The Political Free Market: Bringing Down Under to the Great North (and some fresh air at the end)

And they're being urged to participate direclty in an effort to prevent the province from helping to elect a "risky" new government, according to a letter provided exclusively Monday to the Vancouver Sun.

"They" being select members of the B.C. business community, the kind of folk that Lynton Crosby wants to find a relevant message for.

Expect more of this ABC-style approach to political campaigning as the season-long #elxn42 lumbers forward into fall. Identify your target market - only your target market, not (pejorative minority group) - they aren't your people anyway - and then close that deal.  If you keep hammering at them, hitting the key emotional triggers and all that jazz, you'll push them into making a choice, and that choice will be in your favour.

Pretty simple, right?

You'd think so, at any rate.  Apparently not, though.  Despite having aggressive sales folk like Nick Kouvalis and comms whizes like Kory Teneycke at his service and despite having long-term loyalists like Jenni Byrne and, um, Chris Woodcock in his circle, Harper has decided to look further afield for the talent he needs to win this election.

It's not that, you know, he's ungrateful to his own people.  He simply realizes it's a tough election and he could very well lose, especially if his campaign can't get on the right course.  Staying the course isn't an option, because too much is not going his way.  If they're too risky to guarantee a win, you have to look at other options.

Which is what a lot of Canadians, including traditional Tory supporters, are doing.

Harper's people, meanwhile - they're all about the free market and against national protectionism. 

They won't be the slightest bit wounded or embittered about Harper's clear indication that he doesn't feel they're up to the job and preference for bringing in an Australian to do the job they are having trouble with.

Which is why Harper's whole team is surely embracing the simple message frame and proven track record of that Voldemort from Down Under, Lynton Crosby.

It doesn't matter whether he comes from up above or from Down Under, or how much skin he has in Canada's election.  It makes no difference whether the policies and messages he picks as winners for the target he identifies create headaches for non-Con market voters.  All that matters is that he can deliver the goods.

This got me thinking.

Harper's message is that the other guys - Trudeau and Mulcair, because he is loathe to mention Elizabeth May's name - are too risky.  You can't be sure they'll do a good job, and if they don't, fire and brimstone will ensure from the ruptures that will form in the earth, sucking all that is good and traditional down the drain (like manufacturing jobs and the forest industry).

Thing is, though, Harper hasn't done so hot himself.  He's continued and exacerbated the trend of poisoning the democratic well for partisan gain; he's made a mess of relations with provinces, the media and countless stakeholder groups; un- and under-employment are on the rise, aboriginal women are still going missing, pipelines are still pipe dreams, etc.  

Can we really count on Harper to do anything other than what he's been doing already?  That's what his campaign seems to suggest - more of the same, when that simple hasn't been good enough.

It's a bit risky, isn't it?

Maybe Harper has provided us with the extra option we needed.  Perhaps we don't need to limit ourselves to the risky choices before us - Harper didn't, and as leader he sets the example, doesn't he?

There's no rule that says Canada's Prime Minister has to be an elected official.  To be honest, the office of PM is one of convention, not one of legislation, so we have all kinds of flexibility on how to fill the role.

To keep things moderately in-house, though, what we could do is look at honourary Canadian citizens to fill this honourable role.

Here are some options:

   Karim Aga Khan IV

   Malala Yousafzai

  Aung San Suu Kyi

 and my personal choice:

   The Dalai Lama

Can you imagine how awesome Question Period would be if the Dalai Lama was giving the answers?

Of course, we don't have to look abroad to find the best fighters to conquer electorates, or to fight off our political representatives. That's another thing that's become convention, but is not and does not have to be the rule.

Perhaps instead of looking abroad for people to fight his battles for him, Harper should look to the past for some advice on what it means to be Public Servant #1, as the Prime Minister should be:

“Public service reminds us all that there exists a genuine concept of the public good in the broad public interest. While we value individual liberty and protect it, as Canadians we also maintain a strong tradition of the public good — that is, what is good for society as a whole, on balance, taking into account disparate interests and adopting the longer view.”

- the Honourable Jim Flaherty, 2011

As for the rest of us - maybe we have to stop waiting for someone to solve our social ailments. Maybe we have always had the ability ourselves, and just needed the opportunity and encouragement.

Now's the time for something different.

Patronizing Citizen Richard

 

I want to be Canada's first non-government public servant

I've spent the last four years actively working in the Open Government, Open Data, and Civic Engagement space.  I don't consider myself as an advocate, activist, lobbyist, or expert.  I like to think of myself as a Fanboy and I celebrate change instead of damning the status quo.

 

There really isn't anyone that I know of on the Canadian (or any) landscape quite like Richard.

 

He's pretense-free, which is rare.  He's thoroughly committed to his ideals, of which he's not at the centre - we are.  Richard has a code of ethics that he follows, religiously, because be believes integrity matters.  Richard is open, a natural communicator, great at breaking down complex issues and ridiculously committed to making a difference.

 

Best part is, Richard does what he does because he believes in it.  He's not after profit, even to his own detriment sometimes.  This doesn't mean he's got trouble securing funding or donations for projects - #OGT14 is proof of that.  It means that you never need worry about him being inefficient with resources.

 

What that means is he's the kind of public servant we'd love to have more of.

 

It's kinda hard to save the world on an empty stomach, though, so Richard is looking for support to do what he does.  To be clear - his services aren't for sale; he believes that they're valuable enough that someone out there will surely be willing to pay for them.

 

Richard isn't looking for an employer, an investor or a sponsor - he wants a patron.  Consider him a civic engagement artist.

 

I'm going to invest in Richard - he's earned it and besides, I can't wait to see what he comes up with next.  Whatever it may be, it's something Canada will benefit from.

 

Check him out, folks - this is community art like you've never seen before.  We need more like him.

 

The Return of Don Drummond

"You need to look at what public services you want to deliver then what's the most efficient way of providing them," economist Don Drummond said in an interview with Tom Clark on The West Block.  "You don't arbitrarily constrain a certain outcome."

Drummond's not the only one who's suggested that clear-cutting the public service isn't the best way to nurture sustainable growth and efficient service delivery.

The Mowat Centre took a hard look at structural failings within the public sector and offered suggestions on how to fix them.

Through his Open By Default report on Open Government, Don Lenihan did the same thing.

The truth is that we have a oxymoronic silo-based system riddled with duplication, gaps, overlaps where title, process, position and information hoarding takes precedence over efficiency or results. Mid-managers are downloading the innovation imperative to staff, expecting them to include metrics on how they're going to think outside the box in their self-written performance reviews.

Clearly, they haven't heard of the candle problem.  You can't pressure people into being innovative. You can't force innovation through competition.  

Worse, a complete lack of communication flow leaves our public servants in the daily equivalent of shoveling water - they don't know what they're doing, why they're doing it or what result it's expected to have.

It should come as no surprise how heavily medicated our OPS is, but doing anything about that would mean a whole lotta culture change and a great number of entitled folk recognizing they're part of the problem.  

That's not gonna happen overnight, but it won't happen at all until someone takes ownership of the problem.  That ownership doesn't necessarily have to come from government.

But he pointed to an example of a recommendation ignored: restructure business subsidies.

There is plenty of money out there.  More than this, there's as ridiculous an amount of inefficiency in the private sector as their is in the public sector (we won't even get started on the NFP sector).  Like lighting a fire when all you want is light, a great deal of energy is being wasted to create new wealth without sufficient effort being spent on internal management.

This is particularly true where it comes to HR.  

Precious little time is spent on the "onboarding" process and few employers have the slightest grasp of environmental/work design impact on productivity, presenteeism, innovation and customer experience.  They just want things to work, damn it, without having to put thought into how to get the results they want.

Fortunately, there are best practices out there - people and organizations in the private sector that are adapting to the Knowledge Economy by improving how they do HR, how they consult and how they engage with their clients and the community at large.

Just imagine if there was a coalition of the willing that banded together and told government "we want to partner with you on these big, structural solutions - but we want your help, and we want to see you setting the example.

How likely is this to happen?  Not overly, but you might be surprised how many willing parties there are already.

It's a good kind of problem to work on, and to gain brand from being part of.

Just ask Don Drummond.

Some Advice for Tim Hudak via Leslie Noble

For his trouble, Mr. Hudak has received a cease-and-desist letter from the Premier's counsel.  But the bigger concern for his Tories should be that he has served up a reminder of why many Ontarians have struggled to warm to him.

I've had the privilege of learning from many of the brightest political operators in the country over the years.  It may surprise some that the best, most enduring advice I've received from any of them came from Leslie Noble.

Many moons ago when I was in her employ, Leslie gave me this sage bit of wisdom: "in this business (Government Relations, which is really just an extension of politics), the client's best interests has to come before all else, even your own partisan feelings."

As a Conservative, she was referring to then-Premier Dalton McGuinty.  She then mentioned a couple of brilliant wins she'd scored for her clients (to learn more about her services, visit here) that the Liberal Government she opposed was also able to cite as wins.  

Her message was plain; in a service-based industry, the client comes first, period.

This is a piece of advice I've turned to again and again over the years as I've seen leaders in the public, private and Not-For-Profit sector lose sight of this mandate and shift to focusing on their own interests.  Inevitably, these bosses fall.

It's a great tragedy that Tim Hudak has Leslie Noble in his corner, but is failing to heed her advice himself.  By focusing so intently on getting hits in on his opponents, Hudak is failing at his responsibility to serve both his Party (his antics have yet to help bolster their numbers) or the people of Ontario (how many opportunities for legitimate opposition over misguided initiatives has he missed because he went for the over-the-top attack?).

What's even worse - he's either forgetting or simply doesn't know that, to most Ontarians, there's no difference between Parties or leaders.  When one Party Leader blasts another with the basest, crudest of attacks, they wear more than a little bit of the blowback.

By focusing so narrowly on short-term partisan hits, Hudak is chipping away at public faith in the institutions of Government and Parliament themselves.

I don't expect Hudak to listen to me, to the countless reporters telling him he's gone over the line and he clearly won't listen to his Opponents, but one would hope he'd heed the counsel of one of his own advisors.

When it becomes about wins for yourself rather than service for the people, you've lost.  

And, sadly, we've lost, too.

Political Morale and the Value of a Pivot

We work in complex problems and sometimes find ourselves as the ones who have to say, "hold on... what are we actually trying to achieve here?"

The other night I got to listen in on a fascinating conversation between the Globe and Mail's Adam Radwanski and Alison Loat, founder of Samara.  As part of the chat, Radwanski talked about how reporters/columnists get their information from politicians and staff (yes, it goes well beyond the scum).  

Some reporters read much into body language and mine the depth of every pause and every word unsaid as well.  Others are all about the phone call.  Adam said that his preferred method was actual conversations instead of just inquiries; as we're social creatures, that often means a coffee or a lunch together.

Radwanski shared a bit about his relationship with staff in former Premier Dalton McGuinty's office and how it changed over time.  At the onset, he had a more open conversations with them - not that they would leak exclusives or reveal inappropriate details, but that he could suss their mind out a bit on what they were trying to accomplish with a particular message campaign or piece of legislation.

For obvious reasons, Radwanski found this valuable - he could really get a sense of the intent and goals behind government activity that might not always turn out as intended.  This intel would inform his stories, allowing him to do a political reporter's #2 job (after making money for their outlet) - facilitate the public's awareness of why and how their tax dollars are being spent and their society being supported.

There was a shift though, Radwanski said, between McGuinty's first class of staff and the one that followed.  The second bunch, he said, were less open, less willing to have conversations and began instead to use tricks to get stories they wanted - leaking to one outlet, putting them in competition with others, supposedly making them more likely to print favourable stories so as to get the inside scoop.

What resulted was a more confrontational relationship between press and press secretaries, more like what we see at the federal level where the press are clearly considered the enemy by political staff.  Stories became less favourable and intent was read as more cynical; without some background on the thought process, there really wasn't much else for reporters to go on.

I spent a bit of time within Liberal ranks over this period.  Some of the happiest days of my career were during the end of the first term when there was a real sense of being part of something special and other staff were almost more like family than colleagues.  I attribute this sense of team primarily to two men - my former boss Jim Brownell who may have been just a backbencher but for many of us was the heart and soul of the QP Liberal family and the Premier himself, Dalton McGuinty.

As part of Team Brownell, I spent a lot of time connecting with other staff, figuring out what they were working on, what we might be able to help them with and of course, seeing how all of this tied in to the projects Jim wanted to deliver for his riding (he had a very long list over two terms and delivered every single project, save one).  It was networking, team building, capacity building, but also humanizing.  I wanted to be human to these people I might otherwise only connect with via email or phone and I wanted to understand them as people as well.

More than a couple times when I was making rounds, I would run in to the Premier himself, just popping by offices to see how people were doing.  There are worse people to have your thunder taken away from than the Premier, but most importantly to me was how obvious it was that McGuinty actually understood the importance of connectivity.  

McGuinty did more than just the odd staff visit, which was huge - he also showed personal interest in the projects and accomplishments of staff in their lives beyond Queen's Park.  I got nice, hand-written letters from him when I won a short story award from the Toronto Star and at the birth of my first son. 

The Premier made time to invite my whole family into his office on a day when I'd arranged for my grandfather, a World War II vet and Holocaust survivor, to be recognized in the Legislature.  And that was just me, staffer to a backbencher.  

I know he did similiar things for other staff.  There's a great picture of him at the wedding of two of his own staff; he's reaching into the aisle to congratulate them as they leave the church and they, so in love and focused on each other, don't even realize they're ignoring their boss/Ontario's Premier.

While I was at Queen's Park, there were directions and decisions taking that I disagreed with (and was never afraid to share my thoughts on internally).  At the same time, I felt I knew the people making those choices and respected them enough to figure out why they'd made the choices they did and maybe how better iterations could be arrived at down the road.

When I left Queen's Park, I became like anyone else - an outsider looking in, albeit with more connections and understanding of how the place operated.  Regardless, I began to feel like some humanity was slipping away from the relationships I had there.  This was in no small part due to what I'd left Queen's Park for - a job in the private sector as a Government Relations Consultant, but I didn't want that to become a barrier.  

Perhaps naively, I thought (and still think) that people from different sectors don't need to be competitive and cagey - it's much more effective when we're open, pull together and focus on shared solutions for everyone.

As partisanship has gotten worse, though at both the provincial and federal level and from what I hear, communication with the press are much more based on messaging than relationship, I can't help feel as though it's not just me.  There's been a significant culture change, a calcifying of government that has maybe been exacerbated by toughening economic times.

From the inside, I hear (and this from staff in all Parties) two main trends: 

- staff who are functionally fixed on reciting the Party lines, and not in the cheeky, fun way we used to, but either out of fear of straying, a Koolaid-drinking belief in The Word or perhaps most sadly, a lack of trust in outsiders.  It's fascinating how closely this mirrors some the approaches I find among community residents when I work in priority neighbourhoods here in Toronto.

- the second trend is that they're lost.  They don't know who's really calling the shots in their Party, can't figure out how or why the plans (if there are bigger plans) are put together and really have no clue what role they're supposed to play.

Funny enough, this is the same culture of stagnation and confusion that has been identified as a major impediment to efficiency and adaptability within the Public Sector.  We can get mad at bureaucrats who make decent wages but don't seem to produce enough work as being lazy and go on a cutting spree, but that ignores the fundamental problem with the system - 

People within the bureaucracy often don't know how decisions are made, don't know how their work fits into the big picture and get no idea what or how their work gets used, if it gets used at all.

In the military, they recognize the importance of morale - it's #2, right after the mission.  In far too many other sectors and egregiously in politics, morale isn't even considered part of the question.  It's My Party Right or Wrong, right?

This is something we have lost as we focus increasingly on numbers - funds raised, program dollars spent, votes cast, etc.  Our entire system isn't designed to support Political Parties who aren't even mentioned in our constitution, nor an invisible, insatiable beast called The Economy.

Government is meant to support the people.  The Economy is meant to be the food that sustains society, which is a support system connecting and ideally empowering people.  

We've gotten this all backwards; partisanship has taken supremacy away from Parliament and The Economy is being trumped as more important than people.  Is it any wonder so many programs are missing their target or so many people are falling through the cracks?

A big part of why we've gotten things all screwy is that we've decided that relationships - committing sociology, as it were - is a bad thing.  We've been going the transaction, laissez-faire route; as a result, we have poor communication, increased hostility and competition and vitally, less sustainable results.

We think we know where we're going, but we're not sure.  But we no longer seem to care.

We've lost our way and our tracking back in circles.  Which is why now, more than any time in at least my life time, we need leaders with vision who understand the value of people.  

Not as props, not as clients or audiences to be messaged, but as as real people.

I believe we need to pivot our perspective.  I also believe that Open Government/Open Data is the frame that will allow us to do this.  

But I also know that as it becomes harder and harder for a select, siloed few to know what to do next, we're going to see the opacity of politics get worse before it gets better.  But it will get better, one way or another - the historical turn of the wheel teaches us that much.

The Peaceable Revolution is at hand.

THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC SERVICES: Built on an Open-Source Public Service Platform

“Why don’t we create a collaborative model of healthcare?” – Don Tapscott

 January 12, 2010 – a 7.0 magnitude earthquake shakes Haiti to the bone, reducing weak infrastructure to rubble, wiping out 220,000+ lives and putting the fate of a nation in question.  Worse earthquakes had hit other populated areas in recent memory, without the same degree of impact.  What led to Haiti's particular tragedy combined a lack of planning with selfish interests that saw sub-standard buildings erected in the first place.  The absence of proper maps and census data only made a potential response plan ever harder to develop.

Ironically, it was an altruistic, coordinated effort by the international community that stepped in to address the crisis.  The resources of UN agencies, USAID, individual donors from Japan, school groups in Europe and countless other sources in Canada and around the world was largely coordinated through open-source, online maps and crowdsourcing. 

An Ushahidi-based open source platform became the hub around which government and Not-For-Profit agencies were able to interact in a planned, coordinated way to connect the people of Haiti with the services and resources they needed.  A person stuck in a collapsed building could send a text to a friend, who could pass it on to an appropriate official, which would then be coordinated through a central point in the States to get the right people and resources on the ground in Port-au-Prince to go where they were needed.  Someone moved to make a donation after watching footage of the devastation on the evening news could access the system in the same way, learning the best opportunities to contribute and putting their offering into the mix.

The Haiti experience gives a great example of how an online, Open-Source Public Service Platform can provide an opportunity to transform the existing social service model into something adapted to the realities of the 21^st Century.

Think about it – there is broad concern that social services cost too much and that much of that cost is lost to inefficiencies.  It’s like using an old light bulb – little of the energy used actually gets translated into illumination.  Services aren’t always provided where they are needed, or aren’t as accessible as they should be, or people simply don’t know the right entry point to reach those services.  Countless paid hours are spent by government employees trying to help frustrated clients find the specific service they need – and that’s before you add barriers like transportation access, language/cultural barriers, wheelchair/stroller accessibility, etc.

Inefficiencies, cost, access challenges.  You can add to this increased wait times as people struggle to find appropriate services, or end up needing advanced services because they were unable or un-empowered to connect with the right front-end services before an issue emerged.  Also worth mentioning is the recent federal contraction on census data collected and the broad social concerns around accountability and customer service within the public sector.

All these can be problems of the past, thanks to crowdsourcing – and the solution can be realized in a way that doesn’t add to the tax burden.  Again, that solution is an Open-Source Public Service Platform.

A quick example of what the benefit of an integrated, open-source online social service platform would look like: a First Generation Canadian living wherever, trying to find out how to diagnose and treat an ailment in her non-English speaking, wheelchair-bound mother -- could use an App on her phone to narrow down her search and tailor results to include the language and transportation need components.  The search results would include phone numbers for the service providers and a broader coordinating entity, for example a LHIN.  The lady would be able to find and connect her mom with the specific help she needs and how to get to it with a few clicks on a blackberry.

How would you begin to build something of such complexity and magnitude?  Wouldn’t the cost be preventative?  Nope – that’s the advantage of crowdsourcing.  If one central entity – ideally, government – were to provide the basic digital infrastructure (the Ushahidi model is already established and is freely available, and RIM is probably looking for work that could include adapting it for this purpose), the various players involved would organically populate the rest.  A detailed map would be a great, free tool for gaining statistical data, developing broad understandings of service distribution and need (facilitating planning and reducing duplication, gaps and overlaps) and provide opportunities for oversight that would find the right balance through sheer volume.

Service providers inputting their data into the map could use a template form to know which pieces to populate their corner with.  This would include things like address, broad service category, specific service category, accessibility, languages spoken, contact information, etc.  Each entry would have a comments section with an aggregated customer service satisfaction indicator.  When public transit, doctor’s offices, social service offices, etc. plug their information into the map, it would be an easy matter of using an App on a phone or a computer to connect with the right search terms and cross-reference them for proximity, availability and so on.  A secured level of use could record all the data that helps government plan funding allocation and public need in a way only dreamed of now.

We’re already starting to do this by recording wait times in hospitals or results in schools; a public service platform is simply the next logical step.  The Government of Ontario has taken a huge leap forward through a Social Innovation Summit hosted by SiG@MaRS and by launching a wiki allowing Ontarians to participate in the world’s first crowd-sourced policy paper.  The Ontario Liberal Party learned from Facebook and created FRed, creating an online community for members and those interested in learning more.

This same principle can take advantage of the growing connectivity in our society in countless other ways; you could use an open source map to plan your next vacation, if tourist-service providers sign up, or to find new employees/help transition ones that don’t fit without needing to fire them.

Here’s an example of what such a map could look like, using fair trade as an example.

The challenges of today are steering us in one clear direction – collaboration.  The only way to face our current economic, health and quality-of-life woes is to find efficiencies in service – not by cutting the offerings themselves, but by ensuring they are properly coordinated.  An Open-Source Public Service Platform is the perfect tool to make this happen.