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Strategy
ership with little federal experience.
Finally, Barber’s approach advocates
considerable internal and external trans-
parency. The PMDU focused on enabling,
monitoring, and anchoring change but
also provided reports to the Prime Min-
ister and to ministers and their depart-
ments, and shared information on prog-
ress with key stakeholders and the public.
Ottawa has made recent progress on this
front, but it is not yet second nature to
the government and public service. If the
Trudeau government adopts the full Bar-
ber model, it will introduce a new level of
transparency into the system.
By design, deliverology focuses on
fewer rather than more priorities. Barber
recommends identifying 15-20 priorities,
so which priorities become of the focus
of Ottawa’s new delivery capability will
critical. This means selecting initiatives
and demonstrating progress – either
turning around or reinventing policy and
delivery in areas of central importance to
Barber recommends
identifying 15-20
priorities, so which
priorities become of
the focus of Ottawa’s
new delivery
capability will
be critical.
the government. It implies picking initia-
tives more fully within the ambit of fed-
eral government responsibilities, which
would reduce the need to negotiate with
provincial and local governments, lessen-
ing of the risk Ottawa’s performance be-
ing compromised by other actors. Given
the new government’s wide range of am-
bitious commitments, this will indeed be
a challenge.
The Barber model contains a narrative
and practice of pushing out more respon-
sibility for design and delivery to depart-
ments, while retaining control in a central
unit and staff focused on priority policies.
The early version of the Trudeau model
suggests a more de-concentrated ap-
proach, potentially with several units fo-
cused on major priorities. We have yet to
learn about the size, budget and planned
trajectory for instituting the new capabili-
ties. The stakes will be high – as it was for
the Parliamentary Budget Office – with a
need for astute leadership and assembling
Sir Michael Barber