Reinventing administrative policies for the 1990s: administrative policy reform in Canada

To meet the management challenges of the 1990s, governments must fundamentally reexamine their approaches to administrative policy. In most governments, administrative policies, such as contracting, procurement, information technology, land and internal government services, are often dominated by management philosophies inherited from the 1960s and 1970s. Policies in these areas have often been shaped by a desire for detailed control, with little regard for the cost of these controls or their impact on service delivery or innovation. Governments today cannot afford administrative policies which do not balance the need for expenditure control with service delivery and innovation. The good news is that it can be done. Governments and businesses are under enormous pressures to reduce administrative costs, improve services, respond to the demands of an information society and to develop more innovative approaches to conducting business. As part of this transformation, the Federal Government in Canada found that its administrative policies were a major impediment to more efficient, service-oriented and innovative government. Recounts the story of how one organization in a central agency of the Government of Canada recognized the need for a dramatic change in its philosophy and approach to administrative policies, and accomplished those changes over a five-year period of phased implementation between 1988 and 1993.