Abstract
Patrice Dutil, Cosmo Howard, John Langford and Jeffrey Roy (2010) The Service State: Rhetoric, Reality and Promise, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 224pp., ISBN: 1487-3052
Canada has been regarded as an international leader in new modes of service delivery, a message strongly communicated by its academics and practitioners. This leadership was apparent in integrated service delivery, citizen focus and the application of new technology to governance, and was registered by innovations such as Citizen First surveys and Government On-line. A reality check occurred in recent years as progress plateaued and high expectations were not met by organizations such as Service Canada. Once the ‘low hanging fruit’ was plucked, the movement stalled at the point where more ambitious forms of integration were required.
This book is a reaction to these experiments: part lamentation for lost opportunities, part stock-take of progress and part exhortation to address the potential by confronting the challenges, with much stimulating analysis between. Four academics combine their individual research into a narrative about service transformation with a citizen-centric basis. They ask whether given the experience and progress over the past decade, and the interruption to the trajectory of service enhancement, the service transformation movement can rise to the new challenges.
The authors report that service delivery was once regarded ‘as something done by trolls’ (p.1), but as new types of service organisation emerged and public servants became interested in delivering services, such an activity became ‘cool’. The focus here goes beyond service improvement to the more ambitious objective of service transformation, the partial convergence of and interplay between several elements, and the overall question of whether a potentially successfully pathway can be fashioned.
Service transformation is presented in one sense as a collection of agenda: a ‘multifaceted vision of citizen and business engagement; joined up services; multichannel delivery; innovative partnering; collaborative networks; information sharing; and focus on outcomes and performance measurement’ (p.3) This set of ideas operating in unison is meant inter alia to invert the normal approach to service delivery and to lead to re-conceiving services to citizens, integrating complementary services, and redesigning the operational side. The core elements are citizen focus, integration across boundaries and new technology.
A series of excellent, if somewhat Canadian-centric, questions are posed, and form the basis for chapters in the book, several aspects of which can be touched on here. There is a concern with the complexities of service user identities, and the increasing emphasis on customers rather than citizens (or clients). Then there is a critique of the Canadian approach to using satisfaction for measuring service improvements, which is of broader significance given its international influence and take up in countries like New Zealand and Australia. The perennial question of the potential for cultural change is addressed for service delivery agencies. The authors also review the governance challenge of integrated service delivery where responsibilities and accountabilities are diffused and shared in horizontal relationships. There are also the challenges, in a federal system, of reconciling the independent inclinations of jurisdictions with collaboration across boundaries (which implies that unitary forms of government escape this). Finally, there is consideration of the relationship between new web technologies and service transformation.
The authors examine several explanations focusing on matters endemic to Canada. One is the chronic Canadian problem of political indifference towards service improvement (which has been reflected more generally in their attitudes towards public sector reform). Other contextual factors have been the mishandling of decisions and priorities about funding technologies to support transformation, the inexperience with service operations, and indifferent leadership in the public service. There has also been a tendency to ‘muddle through’ when it came to confronting how to advance transformation by extending and integrating services. Canada is of course not alone in confronting such issues and some connection is made with other experience particularly small unitary systems (the usual candidates) that have had fewer constraints.
A further consideration with universal relevance is the set of challenges with operating horizontally in a system that continues to be heavily grounded in traditional vertical structures, and the consequential resistance to horizontal partnering, sharing and responding to external accountabilities. However, the reader has to wait until the second last paragraph of the book to acquire a fuller understanding of the implications for Service Canada (and its provincial counterparts): ‘Shackled between the confines of traditional public administration and the limited space granted to it for customer satisfaction (driven by an awkward mixture of NPM objectives and more centralised, integrated mechanisms for service bundles), Service Canada has been unable to fulfil its potential as a catalyst for service innovation’.
The book dissects aspects of the Canadian experience, raises relevant questions, and addresses major issues in service transformation. Just like the subject they are examining, this is not a seamless account, with some unevenness occurring between chapters reflecting the different authors’ published work, and variations in tone. The engagement with academic arguments is occasionally arcanely Canadian, but more often is astute and relevant internationally including lessons for the practitioner. The book is a rich and important contribution to the debate about the prospects and pitfalls in this increasingly significant field.
John Halligan
Professor of Public Administration. ANZSOG Institute for Governance, University of Canberra, Australia.
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