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Canada's civil service is world's most effective: UK report

daftandbarmy

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More proof the world is doomed, starting with the British ;)

Canada's civil service is world's most effective: UK report​


Canada’s public service is the most effective in the world, according to the results of a new British study that compares the performance of government workforces in 31 countries.

Canada topped the rankings based on its overall score for performance measures such as tax administration, policy making, inclusiveness, openness, integrity, crisis management, fiscal and financial management.


New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Norway, Korea and the U.S. rounded out the top 10 list, which represents the first-ever attempt to compare bureaucracies worldwide.

Among the lowest scoring bureaucracies were those in Slovakia, Hungary, Greece, Czechia, Italy, Portugal and Turkey.

Canada was praised for having a highly-educated government workforce with “a good representation of women, ethnic and religious groups.”

“It’s a good news story, and it’s interesting, when you put that in parallel with the public’s perception of civil servants because, generally, they think we’re a bunch of lazy people,” said Emmanuelle Tremblay, president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE), which represents 13,000 federal economists, policy analysts, research assistants, translators, statisticians and interpreters.

Chris Aylward, national executive vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, said the study speaks to the dedication of the country’s public servants — and the need to stop contracting out government services. “We’re not surprised, but we’re very pleased to hear that Canada’s civil service ranks at the top in this survey,” said Aylward. “They’re proud of the work they do.”

The study, known as the International Civil Service Effectiveness (InCiSE) Index, was prepared by researchers from Oxford University and the Institute for Government, a U.K. think tank.

The researchers assessed government bureaucracies from 31 countries on eight core functions and four key attributes. Data for the initial study was incomplete, the researchers warned, and will be refined in future years.

Canada was ranked third in the world for human resources management on the strength of its meritocratic hiring system, and also scored well on policy making and regulation. Its lowest ranking (20th) came in the area of tax administration — a reflection of the country’s relatively slow adoption of digital services.

Canada was among the top five nations for three of the four “attributes” measured: capability, integrity and inclusiveness. On the fourth attribute, openness, Canada’s civil service ranked 9th worldwide.

“Canada’s openness score, although well above the average, suggests there may be some lessons to learn from the leading countries concerning the right to information theme, as well as the availability and accessibility of government data,” the report concluded.

 
Egad. I had no idea the bar was so low.

[Add: anyone have a working link to the source? Kind of useless to make claims without being able to verify what is measured and how it is weighted.]
 
More proof the world is doomed, starting with the British ;)

Canada's civil service is world's most effective: UK report​

Canada’s public service is the most effective in the world, according to the results of a new British study that compares the performance of government workforces in 31 countries.

Canada topped the rankings based on its overall score for performance measures such as tax administration, policy making, inclusiveness, openness, integrity, crisis management, fiscal and financial management.


New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Norway, Korea and the U.S. rounded out the top 10 list, which represents the first-ever attempt to compare bureaucracies worldwide.

Among the lowest scoring bureaucracies were those in Slovakia, Hungary, Greece, Czechia, Italy, Portugal and Turkey.

Canada was praised for having a highly-educated government workforce with “a good representation of women, ethnic and religious groups.”

“It’s a good news story, and it’s interesting, when you put that in parallel with the public’s perception of civil servants because, generally, they think we’re a bunch of lazy people,” said Emmanuelle Tremblay, president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE), which represents 13,000 federal economists, policy analysts, research assistants, translators, statisticians and interpreters.

Chris Aylward, national executive vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, said the study speaks to the dedication of the country’s public servants — and the need to stop contracting out government services. “We’re not surprised, but we’re very pleased to hear that Canada’s civil service ranks at the top in this survey,” said Aylward. “They’re proud of the work they do.”

The study, known as the International Civil Service Effectiveness (InCiSE) Index, was prepared by researchers from Oxford University and the Institute for Government, a U.K. think tank.

The researchers assessed government bureaucracies from 31 countries on eight core functions and four key attributes. Data for the initial study was incomplete, the researchers warned, and will be refined in future years.

Canada was ranked third in the world for human resources management on the strength of its meritocratic hiring system, and also scored well on policy making and regulation. Its lowest ranking (20th) came in the area of tax administration — a reflection of the country’s relatively slow adoption of digital services.

Canada was among the top five nations for three of the four “attributes” measured: capability, integrity and inclusiveness. On the fourth attribute, openness, Canada’s civil service ranked 9th worldwide.

“Canada’s openness score, although well above the average, suggests there may be some lessons to learn from the leading countries concerning the right to information theme, as well as the availability and accessibility of government data,” the report concluded.

I'm sure the fine print of the headline goes "...of countries encompassing the arctic circle that aren't Scandinavian".
 
We have a lot of hard working public servants and I will agree on the high integrity index, based on what I saw personal over the years. Like every large group we have a our "Specials" but for the most part the people that toil in the technical stuff, frontline and out in the field are top notch. Now as far as these groups are concerned: federal economists, policy analysts, research assistants, translators, statisticians and interpreters. I will reserve judgement, because the layers of crap and useless sods grows exponentially the closer to Ottawa you get. In fact I say it's the inverse of what I saw in the Regions.
 
If we have the best... How bad is the worst ?
Well as an example, I exchanged my Ontario drivers licence for an Irish one, when I moved to Ireland. The Irish government took my Ontario licence from me and was to inform the Ontario government to cancel my Ontario licence. Last month a notice arrived at my last Ontario mailing address, reminding me to renew my Ontario drivers licence. While, it may have been the Ontario government that dropped the ball, I strongly suspect that it was the Irish government failed to do their part. I base this on the fact that they accidently added motorcycle to my licence, though I had never held a class M in Ontario. So, as far as these things go, Canadian governments tend to be "pretty good".
 
Culture of Secrecy Rampant in both Government and Civil Service.



Case is point.

In a response to an ATIP request from historian Timothy Sayle in 2021, the Privy Council Office returned a partially redacted transcript of a speech given by then-prime minister John Diefenbaker on the cancellation of the Avro Arrow program. Sayle noted that the PCO had redacted a portion of the public speech, which can be found in the pages of Hansard, as damaging to Canada’s international affairs or defence. The PCO later released the entirety of the speech.

Or the secrecy behind the ArriveCAN contract. Is it privacy or embarrassment that there is so much redactions?


All this secrecy just adds to the mistrust that more and more Canadians have towards the decision making process of our governments.
 
Hasn't the PCO only ever been accountable to the PMO?
No, its official role is to support the Prime Minister and the entire Cabinet, not just the PM, and then accountable to Parliament for the proper execution of the Government’s program.
 
Well now a good number of them don't want to return to the office. So how effective is that?
 
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