“Drummond Report”

 Commission on the Reform of Ontario's

Public Services
 Public Services for Ontarians: A Path to

Sustainability and Excellence

 485 pages

http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/reformcommission/
Serving Customers, Clients
or Citizens?

Week 7
Tensions within
“Service Transformation”

 “service transformation does not represent a

straightforward and coherent administrative
reform agenda, but is rife with ambiguities,
dilemmas, tensions and contradictions”
(2010: 12).
Different goals of
“Service Transformation”
 “the relative emphasis placed on different
service transformation goals and strategies
has varied across sectors and jurisdictions”
 “these variations have had profound
implications for the ways in which the public
experiences public services” (2010: 12).
Customers, Clients or Citizens?

 “it is possible and useful to categorize service

transformation efforts according to how they
imagine the identity of the service-user.”
 “The three most important identities are
customer, client and citizen” (Dutil et al.,
2010: 12).
Customers, Clients or Citizens?

 “We argue public service users are

increasingly perceived and treated in Canada
as customers, with lessening regard to the
potential importance of client and citizen
relationships” (Dutil et al., 2010: 13).
Customers or engaged citizens?
 “despite new opportunities that service
transformation presents for enhancing
democratic citizen engagement and the
power of clients, it is the ‘customer’ that is
likely triumphant” (Dutil et al., 2010: 13).
 “information and communications technology
open up so many different opportunities for
engagement” (Dutil et al., 2010: 13).
‘Customer’ service

 “The terminology of ‘customer’ came to

represent an approach to public
administration preoccupied with enhancing
convenience and choice for service users”
(Dutil et al., 2010: 14).
 “market-inspired models of the citizen as
‘customer’ of government products and
services” (Dutil et al., 2010: 31).
Contradictions of the ‘agency’
movement
 “On the one hand, agencies have been proposed to
promote specialization, flexibility and
responsiveness to local customer groups, moving
away from standardized, one-size-fits-all models”
 “second contradictory set of customer service
imperatives pushing the creation of agencies. This is
the movement for integrated one-stop-shops,
justified on the grounds that the ‘customer’ prefers
to obtain all their services from government in one
convenient (real or virtual) location” (Dutil et al.,
2010: 14).
‘client’ relations
 Rather than simply being a synonym for customer,
client can “describe specifically those individuals
who depend on assistance and support provided
through government human and social service
social systems” (Dutil et al., 2010: 17).
 “A consistent theme running through the literature
on human services is the suggestion that client-
based service delivery should be ‘democratized’”
(Dutil et al., 2010: 17).
Engaging the ‘citizen’
 “the potential of service transformation to
contribute to a broader strengthening of the
democratic potential of service recipients and
other individuals in the community as
citizens” (Dutil et al., 2010: 21).
 “the Internet has ushered in a plethora of
hope and rhetoric for online engagement and
renewal” (Dutil et al., 2010: 29).
“obstacles” to service transformation

 “bureaucratic resistance to the modernization

and integration of services”
 “dilemmas and trade-offs associated with
responding to service users’ demands in
complex policy areas including health and
social services”
 “ongoing resource limitations” (Dutil et al.,
2010: 32).
dilemmas in service transformation

 “The first concerns the attempt to impose the

customer identity at the expense of
alternatives.”
 “the standardized customer model conflicts
with the growing interest, especially within
human and social services in ‘individualized
service delivery’ and in enhancing the voice
of each client in the service interaction” (Dutil
et al., 2010: 48)
dilemmas in service transformation

 “the organizational realities surrounding

service delivery” (Dutil et al., 2010: 49).
 Tension between centralization (one stop
shopping) and push for decentralization,
specialization and outsourcing
 Plus there is the “politics of branding
associated with service integration” (Dutil et
al., 2010: 50).
Progress in Canada?

 “limited progress beyond streamlining of

simple transactional services”
 “an almost universal disinterest on the part of
politicians”
 “an absence of meaningful citizen
involvement in service improvement” (Dutil et
al., 2010: 32).
Democratic Administration
An alternative critique of
bureaucracy
 The dominant critique of the bureaucratic
state has led to the various attempts to run
government more like a business.

 Advocates of democratic administration

present a different or alternative vision of the
state.
Bureaucracy is a problem

 The political attack on the state that resulted

in downsizing, privatization and the “new
public management” was ideologically driven
but it was facilitated by public distrust and
discomfort with the bureaucratic state.
Lack of public support

 The attack on the welfare state “had some

appeal even among those who were most
dependent on the welfare state, who needed
its benefits but did not feel that the public
agencies who dispensations and services
and regulations they depended on really
belonged to them, were theirs to influence or
control.”
– Leo Panitch
A new kind of state

 “The real issue of our time is not less state

versus more state, but rather a different kind
of state.” - Leo Panitch
The problem with bureaucracy

 Advocates of democratic administration

criticize the bureaucratic state because it is:

 undemocratic
 elitist (and sexist, racist)
 secretive, alienating, oppressive to public
 rigid and unable to tap into the knowledge or
experience of frontline workers or the public
Undemocratic administration

 “Democracy is above all about popular rule,

equality, and active citizenship; yet the public
sector is organized as a hierarchical, quasi-
military chain of control, rules, and
regulations for the distribution of public goods
and services.” – Greg Albo
Control by experts

 “The modern state has depended, as a basic

operational rule, on monopolizing knowledge
in the hands of professional experts –
lawyers, doctors, social workers – who,
instead of contributing to independence and
choice, often control their ‘clients’ by fostering
dependence upon expertise.” – Greg Albo
What is Democratic Administration?

 According to Lorne Sossin:

The core value of democratic administration is

citizen empowerment.
Citizen empowerment

 Sossin argues that citizen empowerment

involves two related issues:

 ensuring the accountability of the state and

the bureaucracy to the public (not to upper
levels of the bureaucracy or cabinet)
 public participation in decision-making and
the implementation of government policies
and programs
Government by the people, for the
people
 “Democratic administration...raises the
fundamental question, namely, how to
transform people from the object into the
subject of government” – Lorne Sossin

 “Long-term improvement of service delivery is

contingent upon input from user groups”
– Greg Albo
Transforming the State
 What changes are needed?

 less secrecy in government, more openness and

transparency
 greater decentralization of decision-making and
service delivery
 less rigid structures and procedures, more flexibility
 new forms of public participation and public
overview (citizen boards, community groups, client
committees)
Engaging the Public
 Who is the public?
 What does public participation mean?

 Advocates of democratic administration recognize

inequalities within civil society (in money, education,
time, political efficacy).
 To facilitate public participation, the state must play
a role in funding organizations of disadvantaged
groups, organizing unrepresented interests and
seeking out the voices of the marginalized.
Organizing the Public

 “The task of democratic leaders and

administrators, the skill they have to learn, is
to encourage and facilitate the organization of
communities of identity and interest. This is
the sole way in which people who as
individuals are isolated and powerless can
develop collective power – which the process
of participation can then harness in
democratic decision-making” – Leo Panitch
Public participation

 There are indications that the public wants a

stronger role in decision-making.

 Charlottetown Accord referendum 1992

 BC Citizen’s Assembly on Electoral Reform
2004-05
Democratic Administration and
Participatory Democracy in Action
Mainstream attempts to develop more
democratic forms of public administration
have been very timid, limited and
contradictory.

 US “Great Society” and “War on Poverty”

programs in the 1960s
 Trudeau’s “Just Society” and “participatory
democracy” initiatives beginning in the late
60s
Democratic Administration and
Participatory Democracy in Action
Advocates of democratic administration have pointed
to a few isolated but celebrated examples (or small
islands) of democratic administration:

 Greater London Council (UK) early 1980s

developed a Popular Planning Unit
 Participatory Budget process (most notably in Porto
Alegre, Brazil beginning in 1989)
A new kind of public administration

“democratic administration posits a new ideal-

type of public administration, one that aims at
attachment rather than detachment,
relationships rather than isolation,
transparency rather than secrecy, flexibility
rather than rigidity.”

– Lorne Sossin
Customers, Clients or Citizens?

 How should students be perceived in their

role as recipients of public education?

 Customers, Clients or Citizens?