Greetings all...
Let me thank Michael Gurstein for his thoughtful response to my comments.
It rings true to my ears. Let me take this opportunity to add a few
additional notes.
On Thu, 23 Apr 1998, Michael Gurstein wrote:
[snip]
> From what I can see, in Canada we have the worst of both worlds. We have
> national program stipulations which introduce absurd rigidities locally
> (for us), and we have almost complete local decentralization which makes
> us subject to the training and skill set of case officers and local
> managers with no knowledge of or sensitivity towards any of the areas
> where new opportunities for employment creation are emerging. (cf. my
> recent posting on WiNS2000).
[snip]
> The labour market in Canada is so regionally specific that national design
> and even national standards make little sense. What works or could work
> in Cape Breton bares little or no relation to what could work in Southern
> Ontario or rural Saskatchewan. In that sense decentralization is useful.
> But to have the degree of decentralization which has been recently
> introduced while having virtually no capacity for research, analysis,
> longer term planning, or staff upgrading is a recipe for disaster.
I tend to agree, for the (soon to be devolved) federal system is
organised around two conflicting forces.
On the one hand you have administrative decentralisation. An Human
Resources Development Canada official was bragging (at last summer's
Social Policy Conference at Queen's) that HRDC programme administration is
the second most decentralised in the country (after Quebec's). The
decision to decentralise in this way is informed (according to my
interpretation of public servants' comments) by the fashionableness of
"new public management's" decentralisation credo and programme evaluation
evidence that suggests that decentralisation of active measures works
better.
But it is not totally decentralised, for on the other hand you have a high
level of policy-making centralisation. This retention of decision-making
power in the National Capital Region is informed by our Westminister
model's policy-making centralisation convention (handmaden to politicians
wanting new targeting) and the paradoxical desire, on the part of public
servants, to implement more lessons from programme evaluations (of which
they have accumulated over 25 years worth). The result: the system
Michael Gurstein describes in Cape Breton.
This is an important lesson for Blair, for a look at his government's
administrative structures in the wake of the Next Steps reforms -
according to Colin Campbell's interviews of British public servants -
shows that this type of problem beleaguers the British state
across-the-board. In other words, it is a state cut in half. At the top
you have policy wonks wanting to test new ideas all the time (e.g. Market
Testing) and at the bottom you have management drones charged with the
duty to "manage", but must continuously react to new demands coming from
the centre. UK Employment Zones, to return to the original topic, are a
reaction to this - more discretion to local managers. Or are they a
result of this, with all of the claw-backs and the promise of implementing
success stories? This seems so very schizophrenic, and unfortuneatly
for Blair, dangerously complicated.
Thank you for your attention.
Cheers, Peter Stoyko
