Reinventing Government in Canada

Outline and assess the concept of “reinventing government”. What does it mean and what are its strengths and weaknesses? Does the reinvention thesis provide Canadian governments with a viable way to reform and restructure the nature and working of public administration in this country? Why or why not?

The reinventing government concept was best explained by two Americans, David Osborne and Ted Gaebler. They made this concept known across a wide popular audience and also enhanced the perceived legitimacy and popularity of this idea among government leaders. Basically this idea is a reformist concept where governments are seeking to adopt ten major reform initiatives. Osborne and Gaebler came up with ten principles of reinventing government that if embraced by governments and managers, could turn public sector managers into public sector entrepreneurs. The ten principles are: catalytic government, community owned government, competitive government, mission drive government, results oriented government, customer driven government, enterprising government, anticipatory government, decentralized government, and market oriented government.

Catalytic government (steering rather than rowing) is the role of government and management where they are to be proactive and innovative, not reactive and traditional. Instead of dealing with issues as they arise, governments are encourages to be catalytic. In order to help with governing and managing tasks, they should find new and creative ways to achieve public goals. They should deal with issues and problems by thinking outside the box and beyond standard action, thus finding new and better ways to address the matters. Their first action should be to “steer” rather than “row.” Instead of hav...

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...ovision of value. Keeping within the Canadian perspective Kernaghan, Marson, and Boris (2000) stress that the concepts embrace three approaches to public sector governance. They are the importance of reducing the role of the state in society; importance of restructuring and reforming the nature and working of government organizations; and the importance of improving management capabilities and practices within the public sector through participatory decision making and employee empowerment. Even though this is a good way to reform government, the choice depends on the degree of support within government for substantial change to its way of organizing and delivering public service. Most Canadian governments have been more moderate and centrist in their application of NPM approaches, stressing managerial reforms over the wholesale reinvention of government systems.