Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Government Will Not Act Until You Speak Up

I work in government in the public service, and I see government from within the offices and hallways of the bureaucracy. I operate in the public service which means I do not see what happens in the political wing of democratic government, but I see what happens in the administrative middle-ground between the political decision-makers and the front lines where agencies actually do the work. A colleague recounted to me last week about her discussion with someone from one of the Province’s emergency response teams, who asked very straightforwardly, “What is the Government doing this year to make the team better?” That is an honest and sensible question.

There is a concept that I’m sure many who went to business school learned about: kaizen, or continuous improvement. The idea behind this is to make small improvements on a continual basis so that, over time, you end up with significant improvement over where you started but without having taken any momentous leaps at any point. It’s the idea you may have come across in personal improvement about being 1% better each day, or learning 1 new word each day or doing 1 new thing each day. It’s something that every high-performing organization really ought to have instilled in its culture.

As I’ve written before, government is not about excellence. Government does not, in all honesty, need to be excellent because there is no competition. Furthermore, the culture is risk averse to the extreme, finding it better not to do something than to do the wrong thing.

The end result is that a government as a political entity, and the unelected, for-the-most-part obedient bureaucracy working for it, will only do what it has to out of practical necessity or out of political urgency. You may have noticed that the latter often trumps the former.

My colleague in the instance mentioned answered the team leader in a very diplomatic manner, but would have liked to say, “Don’t you know by now that government won’t do anything unless it has explicitly committed itself to doing it?” In other words, there is no concept of continuous improvement in government. Well, that’s not entirely true – I think there may be the occasional speech or motivational memo (isn’t that in itself an oxymoron?) that talks about the pursuit of excellence in the organization – but in my opinion and based upon what I’ve heard over the years from my colleagues, the concepts of excellence and continuous improvement are foreign to the public service (and almost assuredly equally foreign to many elected officials).

If there is something that you feel your government – be it municipal, regional, provincial/state-level, or federal – ought to be doing, you need to write to your representatives and even call their offices. In a democratic government, elected officials run the government and its bureaucracy and require your votes to be re-elected. They want to know what you are concerned about because they will focus their attentions on what you are concerned about, and not on what you don’t give a damn about. It’s logical, really. If they represent you, and as far as they can tell, you don’t care about Issue A, they won’t lift a finger about it. They will not spend a dime on it, they will not devote any government resources to it. But, if enough constituents write or call about Issue B, it may garner enough political weight that the machinery of government starts to move and do something about it.

You may well receive a form letter response, but keep at it. Don’t take an answer about how the issue is “important” or that it’s a “priority” at face value, either. I once heard a colleague remark how she had heard from a Communications rep say, only half-jokingly, that saying something is “a priority” means very little because the government has so many things labeled as “priorities” that in reality none of them are actually priorities. Press for a commitment. You likely won’t get it, but at least you have to try – that is your right as a citizen.

If there is something you really and truly think that your government should or should not be doing, you need to put in some effort. You need to say something, say it strongly, say it often. Your voice counts, particularly when the vast majority of the populace remains silent.

There are some, or even many, politicians who want to do the right thing and do good things, but they need to hear from you. There are many public servants who want to do the right thing and do good things, but we can only do what our political leadership enables us to do. All of us, as individual citizens, are ultimately responsible for getting our voices and concerns heard.

If you want your government – at any level, in any jurisdiction – to be doing something, you have to speak up and say something to your elected officials.