Evolve Government Consulting

…”The world in which the federal Public Service operates has become more complex and unpredictable. This new environment is characterized by an aging population, a globalized economic landscape, ever-changing information and communications technologies, the emergence of new horizontal issues and changing public attitudes to government”…[1]

The words from the Canadian Prime Minister’s Committee stake out and embed the increasingly important role that public servants play in the fabric of a democratic society. Others – particularly Gen Yer’s would say that that is not the case and that can get along just fine, thank you by only dealing with government when they have to. Some, such as Max Valiquette from Youthography, have pointed out that the facts say just that. That the youth of today - tomorrow’s potential public servant - only deals with government when they have to and have difficulty “connecting” with government[2].

For those interested – as the Clerk is – in performance management it can be a discouraging sign. Any public service in any country in any jurisdiction is built on its employees and their ability to connect and serve citizens. Not being able to replenish the well with fresh water leads to, well, problems. Tracking the performance of an organization, particularly a government organization, inevitably and quickly focuses on tracking how their people are doing, what they are doing to support and benefit the brand, and what tools they are using and how they are using them to increase the organizations performance. An organizations performance is equated to the talent that they have and how they are leveraging that talent to increase their performance.

Sometimes in the government environment this can be a discouraging discussion. Mr. Valiquette does a good job of pointing out the challenges faced by an organization that is viewed by its prime talent pool as a “big, slow, rules-bound hierarchy, and it’s not going to attract anyone with the pay”[3]. There are however many public sector organizations that are well into understanding the importance of being as progressive as they can with their talent recruitment process. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is a great example of a public sector organization that has for a number of years been making moves to adapt from being in the HR business to being in the talent management business. Taking a quick look at the org structure for their Office of Human Capital Management (OHCM) helps one to understand how they are making themselves HR and Performance agile:

NASA OHCM Organizational Structure[4]

- Talent Acquisition Office (TAO)

- Talent Cultivation Office (TCO)

- Organizational Leadership and Culture Office (OLCO)

- Performance and Work-Life Dynamics Office (PWDO)

- Business, Planning, and Strategic Alignment (BPSA) Office

- Organizational Capability Office (OCO)

We’re not saying that changing the name of the sectors in your org means everything but if you reflect on challenges laid out in the latest PM’s Advisory Committee report or go through the Clerk’s report to the Prime Minister you can see that a) NASA (as does the US public service in general) has many of the same challenges as the Canadian public service and b) arguably, they are tackling the issue with a progressive management approach that is aligned to the challenges at hand.