
• Service Canada consolidating back rooms (e.g. call centres),
developing agreements with provinces to integrate specific
services
• Service Canada still part of HRSDC, not an independent
department
• Possible delivery of service over social network portals chosen
by user (depends on government making available content,
especially data)
Class of March 16
Crisis Management Simulation (no advance preparation
required, but read Blakeney and Borins chapter 17,
Goldenberg prologue and chapter 16)
Examples of political communication:
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Pierre Trudeau informal interview
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Stephane Dion interview
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John Tory ambushed by two little old ladies
Crisis Management and Communications in Government