Working on open government in Canadian politics

This is part of a series in which I explore different, high-level ways to work on improving how government works and how citizens inform, direct and monitor that work, from the perspective of open government and civic tech.

In the introduction to this series, I recommended becoming a policy advisor within a Cabinet minister’s office if your desired strategy is to mandate the improvements to open government. (The other options were to deliver, demonstrate, advise, or lobby for improvements.) While it is the best option for this strategy, you should set your expectations low.

The articles in this series are based on conversations with people who worked or are working in ministers’ offices and government departments.

Getting In

About a dozen people make up most ministers’ offices.¹ In terms of hierarchy, there’s the minister, the chief of staff, and directors of Policy, Parliamentary Affairs, Communications and Issues Management. You can read a description of each position’s responsibilities.

The Director of Policy has the largest team, and that’s the team you want to join.

At the federal level, if you have a general interest in open government, civic tech or open data, you are most likely looking at working in the President’s Office of the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat.² GEDS lists the current staff. The policy team is expected to have about five policy advisors.

In order to get on that team, you would need to talk to the chief of staff, or work through the governing party — the Liberal Party. To my knowledge, no positions are advertised, and the hiring process is not documented.

Getting Things Done

Okay, you’re in. What powers do you have?

From one perspective, a staffer’s power is only limited by what they can convince the minister is important. The minister can promote a project within the Cabinet to make it a government priority; they can negotiate budget transfers from other departments to fund a project; and they can make a project a priority of the department they head.

However, if your interest is in open government, civic tech or open data, you will be hard pressed to find the time to convince the minister. If the President’s Office has ten policy priorities, open government will be the tenth. You can expect to spend at most 10% of your time — or half a day per week — on open government.

To work as a policy advisor in the President’s Office, you need to love what you’re doing in the other 90% of your time,³ and you need to love politics.

That said, given that open government is not a high priority, you can make things happen faster by being there to champion it than if there were no one there pushing or advocating for it.

Considerations

The President’s Office and the bureaucracy work together to deliver the government’s priorities, but there are tensions. The President’s Office is short-term and partisan; the bureaucracy is long-term and non-partisan. The President’s Office has the power to mandate changes; the bureaucracy has the expertise to advise changes and the power to deliver them. These different contexts can produce conflicting perspectives.

There are civil servants that work on open government 100% of the time; however, they can only make things move at the bureaucracy’s slow pace. As a policy advisor that works on open government 10% of the time, you can make the fewer things you work on move at a much faster clip. For example, in the last government, the Canadian Open Data Experience and the G8 Open Data Charter were initiated in the President’s Office. It’s unlikely they would have happened if they had been initiated within the bureaucracy.

As a policy advisor, it can take time to break through and gain trust within the bureaucracy — think years. Once you’ve established a reputation and created some relationships, you can advocate on behalf of bureaucrats to ship their work faster, but it will always be a delicate balance. Bureaucrats are not likely to take risks in order to do you favors, since they are more likely to take a longer view.

Looking at such relationships from the perspective of the bureaucracy, on the other hand, it can be hard to identify and make allies in the President’s Office.

Summary

Working on open government in Canadian politics is not a long-term option. Your job depends on the current government being re-elected. In your limited time, you may be able to introduce a significant policy or start a new program. However, you will be spending most of your time on other issues. You have to love that work or you will be miserable.

Footnotes

1. To see the composition of each minister’s office, select the Honourable Ministers menu item in the Government Electronic Directory Services (GEDS), and then click the last link in each minister’s entry.

2. You can read all the mandate letters sent from the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, to each minister of Cabinet. The only two letters with open data as a priority are to the President of the Treasury Board of Canada and the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development.

3. Among other things, you may work on performance standards for government services, budgets and estimates, bargaining with unions, and other priorities from the mandate letter.