Information technology, public policy and Canadian governance: partnerships and predicaments

Abstract

This chapter examines the strategic and political context shaping the role of information technology (IT) in Canadian government. We explore different dimensions to the link between IT and public administration, drawing on both the rising interest in the new public management (NPM) and new governance models based on a re-configuration of traditional organizational architectures, private or public, in which information technologies play a determinant role. Our underlying purpose, however, is first to expose the main political and bureaucratic forces that have shaped the adaptation and implementation of IT in the Canadian state and secondly, to review the Canadian public sector's main actions to date on these fronts. The resulting trends, in Canada and elsewhere, point to both new partnerships and predicaments. On the former, the growing importance of IT, and their solution providers, as well as the pressures for multi-stakeholder solutions in response to the information age, mean that private-public collaboration is increasingly common. Accordingly, the effectiveness of this collaboration is a key determinant in the adoption and deployment of IT within the public sector, as well as the forging of new governance models, hybrids of private and public actors. The resulting predicaments stem from the pressures on governments to embrace models of NPM, implying organizational innovation; but these pressures, in turn, mean that traditional controls and decision-making processes are no longer relevant. In many cases they become blockages. Thus, a primary purpose of this chapter, in reviewing Canadian government action, is to consider the different degrees of change and adaption created by IT as an enabling agent. Within the Canadian context, the main findings of this chapter can be summarized in the following manner: i) new information and communication technologies are inspiring radical changes to traditional governance models in all sectors; ii) notwithstanding the specificities of government, ITdriven reforms, within a NPM context imply a strong need to rethink traditional, Westminster-style, parliamentary systems of accountability, control and delivery; iii) despite growing resource allocations, the Canadian experience illustrates resistance to change, and an under-utilization of new technological capacities; and iv) critical events and emerging challenges in the future, such as the Year 2000 computer crisis and virtual governance, imply that this gradual and cautious path is not sustainable.