Incremental change isn't enough

Leading Canadian public servant Jocelyne Bourgon has written a powerful essay about the future of the public service with the misleadingly bland title "New directions in public administration" serving beyond the predictable". 

The paper, given at a conference in the UK in September, sketches 30 years of dramatic change in public administration to arrrive at this conclusion:

New directions in public administration must also entail exploring 1) how to encourage innovation in government that goes beyond incremental improvements and 2) the role of governments in a world that is characterized by discontinuity, disruptions, unforeseen risks and breakthroughs.

A little later, Bourgon indicates the kinds of shifts she expects the public service to make if it is going to thrive in this kind of world:

Reforms shaped to prepare government to serve beyond the known paths would emphasize a number of shifts. Among others, these might include moving from closed to open government, from multiple separations to diverse connections, from hierarchies to networks, from predictability to probability, from control to influence and from linear to systems thinking.

Easier said than done, I suspect would be the response of many working in the public sector.

Bourgon doesn't argue that rule of law, efficiency and the ability to perform predictable tasks well and according to due process are no longer important.  Far from it.  It's just that, to remain relevant and resilient in the face on dramatic change, the public sector needs more, much more.

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