Research-based Service Improvement in Canada: from Smart Practices to Smart Results

Brian Marson and Ralph Heintzman

Government of Canada

International Political Science Association Structure and Organization of Government Research Committee Conference

University of British Columbia, June 15-17, 2004

Smart Practices: Towards Innovation in Government

DRAFT Not for Quotation Without Permission of the Authors

Research-based Service Improvement in Canada: from Smart Practices to Smart Results

Brian Marson and Ralph Heintzman

Government of Canada

1. From Best Efforts to “Smart Practices” in Service Deliveryn Action Research Network This paper outlines the innovative research projects, processes and organizations created by public sector managers in Canada to identify citizens’ service needs and expectations, and to forge “smart practices” (Bardach 1998) in citizen-centred service delivery. These smart practices, which have been recognized by national (IPAC) and international (CAPAM) awards, have resulted in a significant improvement in citizen/client satisfaction with Canadian public sector service quality since 1997. In the eyes of citizens, Canadian public sector services now match citizens’ satisfaction with private sector service quality. In 1997, following a decade of service improvement activity by the Government of Canada, it appeared to public service leaders that citizens had not noticed a significant improvement in service delivery. Therefore, the Honourable Jocelyne Bourgon, head of the Canadian Public Service, asked the Canadian Centre for Management Development (www.ccmd-ccg.gc.ca) to apply its action research methodology to find a way to significantly improve citizens’ satisfaction with public sector services. According to Stephen Corey, action research is “the process by which practitioners attempt to study their problems scientifically in order to guide, correct, and evaluate their decisions and actions”. In the private sector, General Electric, pioneered an action research methodology where a team of GE managers supported by experts researched an assigned corporate problem with a view to developing an actionable solution. In July 1997, CCMD invited about forty senior service “champions” from across the public sector, plus knowledgeable academics, to meet in Ottawa for two days to consider these basic questions:

• From the citizen’s perspective, how well is Canada’s public sector performing on service delivery?

• What research would we need to do in order to provide an empirical foundation for a forward service improvement strategy for the public sector?

• How would we need to work together in order to implement a research-based service improvement strategy in Canada?

Through a facilitation process, the group came to consensus conclusions on these basic questions, and agreed to form an ongoing Citizen Centred Service Network to oversee the development of effective research and effective service improvement solutions. Among the group’s conclusions were that Canada had largely taken an “inside-out” approach to service improvement over the previous decade, with little input from citizens as to their service needs, or their priorities for improvement. Moreover, the Network members concluded that the public sector had no real idea how satisfied Canadians were with service delivery. Therefore, the members agreed that a first priority was to undertake a national citizen survey to seek the answers to these questions, in order to provide a baseline from which to measure progress and to develop a service improvement strategy based on citizen input. The CCSN also decided that the national network should be expanded by establishing regional networks in each part of the country. This led to CCMD replicating the national discussions in each of the country’s five main regions, using a similar membership drawn from senior service champions from the three levels of government, and from academia. 2. Implementing the Citizen-Centred Research Agenda By the Spring of 1998, the Citizen Centred Service Network encompassed over 220 senior managers and academics across the country, linked together through regional forums and through the Internet. In the meantime, the CCSN at the national level assisted CCMD to design and launch an extensive research program. In this respect, it is important to note that a great deal of survey research had been done on service delivery over the years, but almost all of it was non-actionable- that is to say it didn’t provide managers with specific guidance on what elements of service required improvement, and to what degree. Therefore, the main pillars of the CCSN research program were:

• A review and overview of previous public sector service research in several countries, including an analysis of the research gaps (Citizen-Client Surveys: Dispelling Myths and Redrawing Maps) that needed filling-in;

• The Citizens First national survey of over 3000 Canadians to determine their views on public sector service delivery, their service needs, their satisfaction levels, their service expectations, and their priorities for service improvement;

• A study on Good Practices in Citizen-Centred Service; • A study of Innovations and Good Practices in Single-Window Service; • The creation of a Common Measurements Tool, to permit public

organizations to be able measure client satisfaction in a common way, and to pave the way for benchmarking between organizations.

These publications are available on the Institute for Citizen Centred Service website (www.iccs-isac.org) and the CSPS website (http://www.myschoolmonecole.gc.ca/Research/themes/servicequality_e.html).

The Action Research Findings: New Discoveries

The results of the Citizens First national survey (Citizens First 1998) were presented to CCSN members in June 1998. The survey was designed to fill the key knowledge gaps identified by the CCSN members, and the results of the Citizens First study had an enormous impact on the Network and on the broader service community. Among the major findings were that a large majority of Canadians expected higher levels of service from governments than the private sector, even though they recognized that governments have to balance service with protecting the public interest. Perhaps the most surprising finding was that Canadians rated their satisfaction with individual public and private services within similar ranges. Moreover, the mean satisfaction scores for a basket of private services and a basket of public services was nearly identical, with some public services outperforming many private sector services. For example, according to Citizens First data, public libraries, police services and park services outperformed Canadian banks. These findings had a very positive effect on public service morale. The survey also sought to determine what drives citizens’ satisfaction with public sector services. Using regression analysis and modeling to analyze over three thousand recent service experiences (covering a wide range of public services and service channels), the Citizens First study found that there are five “drivers” of satisfaction which account for approximately seventy percent of the service satisfaction outcome in the public sector:

• Timeliness • Knowledge and competence • Courtesy (“extra smile, extra mile”) • Fairness, and • Outcome

These five “drivers” are displayed in order of importance, with timeliness leading the way. When all five service elements were performed well (i.e. rated four or five out of five) citizens rated their service satisfaction with a service experience at almost nine out of ten; when none of the five drivers were done well (rated one or two out of five), the overall satisfaction scores for a service dropped to about two out of ten. The survey discovered that “drivers” of satisfaction vary somewhat by service channel and by the nature of the service, but the discovery of the five generic drivers was a major breakthrough for the public sector, since it

managers to focus their attention on the key elements that drive how citizens assess their satisfaction with the service delivered by public organizations. Citizens First identify identified that timeliness was not only the most important driver but also the one rated lowest in performance by citizens. This was a critical finding from the research, since it gave the public sector a clear priority on which to focus service improvement activity. Previous activity in public organizations had focused on courtesy rather than timeliness. The Citizens First research not only identified timeliness as a priority, but for the first time also provided insights into citizens’ expectations for service standards. For example, it was discovered that Canadians expect to wait in line no more than five to ten minutes at a counter, that they expect the telephone to be answered in three or four rings, that they believe they should not be “bounced” more than once to obtain a service, and that interactive voice response telephone systems (IVR) should have no more than three or four choices at each stage, and should always have an early option to connect to a real person. Perhaps even more important, for the first time the research gave public sector managers a broad view of how citizens experienced service “from the outside-in”. A schematic, or model, demonstrating the citizens-eye view of service delivery appeared in the Citizens First study.

The Citizens First Model In addition to providing insights into the actual service experience, the Citizens First model (Graphic 1) provided new insights into the problems Canadians have in finding and accessing government services. This is an issue largely unseen from “the inside-out”, since the first experience the organization has with the client is when they get through, and the journey the citizen has had in getting to that point is usually invisible to the service provider. However, when citizens were questioned about a recent service experience, researchers discovered that the “outside-in” view of service delivery starts with a need, and an expectation (surprisingly, 97% of Canadians expected the same or better service from the public sector than from the private sector. Perhaps this is the “credit union” phenomenon where people feel they are entitled to excellent service because they are “members” (citizens) not just customers).

2

Citizens First Service ModelCitizen’s Needs &

Expectations Finding/Accessing the Service or Group of

Related Services

FINDING THE

SERVICE

-e.g. knowing the service location or phone #

ACCESSING THE

SERVICE

- e.g. parking, or getting through on thephone or Internet.

Service Delivery/Quality

SERVICE DELIVERY QUALITY:

One’s experience with the service provider

- why clients are or are not satisfied with the service they receive.

ImprovingService

PRIORITIESFOR

IMPOVEMENT

- using the surveyresults to guide improvements

ImprovingService

PRIORITIESFOR

IMPOVEMENT

- using the surveyresults to guide improvements

The Citizens First Service Model

Figure 1

Sixteen percent of the time, citizens’ particular service needs require them to access multiple services and often multiple agencies and levels of government. In the past, governments required citizens to manage the “white space” between these services. The “service clusters” citizens need are linked to life events such as a geographic move, a graduation, a marriage, a death in the family or an overseas trip. For example, in Canada if you want to obtain a passport for a child’s overseas vacation trip, first you have to get a birth from Provincial authorities, then a citizenship certificate from Citizenship and Immigration Canada, before you can proceed to the Passport Office, which is an agency of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. In other words, from the citizen’s perspective, meeting the service need involves obtaining services from three agencies and two levels of government. This example suggests the need for the public sector to make it easier for citizens to find and to access the government services they need, and the requirement for a greater degree of integrated single-window service. According to the research findings, citizens are often frustrated because they cannot easily identify, find and access the service or services they need. Access issues involve both locating the point(s) of service, and then actually getting into the point of service. A quarter of the time, citizens didn’t know where to go to get the service they required. In the past citizens often found it difficult to locate the point of service because the telephone “blue pages” were organized by agency and level of government, not by service or key words. In Canada, one of the “smart practices” to improve service access has been to reformat the government blue pages by service key words, based on the recommendations from citizen focus groups, so that services are now easier to find. In addition the Government of Canada has introduced 1-800 OCANADA, which is a government-wide call centre to help citizens access all government services.

Once a telephone number or address has been identified, citizens still have problems getting in to the point of service. Two thirds of Canadians had problems actually getting through to the point of service. Most of their problems relate to the telephone channel - busy phone lines, interactive voice response systems, and “voice mail jail”. In Canada, these telephone problems are a source of great frustration for citizens trying to access public services. From the citizens’ outside-in perspective, the telephone channel is a very high priority for service improvement.

Drivers of Service Satisfaction As noted previously, five service elements largely drive service satisfaction or dissatisfaction across the public sector: timeliness; knowledge and competence; courtesy; fairness; and outcome. These five elements account for about 70% of service satisfaction. Performance on the The Five Drivers

Determines Satisfaction Levels (CF-3)

8774

6355

3722

0

20

40

60

80

100

5 4 3 2 1 0

Overall service quality rating

Number of drivers scoring “Good” (where “good” is 4 or 5 out of 5)

8774

6355

3722

0

20

40

60

80

100

5 4 3 2 1 0

Overall service quality rating

Number of drivers scoring “Good” (where “good” is 4 or 5 out of 5)

These clients rated service 4 or 5 out of 5 on all five drivers

Figure 2 (Citizens First-3 data, 2003) When, in the clients’ view, all five drivers are performed well the service satisfaction scores for a wide variety of services is approximately nine out of ten. When none of the five drivers is rated well, the overall service satisfaction score drops to about two out of ten. When one driver fails, most often it is timeliness, the most important driver. This finding is crucial, because it suggest that if the public sector gives priority to improving timeliness, citizen satisfaction with service delivery will rise very significantly.

The overall satisfaction ratings with the five drivers, also suggests that the “extra mile” element of courtesy is also a candidate for improvement, but at a lower priority because it a less important driver. Moreover, because knowledge and competence is the second most important driver, and is rated at only an average level, this element is also a candidate for attention by service managers.

• Outcome: 72% • Courtesy (extra smile): 71% • Fairness: 69% • Competence: 64% • Courtesy (extra mile) 55% • Timeliness 51%

Citizens’ Expectations for Service Standards Before the introduction a smart practices approach to service improvement, many agencies set service standards, but no one had undertaken the research to find out what citizens thought was reasonable to expect, especially in terms of timeliness. The Citizens First research identified for the first time what citizens’ expectations were. For example, Service Expectations

Telephone

In-Person Email

2 1

30

14

4239

20

35

510

1 10

25

50

75

1 2-4 5-9 10-14 15-29 30-60 >60

Percent of respondents

19982002

Number of minutes

30

105

44 40

2924

4352

2 612

1 20

25

50

75

4 hr Same day Nextbusiness day

2 days 3 days +

Percent of respondents

199820002002

610

20

32

17

73 5

0

10

20

30

40

50

10 sec 20 sec 30 sec 1 min 2 min 3 min 4 min 5 min

Percent of respondents

Figure 3

(Citizens First-3. 2003) 68% of Canadians expect the telephone to be answered in 1 minute or less, and 85% in two minutes or less. For waiting times in line at government offices, 54%

of Canadians expect to be served in nine minutes or less, and 89% in fourteen minutes or less. Some 86% of citizens expect e-mails to be answered by the next day or sooner. These findings provide concrete guidance for public managers who want to meet their clients’ expectations for service delivery, through a service-standards approach. In fact, the Government of Ontario has introduced government-wide service standards based on these empirical findings, and measures departmental performance annually against these standards, using a mystery shopper approach.

Satisfaction with Individual Service Channels Another way of measuring citizens’ satisfaction with service delivery is to measure satisfaction according to the service channel used by the client. This is becoming more complex to measure as citizens increase their use of multiple channels (e.g. Internet and telephone; or telephone and counter service). Most recently over half of citizens used more than one channel to complete a service transaction, double the rate two years earlier. However, measuring citizen satisfaction with service provided on individual channels still provides some useful insights- especially about telephone service.

Satisfaction by Channel

68

62

62

56

55

54

0 25 50 75 100

Internet/email

Office visit

Kiosk

Phone

Mail

Other

SERVICE QUALITYVery poor Very good

Does online service delivery lead to higher satisfaction?

Figure 4 (Citizens First-3. 2003) The table above demonstrates that telephone channel (referred to as “the peoples channel” by the authors, because it is a universal channel, and still the preferred channel of service by a majority of citizens) receives lower ratings compared to the Internet, counter service, and kiosks. Mail also received lower satisfaction ratings as a single service channel. The finding that telephone service is rated lower than other channels, combined with the fact that it is the most-used channel, suggested again that the telephone channel is a priority for service improvement in most parts of the public sector.

Summarizing the Action Research Findings

The Citizens First research, plus an array of other research conducted inter-jurisdictionally (for example, a major parallel survey of the service needs and expectations of the business community, entitled Taking Care of Business, was successfully competed in 2003-2004) has provided the Canadian public sector with a clear picture of:

• Service satisfaction ratings and trends with the public sector as a whole, with individual services, and with service channels and elements;

• Access problems and issues; • The drivers of service satisfaction and dissatisfaction; • Service expectations, including citizens’ specific expectations for

service standards; • Clear priorities for service improvement action by: access issue; by

program; by service channel; and by drivers of service satisfaction. The following schematic provides an “outside-in” summary of what the research uncovered.

Citizens’Needs &

ExpectationsFinding/Accessing the Serviceor Group of Related Services

FINDING THESERVICE

ACCESSING THE SERVICE

Service Delivery/Quality

SERVICE DELIVERY: Citizens’experience with the serviceprovider.

•Citizens (97%) expect as good or better service from the public sector than from the private sector.•Sixteen percent of the time citizens need more than one government service,generally when dealing with lifeevents like births,deaths, travel, unemployment and inter-provincial migration.

•25% of Canadians did not know where to find the service they needed.

•Confusing Blue Pages•Services not well advertised

•Two thirds of Canadians had one or more problems accessing the service(s) once they new where to find it:

•Busy telephones•Voice Mail•Interactive voice response•“Not my department”•Citizens were required to manage the “white space” between related services (service clusters)

•Public services were rated an average of 62 out of 100- the same as the private sector.•Five factors drive service satisfaction: timeliness; competence, courtesy/extra mile; fairness and outcome.•When all five factors are performed well public services score 89 out of 100; when one driver fails the score drops to 76 out of 100; when two fail the score drops to 63- the current average. When one driver fails, 60% of the time it is timeliness.•Citizens priorities for service improvement include:

•one stop service•improve telephones & Internet•improve timeliness & extra mile

HOW CITIZENS EXPERIENCE PUBLIC SERVICES:THE “OUTSIDE-IN” VIEW

Figure 5

(Based on Citizens First-3 data, 2003)

The Common Measurements Tool In addition to the extensive research on citizens service expectations, satisfaction and priorities for service improvement, the Citizen Centred Service Network produced a Common Measurements Tool (Schmidt 1999) in 1998, which was revised and expanded by the Canadian intergovernmental service community in 2003. This tool is designed to operates at the agency and client level, as a standard way of measuring client satisfaction. It is based on the empirical research on the drivers of service satisfaction, so ensures that organizations measure the things that matter to clients. It is also designed to give managers actionable information about clients’ priorities for service improvements, as well as to permit benchmarking of results with other public sector agencies. Thus, for the first time in Canada, there is a widely-accepted common way of measuring client satisfaction across the public sector, and for measuring improvement over time and among agencies. The CMT is managed and updated by a CMT Standards Board which draws its members from the federal, provincial and municipal levels of government, and which is chaired by the Institute for Citizen Centred Service (http://www.iccs-isac.org/eng/cmt-about.htm). 3. Combining Research with Action: Institutionalizing the Network The Citizen Centred Service Network completed its research program in the summer of 1998, and presented a number of recommendations for institutionalizing tits work over the longer term, including the creation of an Institute to continue the research work, to become a centre for documenting best practices, and to become a warehouse and benchmarking centre for Common Measurements Tool data. Several key members of the Network, led by Ralph Heintzman of Canada and Art Daniels of Ontario met during the final national meeting of the CCSN in June 1998 to seek agreement to establish a Senior Service Delivery Officers Council (SSDO Council) to build on the CCSN’s work and to begin a collaborative effort to put the results of the research into action. The first meeting of the SSDO Council (later renamed Public Sector Service Delivery Council, or PSSDC) was held in Toronto in the Fall of 1998, and drew senior representatives from the federal and most provincial governments across Canada, to discuss how to work together to continue the action research and to implement the research findings individually and collectively. A parallel federal-provincial council of Chief Information Officers (PSCIOC) had been meeting for some time to collaborate on the implementation of the e-government agenda, and members of these two councils began a dialogue and collaboration via the annual Canadian “Lac Carling Conference” on e-Government. Later, in 2002 the two councils began working more formally together, with both councils ultimately providing support to the Institute for Citizen Centred Service, which had been created by the PSSDC in 2001.

The Work of the Public Sector Service Delivery Council Established in 1998, the SSDO was a formal council rather than just an informal Network, like the CCSN had been. It was comprised of two senior officials from the federal government and two from each of the provinces, plus other non-voting participants drawn from either the central agency responsible for the service file in their respective government, and/or from the lead service delivery agency. More recently, council membership has been extended to several of the large federal service delivery departments. From 1998 to 2003, the Secretariat for the SSDO (later renamed the Public Sector Service Delivery Council in 2001) was provided by the federal Treasury Board. The Council has been co-chaired by one federal officer and one provincial officer since inception, and meetings have been held three times a year on average, and hosted by different jurisdictions on a rotational basis. The Council’s meetings have traditionally been for two to three days, with one day given over to best practice site visits within the host jurisdiction, or to one-day workshops on an emerging issue such as single-window service, telephone channel management, or integrated service delivery. The working agenda of the Council’s meetings involves reports from the Council’s working committees (e.g. Research; Integrated Service Delivery; and the HR Dimension of Service Committee) as well as discussion of collaborative service improvement initiatives and future research requirements. Typically, working committees meet several times between Council meetings via conference calls and face-to-face meetings, and involve from eight to fifteen members drawn from the Council membership as well as other managers from participating organizations. Since 1998, the PSSDC has undertaken three major leadership roles:

• collaborative research; • collaborative learning, and • collaborative service improvement.

The Research Committee makes recommendations to the Council for collaborative research projects, and once approved oversees their development and implementation. It also oversees the publication and communication of the main research findings across the public sector on behalf of the Council. Collaborative learning has had two dimensions, as noted earlier: council-sponsored learning events around emerging service issues, and on-site visits at best practice sites within the jurisdictions hosting Council meetings. This is one of the most important elements of the Canadian model of service improvement, because this interactive “community of practice” means drastically reduced cycle times for the communication and adoption of innovative service improvement initiatives from other jurisdictions. For example, at one Council meeting the host jurisdiction gave a demonstration of its on-line motor vehicle license renewal application which was to be implemented a few weeks hence. The representatives from a neighbouring jurisdiction liked the idea and went home

and implemented a parallel application before the host jurisdiction could get their application launched. Naturally, this demonstrated a little friendly one-upmanship. Likewise, with the integrated telephone directory blue pages, the Yukon Territory leapt ahead of many other jurisdictions in implementation service-focused blue pages after seeing a presentation of the Ontario model at a Council meeting. The acceleration of single window initiatives has likewise occurred across the country by Council members being aware of developments in other jurisdiction almost as they happen. For example, Manitoba has entered into bilateral arrangements with Service New Brunswick to utilize SNB models and systems in its own single-window strategy, based directly on best practice demonstrations that took place at Council meetings. There are also informal exchanges through the community of practice, where members consult routinely with counterparts when faced with a service issue, or are planning a new initiative. Collaborative service improvement is also a large part of the Council’s work. An example is the development of a “lost wallet” website, which was established by Ontario and Canada in collaboration with other jurisdictions, to help citizens to renew their identity documents if they lose their wallet or purse. The site was designed to allow citizens to quickly find and connect with appropriate services at both the federal and provincial level such as motor vehicle licensing, health cards, citizenship cards etc. Likewise, the Council steered the collaborative project to overhaul the telephone blue pages across the country, to make it easier for citizens to find and access the government services they need. This required the coordination of federal, provincial, local and telephone utility representatives in each part of the country. Now, the Council is developing e-Contact, a collaborative Internet-based enquiry service which is currently in the design stages, and which could cover the entire public sector and build on intelligent, interactive search engine technology. Thus, the Council provides a platform through which jurisdictions can collaborate to create better and more cost-effective service solutions for citizens. Since 2002, PSSDC has joined with PSCIOC to create a joint working agenda, and joint working committees between the two councils. The two Councils have also established a jointly-funded Secretariat in Toronto to provide a strong administrative base for the Councils’ work. In addition, following the creation of the Institute for Citizen Centred Service by PSSDC in 2001, the PSCIO Council agreed to co-fund and co-manage the ICCS as a common platform for research, best practices, and benchmarking. 4. Creating The Institute for Citizen-Centred Service The evolution of the Citizen-Centred Service Network to a more formal government-to-government Council, and then the added development of the Institute for Citizen Centred Service in 2001, can be seen as an evolution towards stronger institutional arrangements to promote and guide inter-

governmental collaboration for service improvement through “smart practices” in Canada. In 1998, the CCSN recommended the creation of an Institute to be a centre of excellence in citizen-centred service. Then in 2000, the second Citizens First Report recommended that the intergovernmental service community:

“Establish a Canadian Centre for Citizen Centred Service outside government to foster inter-governmental, inter-sectoral and international citizen-centred research and service.”

Institutionalizinga Network

The Citizen Centred Service Network

Public Sector Service Delivery Council(Federal-Provincial-Territorial members)

The Institute forCitizen Centred Service

1997 1998 2001 2003

The Public Sector CIO Council

Figure 6 In 2000, the PSSDC asked the PSSDC Research Committee to study the concept and to bring forward recommendations for the creation of an Institute. These recommendations were accepted by PSSDC in January 2001, and the following mandate approved:

• To serve as a world-class centre of expertise and a champion of citizen-centred service across service channels and throughout the public sector;

• To undertake research into citizens’ expectations, satisfaction, and priorities for improvement, and to be the repository for knowledge about citizens’ and clients’ attitudes towards public sector service;

• To measure an monitor the progress of the public sector in improving citizen satisfaction with public sector service delivery, and to develop the means to recognize excellence in citizen-centred service;

• To be the custodian of the Common Measurements Tool (CMT) and electronic CMT in the public sector, and to provide a CMT data repository and benchmarking service for public service organizations;

• To be a centre of expertise in e-government and electronic service delivery;

• To become a centre for the development of publications, training modules, and other management tools required to promote the improvement of service delivery across the public sector.

An agreement was then established between PSSDC and the Institute of Public Administration of Canada, for IPAC (www.ipaciapc.ca) to “incubate” the ICCS, as it had a few years earlier with the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management (CAPAM), until the ICCS was ready to stand on its own feet. In 2001, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and the Ontario Management Board Secretariat each seconded a senior officer to serve as the founding staff for the ICCS. The Ontario Cabinet office provided the space for ICCS, and IPAC provided administrative services. A multi-year ICCS Business Plan was approved by PSSDC, and by the Fall of 2001 the ICCS had taken over responsibility for managing the major inter-governmental research projects, for housing the CMT, and for creating a best-practices website as well as learning events. Subsequently, the Institute for Citizen Centred Service (www.iccs-isac.org) has become an essential part of Canada’s research-driven service improvement strategy- a “virtual” inter-jurisdictional platform (in partnership with IPAC) on which inter-governmental research is conducted, and through which expert knowledge is documented and disseminated. Its three main business lines are: research; the Common Measurements Tool; and best practices documentation and dissemination. As noted above, the ICCS now manages and publishes all of the major intergovernmental research projects, including Citizens First that is fielded every two years, Clients Speak (a study of citizens’ views on single-window service) and Taking Care of Business, a major 2003-2004 survey of the business sector’s needs, service satisfaction, and improvement priorities. These studies are designed by the PSSDC-PSCIOC Research Committee, approved by the joint Councils, and then turned over to the ICCS staff for implementation. The ICCS develops the prospectus, assembles the public sector funding partners, oversees the awarding of the contract, develops the survey tool, and manages the process through to publication. Typically these national research projects attract about 20 partners and cost over C$400,000-C$500,000 to complete. The second business line involves the promotion of the Common Measurements Tool and the creation of a safe haven for sharing and benchmarking CMT results. The original version of the CMT was developed under the leadership of Dr. Faye Schmidt of the Province of BC, who chaired an intergovernmental working group on the CMT. Dr. Schmidt was assisted by Teresa Strickland (Kovaks) from the University of Victoria’s School of Public Administration. The CMT is basically a question bank, which uses a standard five point Likert scale. There is a set of a dozen “core questions” which all organizations are required to use if they want to use the CMT to benchmark with others. In addition to the core questions, which include ratings for the key service “drivers” from Citizens First, there is a wide selection of additional CMT questions which organizations can draw on to build

their own customized survey. In addition, organizations can add their own specific non-CMT questions to their survey instrument if they wish. An updated version of the CMT was developed and released in 2003 by the CMT Standards Board, which is chaired by ICCS, and includes representatives from a number of governments across Canada. The latest version of the CMT is designed to permit surveys across all service channels, and incorporates the latest research findings from Citizens First. Starting in 2003, ICCS invited public organizations to send their CMT data to ICCS to being the creation of a CMT database and benchmarking service. The first CMT benchmarking report was completed in 2003 for a local government in Ontario. The CMT has now been adopted by the Governments of Canada and Ontario and Manitoba as their approved measurement tool. In addition, the CMT is now in use in many other Provincial departments and local governments across the public sector in Canada. Federal government departments and programs are required by the Treasury Board’s Service Improvement Policy (A Policy Framework for Service Improvement in the Government of Canada. 2000) to measure client service satisfaction annually using the Common Measurements Tool. The third ICCS business line involves the documentation and dissemination of expert knowledge and best practices. This is accomplished through the ICCS website (www.iccs-isac.org) which is continuously updated to include the ICCS research studies, innovations and best practices in jurisdictions across the country (and around the world), and publications from member jurisdictions and ICCS learning events. The learning events are another element of the ICCS work, providing seminars and workshops to government managers across the country on the use of the CMT, and on research-based strategies to improve client satisfaction with service delivery. Thus, the ICCS has become the repository for the growing body of knowledge, expertise and “smart practices” Canada has in citizen-centred service, and the main engine for its dissemination and application across the public sector. 5. Intra-governmental Collaboration at the Federal Level In parallel with the creation of SSDO/PSSDC, in 1998 the Treasury Board of Canada adopted a collaborative approach to policy development and service improvement across the federal public service. This was accomplished through the creation of a “community of practice” of those Assistant Deputy Ministers with major responsibilities for service delivery within their departments and agencies. Some of these ADMs had been part of the 1997-98 Citizen Centred Service Network, so it was a natural evolution to create an ADM Advisory Council on Service and Innovation (ACSI) in 1998, chaired by the Treasury Board Secretariat. This was not the first time in the federal government that an advisory group on service had been established, but it was the first time the ADMs actually responsible for service delivery were united into a community of practice.

This group of senior officials:

• Designed the government’s Service Improvement Policy (A Policy Framework for Service Improvement in the Government of Canada. 2000), which was presented to and approved by Treasury Board Ministers in 2000, and helped to oversee its implementation;

• Steered the implementation of Service Canada (http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/en/menu.shtml), the federal government’s initiative to improve service access for Canadians, including a chain of one-stop service access offices across the country;

The Service Improvement Policy was developed using the action research methodology. An ACSI Service Improvement Working Group, chaired by two ADMs, studied over three hundred best-practice cases in service improvement submitted to them by departments. They also examined best practice cases from other jurisdictions. Representatives from best practice sites that could document measurable improvement in service or client satisfaction were invited to a workshop in Ottawa with the Service Improvement Working Group. Through a facilitated process, participants identified the most important elements that accounted for their collective success. These key empirical factors then became the foundation of the recommended service improvement methodology and policy. The simple service improvement methodology gleaned from the best practice sites is captured in the diagram below.

Set Targets & Develop Service

Improvement Plan

Set Targets & Develop Service

Improvement Plan

Measure Clients’ Expectations &

Priorities

Measure Clients’ Expectations &

Priorities

Implement, Monitor, Measure & Ensure

Accountability

Implement, Monitor, Measure & Ensure

Accountability

Where Are We Now?

Where Do OurClients Want Us To Be?

How Will WeGet There?

How Do We MakeIt Happen?

Measure Clients’Satisfaction

Measure Clients’Satisfaction

StaffInvolvement

Results-based Service ImprovementPlanning and Implementation (SIPI Model)

Results-based Service ImprovementPlanning and Implementation (SIPI Model)

Figure 7

The Service Improvement Working Group recommendations were reviewed by ACSI and a set of decisions approved, following a two-day planning retreat. In addition to the methodology, the ACSI members (who would be responsible for implementing it) recommended a government-wide Service Improvement Policy that would include the following elements:

• Adoption of a continuous improvement planning and implementation approach to service improvement and client satisfaction;

• Document baseline satisfaction measures for key services to the public, using the Common Measurements Tool;

• Establish a minimum 10% improvement target for client satisfaction with government service quality over a five year period;

• Adopt, publish and monitor service standards for each service channel; • Prepare annual service improvement plans, based on clients’ priorities

for service improvement; • Implement service improvement accountability in performance

management agreements for all managers, starting with Deputy Ministers;

• Measure and report progress to Parliament and the public annually. These recommendations from the service ADMs community were approved by Treasury Board Ministers in 2000. Implementation was then initiated by the Treasury Board Secretariat in collaboration with six lead ACSI departments, including those programs that citizens had identified as being the highest priority for service improvement. A second important contribution by the ACSI members was assistance with the design and delivery of Service Canada, an initiative designed to respond to Citizens First 1998 findings about the difficulties citizens have in finding and accessing government services. Beginning in the Fall of 1998, a Service Canada Task group was established at Treasury Board Secretariat through secondments of officers from the key service departments. This task force evaluated the single-window access initiatives in other jurisdictions, assessed options, and came forward with a recommended approach to ACSI and Treasury Board Ministers for improving citizen access through Service Canada, a new “virtual agency”. Service Canada eventually established over 300 service counters in government buildings across the country to make it easier for Canadians to find the services they need. In parallel with Service Canada, 1-800-OCANADA was created- a one-stop telephone call centre. In addition, the government created the “Canada Site”, a citizen-friendly Internet portal to facilitate easy citizen and business access to government programs and services.

6. From Smart Practices to Smart Results Canada has been pursuing a “smart” approach to service improvement since 1997 at both the federal and inter-governmental levels. Do citizens notice a difference? The regular surveys conducted by the ICCS suggest that they do, and Canada appears to be one of the few countries that can currently demonstrate such significant improvement in results. Citizen satisfaction with service delivery can be measured at two levels: the “service reputation” level and at the service satisfaction level.. Service reputation is the term used when asking citizens to rate government service in general; service satisfaction is the term used when citizens are asked to rate their satisfaction with specific services. At both levels of measurement, Canada’s results have been improving significantly. Changes in the public sector’s service reputation are shown in the following chart. Canada’s Improving Public Sector

Service ReputationCitizens First-3, 2002

53 5759

4750 51

4751

56

0

25

50

75

Municipal Prov/Terr Federal

Service quality

199820002002

Copyright ICCS-ISAC 2003

Figure 8 (Citizens First-3. 2003)

These data are drawn from the Citizens First series, and appear in Citizens First-3, which was published in 2003. The chart shows that citizens believe that governments at all three levels are providing better service than they did in 1998. The improvement is especially significant for the federal government, where the service reputation score has increase from 47 in 1998 to 56 in 2002, a nine-point (almost 20%) improvement. Citizens First 1998 demonstrated that Citizens rate their service satisfaction with specific public services higher than with their general service reputation scores for a government. At the level of specific services, the results show that Canadians’ satisfaction with federal government service delivery is also improving. The following chart (Canada Information Office 2002) shows the trend

line taken from the Communications Canada survey series (aggregate % of Canadians satisfied and very satisfied with Government of Canada service).

Figure 9 (Canada Information Office. 2002) The Citizens First series shows similar results, although these are mean scores, whereas Communications Canada reports on the basis of percent satisfied or very satisfied. The Citizens First numbers are a mean score for citizens ratings of specific services they have recently experienced, at each level of government.

1998 2000 2002 Federal Services 60 61 64

Provincial Services 62 63 Municipal Services 64 64

Provincial / Municipal 66 * All numbers are national

Figure 10 (Citizens First-3 data, 2003) The disaggregated Citizens First data also show which programs are getting better service scores. At the federal level, these include Canada Post, the Canada Revenue Agency (taxation), and Employment Insurance- all major programs that have employed the research-based service improvement methodology. For example Canada Post and Canada’s taxation agency can both demonstrate very significant improvement in client satisfaction since 1998.

Canada Post(mean satisfaction ratings- Citizens First Series)

5.76.2

6.6

1998 2000 2002

7.0

6.0

5.0

Taxation Services -CCRA(mean service satisfaction ratings-

Citizens First Series)

5.55.7

5.9

1998 2000 2002

6.0

5.5

5.0

Figure 11 (Citizens First-3 data, 2003)

Veterans Affairs Canada is another agency that is a leader in service improvement, based on client survey feedback. For example, using the Common Measurements Tool, VAC improved service satisfaction among its Armed Services client group from 72% to 80% in only two years (2001 to 2003), by focussing improvement efforts on those drivers of client satisfaction that most needed attention (timeliness and staff knowledge in this particular case). Together, these results provide concrete evidence that Canada’s action research approach to service improvement is paying dividends, not only at the federal level, but right across the public sector in Canada. Citizens do notice the difference. 7. Working Horizontally in a Vertical World The progress that Canada has made in improving citizens’ satisfaction with service delivery since 1997 is due in part to the development smart practices, but also to the creation of horizontal institutions and communities of practice in a world where vertical silos are the norm. Because agencies and governments must work together to solve many of the service challenges citizens face, horizontal collaboration is essential to success. In Canada the horizontal collaboration has been both intra-governmental and inter-governmental. Moreover, it has extended to three levels: research, knowledge sharing/learning, and collaborative service improvement.

-Federal Portals

Research-CCSN-ICCS

-PSSDC-PSCIOC

-CCSN-ICCS

-PSSDC-PSCIOC

•CCSN•ICCS

•PSSDC•PSCIOC

-ACSI-Service Canada

-CMT/SIIEvents

Intra-GovernmentalCollaboration

Inter-GovernmentalCollaboration

Research LearningService Delivery

Types of Horizontal Collaboration forImproved Service Delivery

Figure 12 Within the matrix, some of the examples noted are transactional and some are institutional. Perhaps what makes the Canadian experience so interesting is the degree to which horizontal institutional arrangements have been put in place to promote collaborative work across departmental structures, and even more challenging, across governments. In the Canadian experience from 1997 to 2004 we can see the gradual formalization of these horizontal structures at an intergovernmental level, evolving from an informal, short-term network to more formal and long-lasting institutions.

Network→ Councils → Institute

Professor Kenneth Kernaghan (Kernaghan. 2003) has argued that the next generation of collaborative service delivery will require the development of a new generation of horizontally-capable platforms and institutions, just as new collaborative organizational arrangements like VISA and Interac were required in the banking industry to take advantage of new technologies. We see some of these institutions developing in Canada at the intra-governmental level, with the emergence of single-window “utilities” like Service New Brunswick and BC Government Agents, and virtual delivery mechanisms like Service Canada. But inter-governmental service solutions may offer a greater challenge because of the vertical administrative and political accountabilities built into the system. In other words, developing horizontally-integrated service delivery in a vertical world will be a challenge for public administrators and politicians. The intergovernmental arrangements developed within Canada may be the first step in the evolution to these new type of collaborative delivery institutions. Reflecting on the success that Canada has achieved to date in building cross-cutting communities of practice, these are some of the lessons learned:

• Collaborative research which demonstrates citizens’ service needs and priorities provides a powerful tool for public managers to accept and adopt a unifying, collaborative citizen-centric service agenda;

• Collaborative research, knowledge exchange and service delivery is also driven by a recognition that collaboration in a tight fiscal climate leads to lower costs for all;

• Success breeds success- when citizens start noticing improvement in service delivery, there is a strong motivation for public managers to continue collaborative service improvement work;

• Collaborative arrangements require an inclusive, informal, respectful style of leadership that is akin to leading voluntary organizations;

• Governance and fiscal arrangements must be flexible enough to allow smaller jurisdictions to vigorously participate;

• Creating a common measurement tool is a key element in promoting a community of practice and benchmarking; at the individual department level;

• Engaging with the municipal level in a collaborative community of practice is a challenge because of the large number of individual jurisdictions;

• Leadership transitions within a horizontal community of practice are a challenge which must be well managed;

• The creation of an enduring Institute as a knowledge repository ensures that the public sector can continue build on its knowledge and experience even when individual managers, experts, governments and administrations change.

8. Are Canada’s “Smart Practices” in Service Improvement Replicable in Other Jurisdictions? Recently, officials from the UK Cabinet Office visited Canada to review the research-based, citizen-centred service improvement strategy. In a subsequent 2004 article in the UK’s Public Finance (Tetlow 2004), a senior Cabinet Office official stated:

“I visited the country last year with one of my colleagues from the Office of Public Services Reform in the Cabinet Office. I was surprised at the extent to which public servants embraced the needs of those who used their services – and how much they seem to have been personally empowered by the experience….The OPSR (Office of Services Reform) is now considering whether we should develop some aspects of the Canadian model here.

Canada is a large federal country, with only ten Provinces and three Territories, which permits senior public managers in Canada to know each other and to hold meetings where every jurisdiction can actively participate. However, like other countries, there are hundreds of local governments, and creating communities of practice that engages the local level of government is more challenging. Notwithstanding this challenge, a number of major cities and regional

governments representing a large portion of the national population participate in Canada’s large citizen-focused research projects and in the application of the CMT. This would suggest that Canada’s work in building communities of research and communities of practice across the broad public sector should be replicable or adaptable in many other countries. In countries with a high number of states or provinces, it may be important to create an analogue to the Institute for Citizen Centred Service as the “glue” in the system, along with an inter-governmental council or alternatively a membership-based network associated with it. Canada’s experience suggests that other jurisdictions might begin with the creation of a Network of service officials within and across jurisdictions to oversee a research project like Citizens First to get the voice of the citizen into the service improvement agenda. Identifying the key drivers of service satisfaction, expectations for service standards, and the citizens’ priorities for service improvement are important elements of the research, since they inform a very concrete forward agenda for line managers. The Common Measurements Tool is already in use outside of Canada, and could well become the “gold standard” for international benchmarking of public sector service delivery among nations. 9. Conclusions Until 1997 Canada had undertaken a variety of practices to try to improve service to the public. However, few if any governments or agencies could show consistent improvement in client satisfaction. The move in 1997 to initiate a series of “smart practices” and “smart institutions” that focused the improvement agenda on citizen-centred research, on common measurement and benchmarking, and on collaborative action, has resulted in significantly improved results from the citizens’ perspective. At an individual agency level, individual government level, and pan-public-sector level, Canada can now demonstrate higher levels of citizen satisfaction with government service compared to 1997 levels. The key to this success has been the implementation of:

• Action research focused on obtaining information that can quickly be translated by public managers into service improvements that citizens want and notice;

• Collaborative networks, councils and an inter-governmental Institute to provide the necessary horizontal organizational platforms for collaborative work.

It is suggested that other jurisdictions could benefit from examination and adaptation of Canada’s “smart practices” in public sector service improvement.

Bibliography

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