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Federal departments, agencies, and Crown corporations must provide Canadians with quality services despite significant fiscal restraints. To remain viable, public service organizations must create corporate cultures that value leadership, encourage client and employee involvement, and continuously improve services, work processes, and management practices. In recent years, public service organizations have initiated many changes. A sampling includes:
Many departments and organizations, after restructuring and downsizing, are trying to regain momentum. They are looking for ways of providing quality services while systematically managing change and continuous improvement, objectives aligned with the government-wide quality services initiative.
The aim of the quality services initiative is to create the conditions for employees to respond better to Canadians' demands and help to rebuild public confidence in the federal government.[1] Starting in 1996, departments will be required, in their Business Plans, Outlook Documents or Estimates, to report on measured improvements to client satisfaction and on their quality service plans. As part of the government's renewed expenditure management system, the Treasury Board Secretariat is also requesting that departments define expected results in their business plans, then report on performance. It is no longer sufficient to ask how well a program is performing; departments must now demonstrate their "value-added accomplishments".[2]
With constant pressures to improve services, resource use, delivery times, and overall operational efficiency and effectiveness, Benchmarking and Best Practices Sharing are increasingly being accepted as powerful and useful organizational change tools to be used as part of a planned approach to improving service quality.
Benefits of Benchmarking
Benchmarking may
Benefits of Best Practices Sharing
Best practices sharing may
This guide should help you integrate these management change tools in your organization. Following this introductory section are:
Section 2: Benchmarking - what it is; how it is used
Section 3: Best Practices Sharing - Some Points To Ponder
Section 4: Launching initiatives
Appendix A: 34 examples
Appendix B: Names of useful contacts; invitation to share your best practices
Appendix C: Bibliography
Appendix D: Benchmarking and Best Practices Sharing Team
Endnotes