Rethinking E-Government:
Dilemmas of Public Service, Citizenship and Democracy in the
Digital Age
By
Graham Longford
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Studies
Trent University
glongford@sympatico.ca
For presentation to the Canadian Political Science Association Annual General Meeting,
Laval University, Quebec City, P.Q., May 27-29, 2001
Ironically, just as the dot-com craze of the late 1990s fizzles and e-commerce begins to
lose its lustre, a new buzzword has begun circulating among high tech seers, politicians,
bureaucrats, business leaders, and a handful of academics in Canada: e-government. The
concept of using new information and communications technologies (IT) - networked computers
and the Internet in particular - to make government services more affordable, convenient and
responsive, to “reengineer” internal administrative processes, and to enhance opportunities for
citizens to engage with their governments, has moved to centre stage in governments’ efforts to
restructure and reinvent themselves. Conceiving and implementing e-government in Canada
now commands the attention of the Prime Minister, provincial Premiers, deputy ministers,
public sector CIOs, legislators, and academics, not to mention IT hardware, software and
services industries1. Despite the giddy rhetoric of “digital democracy” often associated with
these discussions, however, the move toward e-government in some form is no mere passing
fad. Indeed, while the federal government’s ambitious Government On-Line (GOL) project was
only announced in 1999, governments in Canada have been leveraging IT to rationalize and
restructure administrative systems and service delivery for well over a decade now, as we shall
see. Egged on by technophilic legislators, think tanks, international organizations, and, of
course, the IT industry2Thus, while it would be premature to pass final judgement on egovernment in Canada at this stage, it is not too soon to begin to assess the fruits of public sector
1
For key public sector documents see, for example: Alcock, Reg, and Donald Lenihan, Opening the E-Government
File: Governing in the 21st Century, Ottawa: Centre for Collaborative Government, 2001; Canada, Government OnLine: Serving Canadians in a Digital World, http://www.gol-ged.gc.ca/pub/serv-can/serv-canpr_e.asp; Canada,
Speech from the Throne to Open the Second Session, Thirty-Sixth Parliament of Canada, October 12, 1999,
http://www.pco-bcp.gc.ca/throne99/throne1999_e.htm; Cappe, Mel, “Making Connections and Meeting the
Challenge: E-Government and the Public Service of Canada,” Notes for an Address by Mel Cappe, Clerk of the
Privy Council and Secretary to Cabinet, at the Assistant Deputy Ministers` Forum, Ottawa, May 3, 2000,
http://www.pco-bcp.gc.ca/ClerkSP-MC/adm-forum-2000_e.html; Industry Canada, Preparing Canada for a Digital
World: Final Report of the Information Highway Advisory Council, Ottawa: Industry Canada, 1997,
http://www.strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/ih1650e.html; Office of the Prime Minister, “Prime Minister Launches New
‘Canada Site’,” News Release, February 2, 2001, http://www.pm.gc.ca/default.asp?Language=E&Page=
newsroom&Sub=newsrelease&Doc=canadasite.20010202_e.html; Robillard, Lucienne, “Government On-Line:
Progress and the Challenges Ahead,” Speech by the President of the Treasury Board, Crossing Boundaries National
Conference, March 29, 2001, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/media/psdp/2001/0330_e.html. Important private sector and industry statements on e-government include, for example:
Boston Consulting Group (Canada), Fast Forward: Accelerating Canada`s Leadership in the Information
Economy, Report of the Canadian E-Business Opportunities Roundtable, Toronto: Boston Consulting Group
(Canada), 2000, p.41; and Information Technology Association of Canada, Electronic Government: The
Government of Canada as a Model Knowledge-based Enterprise, Mississauga: Information Technology
Association of Canada, 1999, p.3.
2
The Ottawa Citizen, “752 firns bid for federal billions: E-government project lifeline for tech sector,” April 18,
2001.
2
IT investment and IT-related restructuring over the last ten years in order to discern some of the
trends, issues, and problems likely to rise to prominence as e-government becomes a reality.
The work of assessing the political implications and effects of e-government for state
structures and citizen-government relations has scarcely begun in Canada. With a few
exceptions3, discussions of IT and its impact on government have been the preserve of public
administration specialists for the most part4. However, if, as its advocates suggest, e-government
entails the wholesale reinvention of government, then it should command the attention of all
students of Canadian politics. The growing significance of the issue was signaled to the
discipline by Roger Gibbins in his Presidential Address to the 2000 AGM of the Canadian
Political Science Association in Quebec City, in which he considered the implications of IT for
the future of Canadian federalism5. This paper strives to make a modest contribution to
expanding the discussion.
The federal government’s commitment to implementing e-government in Canada was
formally announced in the 1999 Speech from the Throne. In it, the government resolved to
become “a model user of information technology and the Internet” by 2004, and to become
“known around the world as the government most connected to its citizens, with Canadians able
to access all government information and services on-line at the time and place of their
choosing”6. In support of this plan, the GOL initiative was announced, allocating $160 million
over two years for the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the on-line delivery of
federal government information and services. Responsibility for overseeing the project rests
with the Treasury Board Secretariat through its CIO, Michelle d`Auray. According to its
proponents, the potential benefits of e-government to Canadian citizens are numerous,
including: more efficient, affordable and convenient “citizen-centred” service; greater access to
information regarding government services and programs; less confusing, horizontally
3
See, for example, the collection of essays in: Alexander, Cynthia, and Leslie Pal, eds., Digital Democracy: Policy
and Politics in the Wired World, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998.
4
See, for example: Bent, Stephen, Kenneth Kernaghan and D. Brian Marson, Innovations and Good Practices in
Single-Window Service, Ottawa, Canadian Centre for Management Development, 1999; Brown, David, “New
Information Technologies and Canadian Public Administration,” in Charih, Mohamed, and Arthur Daniels, eds.,
New Public Management and Public Administration in Canada, Ottawa: Institute of Public Administration of
Canada, 1997, pp.93-112; and Thomas, Paul, “The Future of Representative Democracy: The Impact of
Information Technology,” in Modernizing Governance: A Preliminary Exploration, Ottawa: Canadian Center for
Management Development, 2000, pp.52-109.
5
Gibbins, Roger, “Federalism in the Digital Age,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, XXXIII: 4 (December
2000) pp.667-689.
6
3
integrated “seamless” access to all branches and levels of government via “single-window”
access points such as web sites and 1-800 telephone centres; more transparent, accountable, and
responsive government; and greater opportunity for direct citizen input into and engagement
with the policy making process7. In part because numerous initiatives in electronic service
delivery (ESD) predated the e-government plan, the federal government has achieved numerous
successes already. For example, the Canada Site, an Internet portal to all federal web sites
giving one-stop access to electronic directories, program information, and frequently requested
forms, received 237 million hits for the year 1999-2000, with approximately 24,000 separate
pages viewed8. The Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, meanwhile, received over five
million electronically-filed T1 income tax returns in 2000, and a further 400,000 via the
Internet. The latter transactions, part of the agency’s Netfile pilot project, are virtually paperless,
and led to the reduction of the average return processing time to a mere two weeks. Finally,
through the web site of the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, it is now possible for
individuals filing for patents to conduct the entire process on-line. The same is true for those
seeking to incorporate a business9.
In spite of these noteworthy, and highly publicized, success stories, there are grounds for
reserving judgement on the extent to which e-government will deliver on its promise to reinvent
government and reinvigorate the relationship between government and citizens in Canada. By
looking at the previous ten years of government investment in IT, along with its relation to
public sector restructuring, I will argue that government efforts to date at leveraging IT to renew
itself have been narrowly focused on administrative rationalization, cost-cutting, and service
reform. While laudable at some level, such efforts reflect a relatively narrow view of egovernment which ignores IT’s potential to enhance opportunities for greater citizen
engagement with government and the policy making process. Secondly, the story behind the
putative gains in efficiency and service quality as a result of IT-related systems integration and
service delivery is more complex and ambiguous than meets the eye. Self-congratulatory
departmental studies and reports detailing service improvements as a result of ESD often fail to
acknowledge or capture the degree to which other regulatory and legislative moves by
7
Canada, Government On-Line: Serving Canadians in a Digital World, http://www.gol-ged.gc.ca/pub/servcan/serv-canpr_e.asp
8
Canada, Public Works and Government Services Canada Departmental; Performance Report 1999-2000, p.30.
9
Canada, Goverenment On-Line
4
government have left their clients substantively worse off. Human Resources Development
Canada (HRDC) offers a case in point, as we shall see, where departmental claims of improved
client service and satisfaction clearly failed to take into account the effect of EI reforms which
reduced client benefits while increasing insurance premiums. Only on the basis of the narrowest
possible definition of service quality can the claims of departments like HRDC by taken
seriously. The case of IT-related restructuring at HRDC is significant for our purposes in so far
as it was the locus of intensive IT-related restructuring in the mid-1990s and stands as a
harbinger of the e-government to come in Canada. Furthermore, claims regarding the costsavings achieved through IT investments need to regarded with a skeptical eye. While providing
more cost-effective and affordable government is often touted as one of the key benefits of egovernment, the true costs of IT investment are notoriously difficult to track and quantify, and
IT projects are chronically prone to cost overruns, delays, and outright failure. While IT
investment can be shown to produce certain kinds of cost-savings, particularly by reducing
labour costs, large IT projects in both the public and private sector have not traditionally been
aligned with fiscal prudence. Finally, the paper considers the degree to which the potential for egovernment to enhance democratic engagement, transparency, and accountability within Canada
is threatened or resisted by other features endemic to its political system, such as the
institutional concentration of policy and decision making power in the executive, and by other
trends associated with the reinvention of government, such as privatization and alternative
service delivery. Unless measures are taken to address these other aspects of governance in
Canada, e-government alone may produce little if any net gain for the quality of democracy.
Finally, the persistence of the so-called “digital divide,” itself a reflection of historically
recalcitrant cleavages within Canadian society, poses a significant problem for the inclusiveness
of any future system of e-government. There will be no quick technological fix to this and other
forms of inequality in Canada. The extent to which e-government will strengthen Canadian
democracy depends less on putting computers and modems in the hands of every citizen and
more on addressing the institutional, political, and socio-economic context in which these
technologies are deployed. Let us now trace the genesis of e-government in Canada by
examining the federal government`s investment in IT over the last decade.
5
The Origins of E-Government in Canada: IT and Public Service Restructuring from
Electronic Service Delivery to Government as a “Model User”
In spite of the relative novelty of the concept of e-government, the Canadian
government’s infatuation with IT dates back to the late 1980s. Indeed, rather than being seen as
a sudden novel initiative, projects like GOL are best understood as continuous with a surge in IT
investment by the federal government dating back to that time. The federal government in
Canada has been an enthusiastic adopter of new ITs since the mid-1980s at least. A Treasury
Board review of IT expenditure in the federal government between 1986-1992 revealed a strong
upward trend. IT investment grew at an average annual rate of 8% during the period, reaching a
sum exceeding $3 billion by 1993. This figure, which includes funds spent on goods, services,
and salaries of IT personnel, represented more than 10% of the government’s total operating
budget. The importance of IT investment is also reflected in procurement figures. Between 1986
and 1992 the federal government spent $11 billion on IT goods and services contracts. In 198990, data processing and computer equipment and services constituted the largest procurement
category in government, and by 1993 four out of the twenty-five top suppliers to government
were IT companies10. By 1993, these funds were being deployed across over 1200 programs and
services11. In its 1994 Annual Report, the Office of the Auditor General suggested that if all
government activity related to IT were consolidated into one department it would rank as the
fourth largest by budget, behind Finance, Human Resources Development, and National
Defense12. Since the time of the Treasury Board study, federal expenditures on ITs have
ballooned to as much as $5 billion in 2000, according to the Treasury Board Secretariat’s Chief
Information Officer (CIO) Michelle d’Auray13. Even this figure may be conservative in relation
to the total cost of such investment. Every purchase of IT goods carries future costs in
maintenance, training, and energy which can exceed initial outlays by up to 5 times, according
10
Canada, Powering Up: A Review and Analysis of Information Technology Expenditure Trends in the Canadian
Federal Government 1986-1992, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat Supply and Services Canada, March, 1993.
11
Canada, Powering Up, p.5.
12
Canada, 1994Report of the Auditor General of Canada: Reaping the Benefits and Managing the Risks,
http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/domino/reports.nsf/html/9408ce.html
13
Proceedings, The Subcommittee on Communications of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and
Communications, Issue 5 - Evidence, September 18, 2000.
http://www.parl.gc.ca/36/2/parlbus/commbus/senate/com-e/comm-e/05ev-e/html
6
to estimates14. Also omitted from the CIO’s official figure is the one-time cost of $1.9 billion
related to the government’s response to the Y2K problem15.
The main drivers behind this investment have been such imperatives as service
enhancement, administrative streamlining, controlling labour costs, and improving productivity.
To be more specific, the federal push to adopt and embrace IT across a wide range of programs,
functions, and services came about as a result of efforts to reform and renew the public service
of Canada in a manner consistent with the increasingly influential principles of the New Public
Management (NPM). Beginning in the early 1990s, partly in response to increasing levels of
public disaffection with governments in general, the federal government began to see the
potential for IT to provide more efficient, convenient, and cost-effective “citizen-centred”
services. Secondly, as levels of public indebtedness reached a peak in the same period, IT came
increasingly to be seen as offering governments the means to cut or control labour costs without
significantly reducing service. Such cost reduction was to be achieved, alongside other strategies
like devolution, privatization, and alternative service delivery (ASD), through savings in labour
costs due to automation, system integration, and the achievement of other efficiencies through
better information management. A final impetus to the federal government’s rapid conversion to
the use of IT came from the recommendations of Industry Canada’s Information Highway
Advisory Council (IHAC) which encouraged the federal government to become a "model user"
of IT in order to rationalize its own operations, stimulate innovation and investment, and shore
up public confidence in the infrastructure of the emerging digital economy.
Enthusiasm for IT within government began to grow in the late 1980s as a result, in part,
of the increasing influence among senior bureaucrats of the concepts, principles, and norms
associated with the New Public Management. NPM has become the dominant intellectual
paradigm among public administration professionals in Canada. As a departure from the terms
of traditional public administration, NPM entails a variety of conceptual, value, cultural, and
structural shifts, only a few of which we need touch on here. NPM reconceives the focus of the
public service from that of meeting the needs of citizens and their communities to one of
satisfying the demands of individual clients and customers. This new focus is reflected in the
changing vocabulary of the public service. Core commitments to the public interest, democracy,
14
15
Canada, Powering Up, p.12.
Canada, Proceedings, The Subcommittee on Communications.
7
social equity, and due process under the previous administrative philosophy have been displaced
by a neo-liberal and highly individualistic discourse which stresses service quality and “valueadded” for the customer, which in turn reflects a broader rethinking of government along the
lines of running a business. In general, the work of public servants under the NPM paradigm is
carried out within a frugal, streamlined, and increasingly marketized and decentralized
organization which sees itself as a business enterprise devoted to providing quality services to
customers at the lowest possible cost16. The rise of NPM thinking coincided with dramatic
developments in the field of IT, including the microcomputer, the ATM, and the Internet, and
the latter were rapidly assimilated to its agenda for civil service reform and restructuring.
The growing importance of IT to restructuring plans in the federal government was also
reflected in the government reorganization initiated by Prime Minister Kim Campbell in 1993,
which marked a watershed in the influence of NPM in public administration in Canada. As a
part of this larger effort to reorganize government departments, the position of Chief Informatics
Officer (CIO), later renamed the Chief Information Officer, was created within the Treasury
Board Secretariat and assigned the task of promoting the use of IT government-wide,
particularly in service delivery. With this new position, and the elevation of the CIO function to
separate Branch status within the Secretariat in 1996, the Treasury Board has since become the
central agency focal point for the use of IT in government restructuring to increase productivity
and reduce administration costs17. In 1994, the CIO committed to delivering $2 billion in
savings and cost avoidance by improving efficiency and reducing administrative overheads. One
of its more important government-wide projects, Shared Systems, was an initiative to promote
shared administrative and information systems across departments, functions, and levels of
government. The potential for cost-savings through a shared systems approach was recognized
before the 1993 restructuring, but the creating of the CIO office and supporting committees and
increasing awareness of the IM potential of computer networking breathed new life into the
project. Small wonder, given that at the time there existed dozens of administrative systems
across the federal government, including 60 personnel, 30 financial, and 30 materiel systems18.
Treasury Board also took responsibility for ensuring departments made strategic use of IT to
streamline the delivery of programmes and services. Within a few years the Treasury Board
Charih and Rouillard, “The New Public Management,” pp.31-36.
Brown, “New Information Technologies and Canadian Public Administration,” pp.101-102, 107.
18
Canada, 1996 Report of the Auditor General of Canada, September, Chapter 16, 16-67.
16
17
8
would take the lead in implementing more ambitious and complex projects, including
Government On-Line and its accompanying Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) initiative, as we
shall see. Treasury Board enthusiasm for IT as a lever for implementing organizational change
along the lines of NPM philosophy has been expressed quite explicitly by senior officials.
Writing in 1997, for example, David Brown, executive director of Information Policy at the
Secretariat acknowledged that:
“[t]he introduction of new information technologies in government has been closely linked
to the growing adoption of new public management. Distributed computing fits well with
efforts to de-layer organizations […] the new telecommunications environment, epitomized
by the Internet, has facilitated the move towards client-oriented service delivery, building
from call centres to the ‘electronic commerce’ vision of on-line, menu driven, self-service
by the public of government information and programmes.” 19
The degree of fit between NPM and new ITs was recognized early on, and has remained
a constant theme in public service reform in Canada throughout the 1990s. In a key Treasury
Board policy document from 1994, entitled Blueprint For Enhancing Governmment Services
Using Information Technology, IT was seen as the key to providing both better quality services
by offering more convenient access to them through a mix of delivery channels such as call
centres, self-serve kiosks, and Internet websites, and greater cost-effectiveness by cutting or
avoiding labour costs through automation and systems integration to eliminate duplication of
such tasks as data collection, storage, and retrieval20. Service quality and client satisfaction are
equated with such factors as convenience, reduced waiting and response times, and accuracy of
information received, all of which are amenable to IT enhancement. Finally, in so far as IT can
be used in various ways to streamline government operations and service delivery, thereby
reducing or avoiding overhead costs associated with more traditional channels, it follows that an
IT-enhanced public service will also be a smaller and leaner one. While few government
documents make such an explicit connection, NPM enthusiasm for IT must certainly be related
to the prospect of reducing the overall size of the public service and its associated costs by
replacing human infrastructures with technological ones. A very close fit, then, between the
concepts, values, and principles of NPM and the qualities of speed and accuracy intrinsic to IT
help explain the rapid adoption of the latter by governments under pressure to maintain and
improve performance while curtailing spending.
19
Brown, “New Information Technologies and Canadian Public Administration,” p.107.
9
While previous government initiatives on IT, including the Treasury Board Blueprint,
had always made some reference to the context of fiscal restraint, the advent of Program Review
in 1994 added further impetus to IT investment as a tool to restructure government. In response
to a looming debt crisis, Program Review was announced by the Minister of Finance, Paul
Martin, in February 1994, and involved a comprehensive review and “rethinking” of the federal
government’s role and responsibilities in the delivery of programs and services to Canadians in
response to a looming fiscal crisis. Under Program Review, the Minister of Finance called for
$17 billion in expenditure reductions over three years in order to meet the government’s deficit
target of 3% GDP by 1996-97. These reductions were to be achieved by streamlining
administrative processes and eliminating “non-essential” programs and services, along with
structural changes such as devolution, privatization, commercialization, and the proliferation of
alternative service delivery (ASD) schemes. Now, while the government stressed that the object
of Program Review was expenditure reduction and not necessarily reduction of the size of the
public service, the magnitude of expenditure reduction required made significant public service
job loss a virtual certainty. Indeed, over the four year period of Program Review, full-time
public service employment declined from 231,000 positions in 1994 to 186,314 by 1999, a
reduction of 45,000 positions representing almost 20% of the public service21.
IT investment was seen as a key factor in achieving the objectives of Program Review. It
was seen as enabling both the streamlining of government processes and the roll-out of assorted
experiments in alternative service delivery in order to achieve cost reductions. As a 1997
Treasury Board status report on Program Review put it: “There are many alternatives to
traditional departmental structures for delivering programs, and the government is vigorously
pursuing these alternatives. IT will continue to play a key role in the modernization process.
Canadians expect affordable, accessible, and responsive service […] The strategic use of IT
helps us meet these expectations…”22. It was also key to the government’s efforts to reduce
overall labour costs without compromising the quality and accessibility of its services, although
few documents acknowledge this explicitly. While advocates of Program Review seldom made
explicit the anticipated labour cost savings from IT investment, the connection seems evident.
20
Canada, Blueprint for Enhancing Government Services Using Information Technology, Treasury Board of
Canada Secretariat, Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1993
21
Canada, Employment Statistics for the Federal Public Service, April 1, 1998 to March 31, 1999, Treasury Board
of Canada Secretariat, Ottawa: Ministry of Public Works and Government Services Canada, 1999, p.8.
10
While a considerable amount of federal public sector job loss can be accounted for by structural
changes such as privatization and devolution, the majority occurred as a result of efforts to
streamline operations and programs from within various departments, efforts which included
significant initiatives involving IT. While it is difficult to establish a direct connection between
IT investment and public sector job loss, a number of suggestive patterns emerged over the
course of the last five years. Firstly, over the course of Program Review, overall federal
expenditures on IT-related activities rose from $3 billion to $5 billion, an increase of 66%.
During the period, government external expenditures on informatics services,
telecommunications and computer equipment, and computer software alone rose from $1.3
billion in 1994-95 to $1.7 billion in 1999-00, an increase of 32%. Total ministerial spending on
personnel costs declined, meanwhile, by 6% in the same period and full-time employment
dropped by 20%.
The correlation between IT investment and employment reduction is also reflected at the
departmental level, where departments such as Human Resources Development Canada
(HRDC) and Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC), which together
accounted for the majority of job reductions not related to privatization and devolution, engaged
in significant IT investment while simultaneously downsizing staff. HRDC external
expenditures on IT goods and services increased by 120% over the period, from $101 million in
1994-95 to $221 million in 1999-0023, while at the same time its personnel expenditures
declined from $1.4 billion to $1.2 billion, a drop of almost 15%, and its total employment
declined by 20.9%24. Similarly, IT-related external expenditures at PWGSC increased twofold
over the period, from $35.4 million in 1994-95 to a high of $77 million in 1998-9925, while job
reductions shed 32% of its permanent workforce for a payroll cost-savings of $200 million26.
Together, these two departments accounted for over $1.2 billion in spending on IT goods and
services, a figure which does not include internal expenditures for IT-related personnel, training,
and other indirect costs.
22
Ibid., p.11.
Canada, Public Accounts of Canada, 1994-95 to 1999-00.
24
Canada, Employment Statistics for the Federal Public Service: April 1, 1998, to March 31, 1999, Treasury Board
of Canada Secretariat, 1999, pp.62-63.
25
Canada, Public Accounts of Canada, 1994-95 to 1999-00.
26
Canada, Employment Statistics for the Federal Public Service: April 1, 1998, to March 31, 1999, pp.62-63.
23
11
While the above patterns are only suggestive of a relationship between IT investment
and public service job loss, a number of specific government initiatives were very explicit in
connecting the adoption of IT with reductions in employment. HRDC, for example, initiated
significant IT projects at the same time as it engaged in large staffing reductions. Faced with a
Program Review expenditure reduction target of $200 million, the equivalent of roughly 5,000
full-time equivalents (FTEs), HRDC embarked on a number of major projects in 1995 to
streamline and restructure operations. One area targeted for major restructuring was the
department’s network of service delivery channels, including local Canada Employment
Centres, Old Age Pension and Canada Pension Plan client offices, and Labour Canada offices,
call centres, and mail service centres. The department’s interactions with citizens involve a huge
volume of office visits, phone calls, correspondence, and financial transfers. As of 1998, HRDC
served 9 million Canadians per year, and handled 60-80 million telephone calls, and 100 million
items of correspondence27. Therefore, HRDC’s Service Delivery Network (SDN) was seen as a
major “cost centre”. Under the imperatives of Program Review, then, relying on traditional
channels of service delivery was not considered an option and HRDC’s proposed solution
involved transforming its SDN into an electronic service delivery network.
By 1998, much of HRDC’s new Electronic Service Delivery Network (ESDN) was in
place. Implementing the SDN involved significant new investment in IT and the automation and
consolidation of numerous operations. For example, HRDC closed or consolidated over half of
its local and regional front-line offices, from 800 in 1993 to 320 in 199828. HRDC plans
involved attempts to offset any potential service disruption with significant investments in IT.
Building on a 1992 project which automated HRDC’s job search assistance service through the
use of electronic self-service “JobBank” kiosks, the department introduced a new generation of
kiosks in 1996, through which citizens could file Employment Insurance (EI) applications and
find labour market information, in addition to accessing the JobBank. HRDC relied extensively
on this kiosk technology in the 1990s in order to meet staff reduction objectives. The 1992
JobBank kiosks replaced the work of 200 employees alone. The number of kiosks expanded
dramatically, from under 2000 in 1995 to over 5,000 by 199829, with 1500 being installed in
27
Canada, Human Resources Development Canada Departmental Performance Report 1998, S.2:3.
Canada, Human Resources Development Canada Departmental Performance Report 1998, S.3:2.
29
Ibid., S.2:3.
28
12
1996-97 alone30, and with proportionate job losses. At HRDC`s Niagara Area office, for
example, the workforce was reduced by 48% during the 1990s as a result of the introduction of
the ESDN, along with other management technologies31. At over 5,000 kiosks, HRDCs network
now rivals that of any of Canada’s major financial institutions and their battery of ATMs32. The
ESDN also required significant network infrastructure, including WANs, LANs, workstations,
and software. Over the same period, HRDC invested heavily in telecommunications to support a
network of telecentres, Interactive Voice Response systems, and its 1-800 toll free services33.
Implementing the Electronic Service Delivery Network called for substantial resources and
procurement. Over the course of four years, between 1995 and 1999, HRDC paid $167 million
to the prime contractor on the project, EDS Canada, for information services related to the
ESDN. This contract represented over 50% of the department’s IT services expenditures for the
period34. In terms of leveraging new IT investment in order to achieve Program Review
objectives, HRDCs ESDN initiative was highly successful35. The department’s employment
reduction goal of eliminating 5,000 FTEs was achieved within three years of the announcement
of Program Review, leading to annual departmental savings of $195 million in personnel costs.
Much of this savings was realized as a result of the implementation of the ESDN.
This example of IT-related restructuring at HRDC during the Program Review years
suggests a strong connection between IT investment and public service job loss, and conveys a
valuable lesson regarding the adjustment costs of IT-related restructuring in all workplaces.
While Program Review proponents made an effort to avoid explicitly acknowledging the
necessary job reductions by emphasizing the Review’s focus on expenditure reduction and
rethinking the scope of government, it was clear from the outset that reducing labour costs
substantially would require shedding rather than merely shuffling thousands of positions.
30
Canada, Human Resources Development Canada Departmental Performance Report 1997, S.3:41.
See: Loucks, Kenneth E., and Michael B. Robertson, “Empowerment and Workforce Adjustment in The Niagara
Area Office of Human Resources Development Canada,” in The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation
Journal, Innovation Case Sudy, http://www.innovation.cc/case_std/workforce.html. Accessed June 30, 2001.
32
Alexander, Cynthia, “Cents and Sensibility: The Emergence of e-government in Canada,” in Pal, L., ed., How
Ottawa Spends 2000-2001:Past Imperfect, Future Tense, Toronto: Oxford, 2000, p.197.
33
Canada, Human resources Development Canada Departmental Performance Report 1998, S.2:3.
34
Canada, Public Accounts of Canada, 1995 to 2000.
35
In terms of other kinds of criteria, including staff morale and relations between front-line workers and
management, however, the restructuring of HRDC clearly entailed its costs. A report on conditions in one area
office speaks of the atmosphere of “fear and mistruct” which developed as a result. See: Loucks and Robertson,
“Empowerment and Workforce Adjustment in The Niagara Area Office of Human Resources Development
Canada,” http://www.innovation.cc/case_std/workforce.html.
31
13
Between the technophilic Treasury Board Blueprint and the imperatives of Program Review, ITrelated job reductions in the federal public service became a virtual certainty. The difficulty of
disaggregating job losses directly attributable to IT initiatives from those due to other
management technologies, such a devolution and privatization should not be allowed to obscure
the obvious relationship. The potential advantages of this relationship were certainly not lost on
the federal government. The experience at HRDC suggests that more aggressive governmentwide initiatives in e-government will lead to further job cuts and their attendant labour
adjustment and unemployment impact.
In addition to a notable correlation between departmental investment in new IT and job
reductions, a discernable pattern also emerges with respect to IT investment and the reduction of
certain occupational categories in the public service. This pattern reveals troubling signs with
respect to the future occupational and gender profile of the public service in the context of egovernment. TB analyses of Program Review’s impact on the occupational mix within the
federal public service reveal that job losses were not evenly spread across scores of occupational
groups but, rather, concentrated in just four, which together accounted for more than half of all
reductions achieved under the Review: the Clerical and Regulatory (CR) and Secretarial,
Stenographic and Typing (ST) groups under the Administrative Support category, and the
General Services (GS) and General Labour and Trades (GL) groups under the Operational
category36. Reductions in the latter two groups are largely attributable to structural change,
including the transfer of Transport Canada’s Air Navigation System employee’s to the newly
created Nav Canada37. No such explanation is readily available to explain the precipitous
decline in employment in the CR and ST groups, which fell from 50,519 to 41,031 and from
8,931 to 4,827 positions respectively between 1995 and 199938. These reductions constituted a
19% drop in employment in the CR group and fully 46% in the ST group. Of the 3,835
departures from the Administrative Support category recorded in 1996-97, for example, only
492, or 12%, are accounted for by transfers as a result of devolution or privatization, well below
the 30% average across all occupational categories of39. While difficult to demonstrate directly,
it is likely that a significant amount of employment loss in the CR and ST groups is attributable
36
Canada, Employment Statistics in the Federal Public Service: April 1, 1988 to March 31, 1999, p.64.
Ibid., p.64.
38
Ibid., p.65.
37
14
to the introduction of new ITs, which both performed many tasks previously carried out
manually and increased the productivity of those employees remaining. Reducing the labour
costs associated with manually-intensive and repetitive administrative tasks through automation
was, after all, one of the key government objectives articulated in the Treasury Board’s 1994
Blueprint. Moreover, of all occupations potentially threatened by new ITs, the CR and ST
groups were among the most vulnerable. One of HRDC’s own studies, The Impact of EBusiness On Office Work, recognized as much40. According to the study, as administrators in the
public and private sectors turn to information technology, “some administrative occupations will
be […] significantly reduced or restructured.”41. Among the kinds of administrative functions
considered most vulnerable the study includes: payroll; purchasing; inventory; accounts payable
and receivable; and secretarial. The study concludes that much of the projected cost savings
from IT-related “e-business” applications in administration will be realized by overall job
reductions. The HRDC study, and others like it, shed light on the disproportionately high job
loss figures in the CR and ST occupational groups, and suggest that the introduction of new ITs
was an important factor.
It is also worth noting that while significant reductions were taking place in these
occupational groups, the Computer Systems Administration (CS) group was experiencing strong
growth. Total employment in this group grew by 36% between 1996 and 1999, from 7,673 to
10,408 positions, outpacing all other occupations. In fact, employment in the CS group
increased by 15% in 1998-99 alone42. This pattern of change in the occupational mix of the
public service has had distinct gender dimensions as well. Job reductions have fallen
disproportionately on women, who are over-represented in the CR and ST groups. Meanwhile,
women have been underrepresented in those IT-related occupations, like the CS group, which
have been experiencing growth. Currently, fully 70% of CS positions in the federal public
service are occupied by men. Women who separated from the public service under Program
Review have also been disproportionately exposed to greater employment uncertainty and
disruption than men. Other groups hard hit by the Review, such as the overwhelmingly male39
Canada, Employment Statistics in the Federal Public Service: April 1, 1996, to March 31, 1997, Ottawa:
Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 1997, pp.81-83.
40
Canada, The Impact of E-Business On Office Work, http://www.on.hrdcdrhc.gc.ca/english/lmi/eaid/occ.info/ebusReport/full_e.html
41
Ibid.
42
Canada, Employment Statistics in the Federal Public Service: April 1, 1998, to March 31, 1999, pp.3,27.
15
dominated General Services (GS) group, were transferred under structural reform to other
employers, whereas separated CR and ST employees found themselves on the open job market.
On the upside, as a result of these employment changes, the occupational make-up of Canada’s
public service has become “smarter” or more highly skilled, with positions of a scientific,
technical, or managerial nature comprising an increasing proportion of total positions43.
However, if current trends continue, gains in skill will be offset by diminished gender equity.
Based on the impact of IT investment on the occupational and gender make-up of the federal
public service over the last ten years, it appears that unless aggressive measures to recruit and
retain female IT professionals within the public service are undertaken, the implementation of egovernment poses a threat to employment gains in the public sector made by women over the
last few decades.
A final contributor to the federal government’s enthusiasm for IT-related restructuring
came from the above-mentioned Information Highway Advisory Council (IHAC), which
released a series of reports and recommendations on federal Information Highway policy
between 1995 and 1997, and whose influence on the direction of federal IT policy has been
significant. IHAC was the result of a government commitment to develop and implement a
Canadian strategy for the Information Highway pledged in its January 1994 Throne Speech. The
29-member Council, made up predominantly of senior business executives from the information
technology, telecommunications, and cultural industries in Canada, issued two major reports
containing recommendations concerning, inter alia, government adoption of IT in its own
operations and service delivery. Both reports, Connection, Community, Content: The Challenge
of the Information Highway44 (1995) and Preparing Canada for a Digital World: Final Report
of the Information Highway Advisory Council45 (1997), urged the federal government to “set an
example as a model user of communications and information technology” in order both to
improve and streamline its services and internal administration and to spur the development and
growth of the information highway throughout all aspects of Canadian economic and social
life46. The IHAC reports identified a number of ways in which IT investment could be used to
43
Ibid.
Canada, Connection, Community, Content: The Challenge of the Information Highway, Industry Canada, Ottawa:
Supply and Services Canada, 1995.
45
Canada, Preparing Canada for a Digital World: Final Report of the Information Highway Advisory Council,
1997, http://www.Strategis. ic.gc.ca?SSG/ih01650e.html
44
46
16
make government more “accessible, responsive and affordable” to Canadians47. IHAC
encouraged the federal government to expand electronic commerce initiatives, to accelerate the
development of electronic “single-window” access points to government information, programs
and services, and to improve service and government-wide coordination by taking advantage of
ICTs to develop “horizontal models” of service delivery which meet the common needs of
clients and departments48. The IHAC recommendations fell on receptive ears, not least because
the Council’s overall approach to the development of the Information Highway in general and to
the proper role of government jibed with both the principles of NPM and the practical
imperatives driving Program Review.
IHAC’s recommendation that the federal government become a “model user” of
information technology helped set the stage for the acceleration of IT-related initiatives in the
internal administration of the federal government. Buoyed by the success of initiatives
originating out of the Blueprint and Program Review, and urged on by IHAC, the federal
government embarked on an aggressive agenda to intensify and expand its reliance on electronic
service delivery. This intention was signaled in a number of key documents. In its official
response to IHAC’s first report49, Building the Information Society: Moving Canada Into the
21st Century, the government committed itself to the concept of government as a “model user”
of IT. The rationale offered at the time reflected the on-going influence of NPM principles and
Program Review imperatives. In a chapter tellingly entitled ‘Getting Government Right,’ the
document argues that:
“[t]he shift to provision of government services electronically will bring about a qualitative
improvement in the responsiveness and accessibility of government. The new technology
also promises to enhance the affordability of government, allowing it to do more for less
- an important consideration in these times of fiscal strain.”50
The October 1999 Speech from the Throne also announced a major new initiative, Government
On-Line, according to which the federal government committed to becoming the most
electronically connected government in the world to its citizens51. Building on existing
government IT infrastructure and ESD initiatives, the Treasury Board and its CIO were
47
Ibid., Chapter 8.
Ibid., Chapter 8.
49
Canada, Building the Information Society: Moving Canada Into the 21 st Century, Ottawa: Supply and Services
Canada, 1996.
50
Ibid.
48
17
mandated to ensure that the main objective of Government On-Line, to make ESD the dominant
mode of interaction between government and citizens, was met by 2004. Since originally being
announced in 1999, GOL has received over $280 million in funding52.
The federal government has since launched initiatives across a broad range of services
and programs designed to deliver e-government to Canadians. A shortlist of such projects and
pilots would include:
- PWGSC’s Canada Site: a single-window Internet gateway to federal web sites,
directories, and frequently requested forms and publications. The site currently
receives approximately 237 million hits annually.
- Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA): “paperless” E-file and Net-file
allow tax filers to submit T1s electronically. Currently used by 5.5 million
Canadians.
- Industry Canada’s “Strategis” web site offers single-window Internet gateway
access to information, programs, and services to Canada businesses.
- Canadian Intellectual Property Office: maintains a web site allowing on-line
patent application and approval
- Statistics Canada: on-line access to government statistical data base and
analysis, and commercial sale of “value-added” information products.
- Industry Canada Investment Review: allows electronic filing of information
requested as a result of the Investment Canada Act.
- Industry Canada Spectrum Internet Auction: electronic auction over the Internet
of licenses for radio frequency spectrum.
- Human Resources Development Canada: Internet transmission of Record of
Employment (ROE) forms from employers.
- Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat: oversees the development of a Public
Key Infrastructure (PKI) to provide network security, including authentication,
confidentiality, and integrity to enable secure electronic government.
- Foreign Affairs and International Trade: Consular services provides web based
51
Canada, Government On-Line: Serving Canadians in a Digital World. http://www.gol-ged.gc.ca/pub/servcan/serv-canpr_e.asp.
52
Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, “Government On-Line: Progress and the Challenges Ahead,” Speech by
Lucienne Robillard, President of the Treasury Board, March 29, 2001, http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/media/psdp/2001/0330_e.html
18
travel information, country conditions, and travel warnings and advisories.
- Health Canada’s Canada Health Network: an Internet database of health information
with access to information on over 1,000 topics.
To complement these initiatives the government of Canada has also renewed its commitment to
its Connecting Canadians initiative, designed to develop and increase citizen access to the
information highway infrastructure by supporting the construction and expansion of network
hardware and bandwidth and connecting thousands of schools and libraries to the Internet.
Designating on-line service delivery as its preferred mode of doing business with its citizens has
obliged the federal government to take steps to ensure they actually have reasonably convenient
and affordable access to the network. Along with on-going efforts to leverage IT to reduce
internal administration costs, GOL and the Connecting Canadians project will ensure that the
federal government’s enthusiasm and appetite for IT will remain strong for the foreseeable
future.
Net Gains? Rethinking E-Government in Canada
Tracing the genesis of e-government in Canada back to its roots in the agenda of public
sector restructuring driven by NPM philosophy, the fiscal imperatives of Program Review, and
IHAC`s corporate worldview of the development of the information society reveals a great deal
about the limits of the government’s progress toward e-government, as well as flaws in the
argument that e-government results in more cost-effective and improved programs and services
to citizens. As it stands, e-government in Canada has been implemented within a framework
privileging the use of IT for administrative rationalization, cost control, and narrowly defined
service improvements. In addition, claims that IT investment in program and service delivery
have improved the quality of government services to citizens are, in some cases, justifiable only
on the basis of the exceedingly narrow definitions of service and citizenship implied by the
NPM analogy of citizens as consumers, which focuses on quantitative service criteria such as
waiting times and claims processing speeds. While laudable achievements, the understanding of
service and citizenship at the heart of NPM-inspired initiatives in ESD is an impoverished one
which often ignores the ways in which both service and citizenship have been eroded and
undermined in more substantive terms by policies adopted by precisely those departments
19
claiming improved service performance. In other words, the mere presence of ESD and other
mechanisms of e-government is no guarantee of meaningful net gains in service, especially of
the substance of state policies and programs leaves citizens/clients worse off. This point can be
dramatically illustrated by returning to the case of HRDC, which we shall do below.
Firstly, let me take up the argument regarding the limited nature of the federal
government`s venture into e-government thus far. According to Alcock and Lenihan, the
discussion and implementation of e-government in Canada can be framed within a number of
more or less expansive visions53. The first, and most narrow and conservative, view focuses on
the use of IT to improve the quality and efficiency of government programs and services
through automation, ESD, and the clustering of services via one-stop ¨single-window¨access
points. A second view endorses the application of sophisticated IT and information management
(IM) systems to all aspects of internal administration and policy making within government. In
this view of e-government as “smart” or “networked” government, governments exploit the
increasing data collection, processing, and systems integration capabilities of IT in order to
facilitate information sharing and communication across departmental and jurisdictional
boundaries and to more accurately track economic and social trends, thus allowing governments
to devise better policies and programs. While each of these two visions has more or less
significant implications for the nature and structure of government, they share a focus on the use
of IT to restructure government internally, by facilitating the development of clustered services
and a more holistic approach to public administration and program development. What these
visions tend to ignore are the possibilities for e-government to transform government in terms of
its external interface with citizens by making it more transparent, open, and accountable54. This
model of e-government as some form of “digital democracy” envisions the use of IT to improve
upon the quality and availability of information accessible to citizens, as well as mechanisms for
empowering citizens by increasing their input into policy discussions and policy making. In its
most radical form, this vision might eventually entail electronic direct democracy via Internetbased voting or deliberative polling by governments, political parties, and other groups.
Now, judged on the basis of these various visions of e-government, it is clear that the
federal government’s IT investment in general and the GOL initiative in particular have been
53
Alcock and Lenihan, Opening the E-Government File, p.9.
I am indebted to Alcock and Lenihan for this distinction. See Alcock and Lenihan, Opening the E-Government
File, p.10.
54
20
framed overwhelmingly within the confines of the first two, which focus on the internal impact
of IT on the structure and administration of government. The Service Delivery Network project
at HRDC and Treasury Board’s Shared Systems initiative are exemplary in this regard. Most of
the IT-related initiatives discussed above had as their primary objective the rationalization of
scarce resources and the reduction of labour costs in response to the imperatives of Program
Review. The federal public service’s commitment to service improvement was genuine, but it
often looked to IT-related experiments in ESD as part of a rearguard action to preserve service
levels in the face of budget cuts. In any event, there is very little sentiment regarding
transparency, accountability, or citizen empowerment of the sort found in the latter visions of egovernment described by Alcock and Lenihan. Assuming that the kind of democratic
empowerment, if not necessarily Internet voting, envisioned in the “digital democracy” model is
desirable, the Government of Canada’s e-government initiatives fall well short of such ideals.
We will return to the question of the prospects for e-government to enhance the quality of
Canadian democracy farther below.
To be fair, IT-related restructuring and other initiatives in e-government must be
evaluated on their own terms as well. In other words the federal government’s IT-related
initiatives, including those described above, need to be judged in terms of how successful they
have been in meeting their stated objectives of making programs and services more costeffective and improving the overall quality of service delivery. As we shall find, the potential
for e-government to deliver fiscally prudent administration and high-quality public services is
far from guaranteed. Considering the federal government’s massive commitment to integrating
ITs into its own operations and service delivery, it warrants investigating the extent to which
this commitment has been consistent with the kind of tendencies the federal government alleges
are inherent in the technology. In other words, has IT-related public service restructuring
enhanced the quality and responsiveness of public services and ensured the affordability of
government programs.
Prominent in the philosophy of NPM which, as we have seen, informs a great deal of IT
investment in Canadian public administration, is a concern with improving the “quality” of
government services to citizens by making them more accessible, responsive, and affordable.
The implementation of NPM principles has also entailed a transformation in the conception of
the relationship between government and citizens using various market analogies. Against the
21
conception of citizenship dominant in Canada during the Keynesian postwar period, in which
citizenship entailed collective entitlements to social rights and the state was seen as the guardian
and purveyor of various “public goods,” the NPM conceives citizens as “clients” and
“customers” of services, and as “taxpayers” who foot the bill. In such capacities, citizens are
conceived as market actors seeking the most cost-effective responses to their needs. For its part,
the state’s role is confined to that of efficiently managing a more tightly circumscribed set of
services, with a focus on efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Much has been written on the
implications of NPM public sector restructuring for the nature of citizenship in Canada. A
number of commentators and critics have argued persuasively that the NPM’s tendency to
marketize citizen/state relationships leads to a confused and impoverished conception of the
citizen55. We need not recapitulate these arguments here. Rather, I want to suggest that ITrelated initiatives in the public sphere aimed at restructuring government and the delivery of
services and programs threaten to perpetuate the confusion and entrench inapt market models
for relations between government and citizens. Again, the case of IT-related public service
restructuring at HRDC is instructive.
By its own account, HRDC has made significant strides in the last half decade in
improving the quality of service delivery to its clients. It has adopted a Quality Assurance
statement articulating a set of national service standards which its clients can expect to see met.
According to its Service Commitment, HRDC promises clients “courteous and considerate
treatment,” “complete and accurate information,” reduced “waiting times” to speak with client
services officers, and set maximum intervals ranging from 28 to 35 days between the time a
benefit claim is submitted and the first payment is received56. By its own account, due in no
small measure to IT-related enhancement of its service delivery network, the department has
See, for example: Brodie, Janine, “Restructuring and the New Citizenship,” in Bakker, Isabella, ed., Rethinking
Restructuring: Gender and Change in Canada, Toronto: U of T Press, 1996, p.130; Gow, James Iain, ¨Frauds and
victims: some difficulties in applying the notion of service to the clientele in the public sector,¨ Canadian Public
Administration, Volume 38, No. 4 (Winter) pp.557-577; Jenson, Jane, and Martin Papillon, ¨The Changing
Boundaries of Citizenship: A Review and a Research Agenda,¨ in Modernizing Governance: A Preliminary
Exploration, Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Management Development, 2000, pp.1-51; Petrozzi, Wayne, “Some
Reflections on the (Un)Scientific Nature of the New Public Management,” in Barrows, David and H. Ian
Macdonald, eds., The New Public Management: International Developments, North York: Captus Press, 200,
pp.129-146.; Pierre, Jon, “The Marketization of the State: Citizens, Consumers, and the Emergence of the Public
Market,” in Pters, Guy, and Donal Savoie, eds., Governance in a Changing Environment, Ottawa, Canadian Centre
for Management Development, 1995, pp.55-81; Shields, Jon, and B. Mitchell Evans, Shrinking the State:
Globalization and Public Administration `Reform`, Halifax: Fernwood, 1998, pp.79-81. also Pierre, Peters, Savoie,
Brodie.
55
22
succeeded in meeting its service delivery improvement goals. HRDC reported, for example, that
in 1998-99 fully 95.5% of first benefit cheques were paid to clients within the 28 day target
period, an improvement of 3% over 1997-98. In addition, call centre clients accessing the
department’s voice automated enquiry system got through 99.5% of the time without a busy
signal, up from 98.6% the previous year57. On the face of it , then, HRDC appears justified in its
claim that providing high quality service to its clients is a key departmental priority. When the
quality of programs and services is measured strictly in terms of such criteria as telephone
waiting times, claims processing speeds, or Internet site “page views” the success of HRDC’s
initiatives is difficult to dispute58. But the department’s narrow emphasis on addressing the
“service gap” for its clients obscures the ways in which much of the substantive content of
HRDC policy failed many clients and other Canadian citizens during the very same period.
Effective July 1, 1996, as we know, the federal government replaced the Unemployment
Insurance Act with a new Employment Insurance Act. The new legislation tightened eligibility
criteria, reduced the level and duration of benefits, and penalized repeat claimants. While the
legislative changes extended coverage to some part-time workers formerly excluded from
benefits, the major effect of the new Act was to reduce the number of Canadian workers eligible
for benefits and to reduce the benefits paid to those who qualified. As a result of the
Employment Insurance Act, the percentage of officially unemployed Canadians eligible for EI
benefits fell to 50%, a drop from 87% as recently as 1989, and from 64% at the time the
Liberals assumed office59. Benefits, meanwhile, decreased in duration and fell from 66.6% to as
little as 52% of insurable earnings60. In addition, the burden of the legislative changes fell
disproportionately upon women and young workers, the groups most negatively affected by the
56
Canada, Human Resources Development Canada Departmental Performance Report 1998-99, p.6.
Ibid., p.28.
58
A recent review of these claims by the Auditor General casts some doubt on the magnitude of the improvement.
An obsession with increasing the speed of transactions at a number of sites examined in the audit led to a
corresponding decrease in the accuracy of payments. See: Canada, 2000 Report of the Auditor General of Canada:
Human Resources Development Canada - Service Quality at the Local level, April 2000, http://www.oagbvg.gc.ca/domino/reports.nsf/html/0002ce.html. Furthermore, an internal audit of the department in 1999 revealed a
number of ways in which service quality was threatened or diminished, including employee burn-out and low
morale, growing numbers of EI appeals, and an overemphasis on achieving quantitative service targets at the
expense of less tangible or measurable ones. See: Internal Audit Bureau, Final Report: Review on Capacity to
Deliver HRDC`s Programs and Services, Project #405/98, April 1999, Ottawa: Human Resources Development
Canada, 1999, http://www.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/fas-sfa/iab-bvi/menu/tab04.shtml
59
Battle, Ken, “Transformation: Canadian Social Policy Since 1985,” paper presented to the 92nd Annual Meeting
of the American Sociological Association, Toronto, August, 1997, p.22.
57
23
reforms. Meanwhile, EI premium increases swelled the EI surplus to an estimated $19 billion,
and established the premiums as the federal government’s second-largest revenue stream,
second only to personal income taxes61. In light of these substantive changes to unemployment
insurance benefits, under only the narrowest and most impoverished understanding of service
quality can HRDC still be seen as having succeeded in improving the quality of its programs
and services to the unemployed. Many workers found themselves ineligible to receive benefits
despite having made premium contributions, while the remaining claimants who qualified found
their benefits reduced. For many citizens, in effect, improved service at HRDC amounted simply
to having their EI benefit claims rejected faster. These legislative changes make a mockery of
HRDCs commitment to satisfying the needs and expectations of its clients. The ambiguities and
tensions at the heart of so-called “citizen-centred” service delivery reform at HRDC offer a
perfect illustration of the confusions introduced by such reforms in general. As Petrozzi argues:
“The underlying assumption of customer-centred delivery is that customers’ preferences drive
the organization. What if customers’ preferences differ from those of political leaders? Which
are to take precedence? If the mantra of customer satisfaction is to be taken seriously by
local managers and staff, who conclude their own positions depend upon satisfying consumer
demand - a demand which may not entirely coincide with that of political leaders - what is
to take precedence[,] political accountability or satisfying the customer.”62
The HRDC case begs the question of who the real clients of these HRDC policies were: benefit
recipients, or the Cabinet ministers, fiscally conservative voters, and financial markets to whom
such policies appealed? The department’s focus on addressing the “service gap” in terms of
waiting and claims processing times are laudable at some level, but fundamentally ignore the
substantive question of the “income gap” and the “social deficit,” in the form of increased
economic inequality and hardship suffered by HRDC clients and former clients, to which its
own policies contributed significantly. The events at HRDC illustrate the dangers of allowing
enthusiasm for IT-related and other service improvements to clients to obscure the substantive
impact of public policies on clients as citizens.
The HRDC experience also renders dubious the claims made by advocates of IT-related
public service restructuring that it will enrich and humanize the delivery of government
60
McBride, Stephen, and John Shields, Dismantling a Nation: The Transition to Corporate Rule in Canada,
Halifax: Fernwood, 1997, p.96.
61
Battle, “Transformations: Canadian Social Policy Since 1985,” p.23.
62
Petrozzi, “Some Reflections on the (Un)Scientific Nature of the New Public Management,” pp.133-134.
24
programs and services. The dominant form of citizen-government interaction envisioned by
advocates of e-government is modeled on e-commerce, that is, highly automated and impersonal
commercial transactions such as information searches, payments, and direct deposits. This
model is a curious choice, it warrants mentioning, given that consumers themselves have
remained skeptical63. In addition, the rhetoric of using ITs to enrich and humanize citizengovernment relations is belied by the underlying logic of rationalization driving IT investment
by government. The Treasury Board Blueprint, for example, called explicitly for the use of ITs
to eliminate as much human intervention as possible from the operations of government. Here
again, the HRDC experience is indicative of the trend; what was witnessed here was the largescale substitution of technological infrastructure in place of a human one. An explicit goal of ITrelated restructuring here was to eliminate as many face-to-face interactions as possible between
HRDC clients and staff, through office closures and consolidations and the introduction of selfservice kiosks in particular, and to reduce the amount of time spent with each client in situations
calling for direct contact64 Presently, HRDC is exploring technology to automate standard EI
claims adjudication, with the prospect that future claims will not only be rejected faster, but with
no human intervention whatsoever. Now, none of this is to romanticize traditional in-person
service delivery, but initiatives like these threaten to exacerbate what service, as well as social
and democratic, deficits currently existing in Canada.
One of the most common and seductive arguments on behalf of e-government is that
investment in IT will reduce the costs of public sector administration and service delivery.
Aggressive IT-investment, the argument goes, enables government-wide systems integration
and process automation, rationalizes service delivery, and boosts the productivity of personnel,
resulting in reduced labour costs. Events at HRDC would appear to confirm such claims.
63
Hesitation to embrace e-commerce is reflected in recent statistics on Internet shopping in Canada. In 1999,
domestic retail transactions over the Internet were valued at $417 million, or less than .1% of the $570 billion in
personal expenditure for the year. A mere 5% of Canadian households reported making an on-line payment in 1999,
and a majority of all Internet users express concern over privacy and security issues related to such transactions.
See: Ellison, Jonathan, Louise Earl, and Stacie Ogg, “Internet Shopping In Canada,” Connectedness Series #3,
Statistics Canada, Ottawa: Minister of Industry, 2001. The hope for increased on-line government service delivery
may lie in the fact that, whereas retail consumers may well miss the sensual and tactile dimensions of shopping
(which on-line shopping has yet to reproduce), few patrons of government service will be nostalgic for the line-ups
and crowded waiting rooms associated with traditional, in-person service delivery. Indeed, by consistently draining
resources from traditional channels of service delivery, increasing the inconvenience of accessing them,
governments themselves can foster the demand for on-line services, at least on the part of those with access to
them.
25
However, despite the connection that can be made between IT investment and reduced labour
costs in this and other examples, it is a mistake to automatically identify IT investment with
fiscal prudence. Firstly, as we have seen, recent investments in IT by the federal government
have not been cheap. Officially, the federal government’s annual bill for IT hardware, software
services, training and personnel is approximately $5 billion. In the case of HRDC’s ESDN
project, for example, EDS Canada, the prime contractor, billed the department $65 million for
information services in one year alone. June of 2001 saw a bevy of major IT spending
announcements. In the month, EDS and the Bank of Canada inked a 9 year, $400 million
systems administration services outsourcing contract65, HRDC awarded a $48 million contract
to Sprint Canada Inc. to develop a virtual contact centre, and the federal government finally
announced the long-delayed awarding of a $57 million contract for the design and
implementation of the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) project to build the secure channel for
on-line government services66. The GOL project, meanwhile, carries with it the additional cost
of as much as $4 billion to ensure universal high speed access to the Internet67. Disturbingly,
such figures routinely fail to acknowledge or factor in an assortment of other indirect and hidden
costs associated with the initial investment, including maintenance, training, energy, and initial
losses of productivity as users adapt to new systems. Estimates of the true cost of an IT
investment range from two to five times the original outlay, as we have seen. Bearing this in
mind, the Treasury Board estimate of $5 billion in annual IT spending may well be very
conservative, if not misleading. Moreover, as the Auditor General has indicated in a number of
recent audits of the federal government’s management of IT projects over the last decade,
financial management and auditing practices associated with such projects are flawed, such that
records of project costs are often unreliable, casting doubt on whether or not savings objectives
are in fact being met. In his 1996 audit of the Treasury Board’s role as a focal point for
government-wide IT projects, the Auditor General chastised the Treasury Board Secretariat for
failing to adequately “assess the costs of investments against their expected benefits to the
Loucks and Robertson, “Empowerment and Workforce Adjustment in the Niagara Area Office of Human
Resources Development Canada, http://www.innovation.cc/case_std/workforce.html
65
Bank of Canada, “Bank of Canada awards contract for outsourcing of retail debt systems and operations
support,” Press release, June 27, 2001, http://www.bankofcanada.ca/en/press/pr01-13.html, accessed June 27, 2001.
See also: “EDS Looks at major deal,” The Globe and Mail, March 13, 2001.
66
“BCE Nexxia to build Ottawa’s Internet link,” National Post, June 7, 2001.
64
26
government as a whole” and for “a general lack of focus on measuring results and providing
information on outcomes”68. In 2000, the Auditor General reported that the Treasury Board
Secretariat was still unable to produce reliable figures on government-wide IT-related
expenditures69.
More disturbingly, research on IT spending in the public and private sectors both in
Canada and abroad reveals that large IT projects, especially those of the scope and complexity
of a project like GOL, have a dismal record of mismanagement, cost overruns, delays, and
outright failures. Research by the Standish Group has revealed a stunning record of poor
performance for major IT projects. According a 1995 report, 31% of projects are cancelled
before completion; 53% of projects cost 189% of their original estimate; and a mere 16% of
projects are completed on-time and on-budget. For the largest projects, the news is even worse,
with a successful completion rate of only 9%70. The report cites, as examples, the experiences of
the California Department of Motor Vehicles and American Airlines, each of which had to
cancel large IT projects at a cost of $45 million and $165 million, respectively. More recently,
corporate giants such as Nike and Hershey have been bitten by the IT-failure bug71. The news
from the public sector is no more encouraging. In its 2001 High Risk Series Update, the U.S.
General Accounting Office identified 3 major federal IT projects on its list of 22 “high risk”
programs and projects, including the Federal Aviation Administration’s estimated $45 billion
(U.S.) Air Traffic Control System modernization, the Internal Revenue Service’s $477 million
(U.S.) systems modernization, and the Department of Defense’s entire $20 billion (U.S.) annual
IT budget72. In the United Kingdom, the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts has
investigated over two dozen major government IT projects since 1990 which have either failed
or experienced significant delays and cost overruns, including the National Insurance Recording
67
Industry Canada, The New National Dream: Networking the Nation for Broadband Access, Report of the
National Broadband Task Force, Executive Summary, http://broadband.gc.ca/Broadbanddocument/english/executive_summary.html, accessed July 3, 2001.
68
Canada, 1996 Report of the Auditor General of Canada: Treasury Board Secretariat, Renewing Government
Services Using Information Technology, September 2000, (16.17, 16.87) http://www.oagbvg.gc.ca/domino/reports.nsf/html/9616ce.html
69
Canada, 2000 Report of the Auditor General of Canada: Information Technology, Acquisition of Goods and
Services, Chapter 23, December 2000, (23.22) http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/domino/reports.nsf/html/0023ce.html
70
The Standish Group, Chaos: The Standish Group Report, The Standish Group, 1995, http://www.scs.carleton.ca/beau/PM/Standish-Report.html
71
72
United States General Accounting Office, High-Risk Series: An Update, GAO-01-263, January 2001, pp.10, 2730, 112, http://www.gao.gov/
27
System debacle, which resulted in the delay or underpayment of social security benefit
payments to hundreds of thousands of elderly and disabled clients and the subsequent payment
of millions of pounds in compensation73. The Canadian experience more or less replicates and
confirms these findings. In 1995, the Office of the Auditor General reported on its audit of four
major IT systems projects under development within the federal government, representing a
combined investment of $500 million74. Of the four projects, only one was deemed headed for
success. Of the other three, one was soon cancelled, one produced a system that was
significantly underutilized, while another was deemed at high risk of failure75. According to the
Auditor General`s findings, IT project management difficulties such as cost overruns, time
delays, and other risks increased with the size and complexity of the project. In response to the
findings of the Auditor General and the Standish Group, the Treasury Board Secretariat
conducted its own review of large IT projects and came up with similar findings. In response, it
developed and released its Enhanced Framework for the Management of IT Projects in 1996.
Nevertheless, large IT projects in the federal government continue to experience difficulties.
Ironically, one problem project has been HRDC`s Electronic Service Delivery Network, further
development of which was suspended in 1999 as a result of a third-party risk assessment
report76. Management problems also surfaced recently at Industry Canada`s Connecting
Canadians program, where dozens of managers had their spending authorities suspended over
allegations of mismanagement77. The downside risks of large IT projects to the private as well
as the public sector were dramatically illustrated by the announcement in January 2000 by
Sobeys Inc., a major Canadian grocer, that it was abandoning a massive database project in
which it had invested years of effort and $90 million78. Clearly, then, despite efforts to improve
management systems for IT projects, the GOL initiative itself remains at risk due to its size,
73
Committee of Public Accounts, First Report: Improving the Delivery of Government IT Projects, 5 January,
2000, 1999-2000 Session, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmpubacc/65/6502.htm
74
Canada, 1995 Report of the Auditor General of Canada: Systems Under Development, Managing the Risks,
Chapter 12, October 1995, http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/domino/reports.nsf/html/9512ce.html
75
Canada, 1995 Report of the Auditor General of Canada: Systems Under Development, Chapter 12, October,
http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/domino/reports.nsf/html/9512ce.html
76
Human Resources Development Canada, Departmental Performance Report: 1999-2000
77
National Post, Fall 2000, also CBC Radio One, Jun 12, 2001.
78
¨Software hangover staggers Sobeys stock after $89M computer system problem,¨ The National Post, January 25,
2001.
28
scope and complexity. Indeed, along with the PKI project to support it, GOL itself has
experienced delays79.
As the above ought to make clear, then, even when judged on the basis of certain
principles of fiscal prudence, e-government may not deliver the goods. Advocates of egovernment consistently assert that IT investment in restructuring government programs and
services makes these more cost-effective and affordable. However, while on the face of it such
investment can be shown to cut certain costs - labour costs in particular - it should not be
equated with sound financial or project management. As the numerous cases cited above have
shown, while IT investment may produce cost reductions of a sort, it has by no means
contributed to a qualitative improvement in government spending. Spending less and spending
smart are not the same thing. Furthermore, IT investments entail other kinds of hidden and
indirect costs not captured by current auditing practices within government, not to mention the
risks of project failure, which may significantly offset savings produced by the original
investment. Indeed, the seemingly inextricable link between large IT projects and high rates of
project failure suggest that e-government may be its own worst enemy. A recent OECD policy
brief, entitled “The Hidden Threat to E-Government: Avoiding large government IT failures,”
suggests as much. According to the OECD’s findings, “[t]he inability of governments to manage
large public IT projects threatens to undermine efforts to implement e-government […] unless
governments learn to manage the risks connected with large IT projects, these e-dreams will
turn into global nightmares.”80
Finally, contemplating the prospects for e-government in Canada calls for consideration
of the likely impact of efforts on the part of governments and other actors to deploy IT to
democratically empower citizens. According to Alcock and Lenihan, advocates of a more
expansive vision and implementation of e-government for Canada see it as “a huge opportunity
to strengthen commitments to values of transparency, openness and accountability” as well as
“vastly increasing government’s capacity to dialogue with citizens” and to “create new
opportunities for involving citizens in deliberative exercises that influence the policy process
79
See for example: ¨Bureaucrat v bureaucrat: Canada`s CIO plods along to get services on-line,¨ The National Post,
February 16, 2001; and “Tendering delays cramp federal plan,” The Globe and Mail, January 28, 2000.
80
OECD, “The Hidden Threat to E-Government: Avoiding large government IT failures,” PUMA Policy Brief No.
8, Paris: OECD, March 2001, p.1.
29
and ultimately decision making.”81 While there is much to be said for maximizing the
availability of government information and as well as channels for communicating with
politicians in order to increase transparency, accountability, and participation in government,
such expectations of e-government technologies overstate their transformative capacity and
underestimate the obstacles to enhancing the quality and participatory nature of Canadian
democracy posed by endemic structural features of the political system, the effects of neoconservative public policy and public sector restructuring, and the recalcitrant, multiple
inequalities cross-cutting the social fabric of Canada. As Thomas has argued recently, “[w]ider,
deeper, more subtle and probably more powerful forces than the dazzling array of new
technologies are affecting how democracy is perceived, understood, and practiced by citizens
and public officials.”82 Let us call these Canada`s democratic deficits. The democratizing
potential of e-government will be severely constrained in the absence of meaningful efforts to
overcome them.
Among the many structural features of Canada`s political system identified by Thomas
as posing a challenge to the democratizing potential of IT is the enormous concentration of
policy making and decision making power in the political executive83. This concentration of
power, which was the subject of Donald Savoie`s recent book, Governing From the Centre,
appears to be increasing as a result of a number of factors, including time constraints, the media,
and globalization84. Governments in Canada still routinely announce new policies and
initiatives, often involving hundreds of millions of dollars in public expenditure, with little or no
public input, and often in spite of it. The recent announcement of a new private school education
tax credit by the Finance Minister of Ontario, to the surprise of the Education Minister and other
Cabinet colleagues, not to mention the concern of many voters, is a good case in point85 What
hope for citizen influence via email or parliamentary Internet chat-rooms is there in a system in
81
Alcock and Lenihan, Opening the E-Government File, pp.17-19.
Thomas, Paul, “The Future of Representative Democracy: The Impact of Information Technology,” in
Modernizing Governance: A Preliminary Exploration, Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Management Development,
2000, p.59.
82
Thomas, “The Future of Representative Democracy,” p.80.
Savoie, Donald, Governing From the Centre: The Concentration of Power in Canadian Politics, Toronto: U of T
Press, 1999.
85
See: “Ontarians to get tax break for private schooling,” The National Post, May 10, 2001; “Vouchers by another
name,” The National Post, May 11, 2001; “Harris ministers ‘brawl’ on tax credit,” The National Post, May 18,
2001; and “Tories agree to school tax credit hearings,” The National Post, May 30, 2001.
83
84
30
which the vast majority of legislators have already been marginalized in the policy making
process? Indeed, as long as they remain unconnected to policy outcomes, schemes for using IT
to increase citizen engagement and communication with their representatives could backfire, by
deepening citizen apathy and cynicism. Already, politicians themselves have begun to react
against the deluge of daily e-mails and faxes enabled by the new technologies86.
Furthermore, efforts to improve transparency, openness, and accountability in Canada`s
political system by leveraging IT will be forced to swim against the current of neo-conservative
public policies and structural reform of the public sector, including privatization and alternative
service delivery, which pose significant challenges for democratic transparency, openness, and
accountability87. Alasdair Roberts has argued convincingly that various forms of “structural
pluralism” within newly restructured institutions of public governance pose a threat to the
values of accountability and transparency. Privatization, creation of Special Operating Agencies
(SOAs) such as Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA), and the growth of outsourcing
all have the potential to remove structures of governance from public scrutiny. The proposed
privatization of a large public asset like Ontario Hydro, for example, threatens to withdraw
many of the utility’s activities impacting on the environment and public health from the kind of
public scrutiny ensured by Crown ownership and Access to Information laws88, thereby
subverting the potential of IT to increase citizen access to government information.
It has often been said that we live in an information age in which the power to produce,
manipulate, distribute and store information has been radically democratized. Thus, as citizens,
we ought to have more and better information available to us in order to hold governments to
account and to contribute to political debate. While statistics on the proliferation of the World
Wide Web and the vast quantities of digitized information coming on-line everyday are
impressive, however, research on the application of Freedom of Information (FOI) laws, privacy
law, and the commodification of information and data points to what Roberts has dubbed “the
closing of the information commons” on which the lifeblood of democratic debate and
discussion depends.
This point refers to a number of cases in Great Britain. See: “Gateway opens streams of messages for
politicians,” E-Government Bulletin, January 2001, Issue 95, http://www.iib.com; and “MPs object to web-fax
service,” E-Government Bulletin, March 2001, Issue 97, http://www.iib.com
87
Jenson and Papillon, “The Changing Boundaries of Citizenship,” p.25.
86
31
Finally, the persistence of the so-called “digital divide” poses a one of the greatest
challenges to cultivating a truly democratic and inclusive form of e-government. As Alcock and
Lenihan rightly warn, “Insofar as governance becomes more dependent upon information
available on the Internet, and participation in Internet-based networks or technology-based
interaction with government, the voices of those who do not have access to or familiarity with
the technology may be increasingly marginalized in public debate.”89 Furthermore, meaningful
civic participation in the wired world will depend on more than simply having access to the
Internet, broadband or otherwise. Ensuring that such access will be meaningful will require
further work to overcome more recalcitrant social divides impeding opportunities to exploit
these technologies, including race, class, gender, education and literacy90. There are no easy
technological solutions to dealing with these problems. These latter social divides will only be
overcome by political will and imagination, broad social change, and no small amount of
conflict and struggle. As Thomas rightly argues, “progress towards stronger democracy will
depend less on technology and more on social development, political changes, the structures of
governmental institutions and the priorities of governments.”91
Conclusion
Like their subject matter, the observations and conclusions put forward in this paper
concerning the prospects for e-government in Canada are necessarily tentative and somewhat
speculative. Nonetheless, as I have tried to show, the Canadian government`s track record of
using IT to restructure and reform its internal administration and service delivery dates back to
the mid-1980s. Sufficient time has elapsed to warrant some prelimary observations regarding
the nature and trajectory of its IT-related activities. The brief history of the development of egovernment in Canada presented here reveals an overwhelming focus on using IT for the
purposes of administrative rationalization and the reform of service delivery. Measured against
the more expansive visions of e-government, the federal government’s foray into wiring itself
88
Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario, Submission to the Standing Committee on Resources
Development: Bill 35, Energy Competition Act, August 1998, http://www.ipc.on.ca/english/pubpres/reports/bill35.htm
89
Alcock and Lenihan, “Opening the E-Government File,” p.18.
90
Longford, Graham, and Barbara Crow, “Digital Restructuring: Gender, Class and Citizenship in the Information
Society in Canada, Citizenship Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2000, pp.207-230.
91
Thomas, “The Future of Representative Democracy,” p.55.
32
has been relatively conservative, falling well short of anything like “digital democracy”.
Furthermore, even when measured on its own terms as a tool for the fiscally prudent
management and delivery of improved services to the public, there are grounds for concern.
While there are clearly cost-savings to be had in terms of IT’s capacity to replace labour and
overhead costs associated with traditional channels of service delivery, the indirect costs and
high degree of risk associated with more ambitious public sector IT projects casts doubt on the
conventional assumptions regarding IT investment and fiscal prudence. In addition, enthusiasm
for IT’s capacity to produce gains in terms of service delivery features such as speed and
accuracy must not be allowed to obscure the fact that these can be, and in many cases have been,
neutralized by the effect of substantive regulatory and legislative changes to programs and
services over the last decade and a half in Canada. Finally, even a genuine commitment to the
deployment of IT’s capacity to strengthen ties between Canadian citizens ans the democratic
process will likely be less transformative than the proponents of e-government suggest in the
face of deeper, more historic, and more powerful features and forces within the institutional,
economic, and social context of Canadian politics. Conventions of responsible government, neoliberal public policy, globalization, and economic polarization will, one suspects, continue to
exert a stronger influence on the character of Canadian democracy than Moore’s Law.
33