Helping Non-Profits and the Public Sector Help You

Peter Bethlenfalvy is MPP for Pickering — Uxbridge and President of the Treasury Board of Ontario. This blog is one instalment in a series on the Ontario government’s Smart Initiatives, aimed at generating savings and improving user experience through innovative approaches to government. Read his previous blog here.

Some solutions seem so simple you would be shocked when you realize they haven’t been implemented.

Take the system of transfer payments in Ontario, for example. Consolidating, simplifying, and digitizing transfer payments is one of our government’s key Smart Initiatives.

That’s because making the system easier and less time-consuming doesn’t just help the government run more efficiently, it also helps front-line service providers do their job better and easier.

Unless you work in the non-profit, health care, education or Child Services sector, you likely haven’t heard much — if anything — about transfer payments before. But transfer payments — the process by which organizations receive government funding — have a big impact on your life.

You may not know it, but 90 per cent of government program spending occurs through transfer payments. These payments go to hospitals, schools, social service organizations, non-profits, and many other groups and ensure they have the funding they need to provide the people of Ontario with vital front-line services.

There are thousands of organizations across the province that rely on transfer payments — 33,000 transfer payments in total! It’s a surprising number — and it accounts for a staggering amount of paperwork.

And when I say “paperwork” I mean: physical, made-from-trees paper filled out with a blue or black pen, then mailed to government offices for processing, paperwork. It’s a way of interacting with government straight out of the 1980s. But it’s 2020 and it’s time we modernize and simplify how the people access their government.

How are we doing it? By consolidating transfer payment agreements where it makes sense and making it easier to submit reports online.

That means non-profits, schools and hospitals will be able to spend less time on back-office administration and more time on front-line services.

We’ve already seen some major successes.

· We’ve decreased the number of separate agreements municipalities have to fill out in order to receive early years and child care funding by 50 per cent.

· We’ve reduced the number of agreements for business support programs by 65 per cent. We have been able to do this, in part, by finding practical efficiencies like merging three locally administered business support programs into a single program and single submission.

· We’ve eliminated 1,000 reports previously required for Employment Service, Youth Job Connection, Literacy and Basic Skills, and the Canada-Ontario Job Grant programs, helping people find opportunities. And we’re making it easier to help those in need by streamlining annual reporting processes for the Community Homelessness Prevention Initiative.

Throughout all our changes to the transfer payment system, we’re guided by the principle of smarter government. Reducing the number of unnecessary submissions and reports saves front-line service providers time, money, and energy — time, money, and energy that can be better spent helping front-line workers serve the people of Ontario. We’re making submissions and reporting simpler and more straight-forward and finally bringing government into the 21st Century.

Through all these efforts, we’re making government Smarter for the people of Ontario. Stay tuned to this page and my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts to stay up-to-date on our government’s other Smart Initiatives.