Innovative Policymaking: From Destination to Discipline
By Neil Bouwer
Long road image byJoe Gardner
Notwithstanding heroic efforts and notable examples of policy innovation, Governments need to fundamentally increase their capacity for policy innovation. Today’s policy environment is famously characterized as “VUCA”, which is to say, “volatile, uncertain, chaotic and ambiguous”. It seems obvious in this context that Governments need to constantly innovate their policy practices to better confront novel and complex challenges, as well as to take advantage of an ever-expanding menu of potential practices. And in the current environment of emergent Artificial Intelligence, new foreign threats, economic uncertainty and transitions of government, the appetite for fresh thinking seems particularly high.
In the dynamic times we exist in, and in the face of constantly rising citizen expectations, the cost of inertia is rising. Policy innovation is no longer optional. It is a means to ensure sustainable public sector stewardship. Without policy innovation, the public sector will not just fail to be excellent, it will fail to be competent.
Policy innovation is the deliberate adoption of new ways to develop and implement public policy. It is not novelty for novelty’s sake. It is a way to adapt policy directions and policy actions to new conditions: such as technological disruption, demographic shifts, and environmental pressures. It is also a means to respond to rising citizen expectations for inclusion in public decision-making, as well as frictionless, mobile, and digital delivery of Government programs and services. Policy innovation includes the use of novel policy instruments (like behavioural nudges and X-prizes), new approaches to policy development (such as design thinking, data analytics and citizen assemblies), with a commitment to organizational learning, usually in the form of experimentation and piloting.
We are not starting from scratch
Image: Federal, Provincial & Territorial declaration on public sector innovation
The Government of Canada has a rich history of bold policy innovation. The 1970s were marked by the rise of universal social programs, new national institutions, and partnership funding with community organizations. The adoption of the Charter, consumption taxes, free trade with the U.S., new major federal-provincial/territorial transfers, and environmental regulations are all examples of large-scale policy innovations from the 1980s. The 1990s brought management-by-results, service transformation, and select new public management instruments (such as the commercialisation of airports and air navigation services, and radio-spectrum auctioning). The 2000s saw the introduction of design thinking, the digital channel of service delivery, product development, data analytics and now, of course, artificial intelligence. In 2017 Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial governments even issued a joint “Declaration on Public Sector Innovation”. Many of these examples of policy innovation were backed by research, modelling, and experimentation. Many used new policy instruments and approaches to effectuate change. And in these ways they can be considered ‘policy innovations’.
In recent years, many federal departments and agencies have produced noteworthy examples of policy innovation:
Impact Canada is working with over a dozen Departments to use challenge-based grants and behavioural insights to advance policy objectives in the areas of renewable energy, climate action, public health, housing, and misinformation.
The Public Health Agency of Canada and the Privy Council Office, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, used behavioural science insights to shape public communications to support the uptake of vaccines and other preventive health behaviours.
The Canada School of Public Service’s Digital Academy moved beyond conventional training to host multi-disciplinary teams in a “digital accelerator” that practices user-centred design and agile methods. It also worked with other departments to pilot the use of natural language processing and “rules-as-code” for regulators.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has experimented with AI-assisted triage in visa processing in low-risk areas – freeing resources to focus on more complex and higher-stakes cases.
Service Canada has introduced robotic process automation to create efficiencies in repetitive, low-value added processes in order to avoid the cost of increasing caseloads.
Major regulators, such as Transport Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, have moved away from prescriptive regulatory approaches to more technologically-neutral systems-based approaches that provide safety while allowing for appropriate innovation by regulated parties.
And many departments and agencies established innovation hubs and labs to support innovative practices and pathfinder projects. In 2017 the Government created a formalized Government of Canada policy community, which has also supported policy innovation, most recently under the rubric of “adaptive policy-making”.
While such examples are laudable, we need more comprehensive change to meet the rising expectations of citizens and to fulfill the potential of new approaches and instruments to create public value.
Avoiding ‘pilotitus’
However, efforts to pursue policy innovation have to contend with institutional antibodies – risk aversion, compliance with the status quo, capacity for change management, and lack of sustained follow through. In many departments and agencies this has resulted in “pilotitus”, the accumulation of pilot projects that fail to scale and generate meaningful change. Heads of departments and agencies have been designated as “Chief Accountability Officers” in a way that encourages risk-averse behaviours and which places compliance with the status quo above the quest for future business value through novel means. For all the recent talk of innovation, the Government’s capacity to incorporate and scale new approaches today remains deeply uneven. Government is more often a “cautious follower” rather than an “innovation leader”.
Image of red paper plane out of line with white paper planes. Stock photo by Vecteezy
Government needs a culture of disciplined policy innovation—one that marries curiosity with stewardship, and experimentation with follow-through. Three shifts are key:
From heroic ‘one offs’ to systemic learning and application. Pilots and prototypes are important – because they inspire and inform. But unless they scale into programs, they become ‘innovation theatre’. Departments and Agencies need mechanisms for continuous learning that are hard-wired into program design. Internal program evaluation resources should be reorganized to deliver more rigorous and independent analysis, and to provide insights based on real-time business intelligence.
From rules-based alignment to empowering differentiation.
The self-imposition of hard-and-fast rules on complex and dynamic organizations stifles the adoption of experimental methods and the scaling of new approaches that can produce demonstrated results. Central agencies should adopt principles-based approaches and reward senior leaders for innovating. Service monopolies such as Shared Services Canada and Public Services and Procurement Canada should be reconsidered. Deputy Heads should empower managers who experiment, measure results and most importantly scale successful new approaches.From fragmentation to common purpose. Many policy innovation efforts are isolated. What’s missing is a clear articulation of an agenda for policy innovation. The Government should refresh the commitment to policy innovation it made in the 2017 federal provincial-territorial declaration. The Privy Council Office and Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat should take a leadership role, along with the Policy Community Partnership Office. They should ensure Deputy Ministers are expected and empowered to pursue disciplined innovation. We need to catalog promising policy formation practices, policy instruments, and policy experiments. We need to raise the expectation on the public service to provide bolder advice, to incorporate modern tools and approaches, and to produce evidence in the form of experimentation and business intelligence. There should be greater communication about the experience of policy innovators, including an annual report on policy innovation.
Policy innovation is not a destination. It is a discipline. And like all disciplines, it demands practice. Moving forward, there is a need for policy leaders to understand where we need to invest in learning, how we can best support innovative practices, and how we scale the practices that work.
The transition(s) taking place in the Government of Canada provides an excellent time to take stock of the current state of policy innovation and to articulate future directions. In particular:
What are some promising approaches to policy innovation that should be shared across the Government?
How can we best support innovative policy practices in the Government of Canada? Are there legal, policy or other barriers that need to be removed or revisited?
How can we best support the scaling of successful experiments?
What does success look like?
Neil Bouwer is a long time policy leader in the Government of Canada. He is currently a Visiting Professor of Practice at the Max Bell School of Public Policy https://www.mcgill.ca/maxbellschool/our-people/visiting-professors-and-scholars/neil-bouwer