Canadian Government Executive - Volume 23 - Issue 08

November 2017 // Canadian Government Executive / 19 The public sector would benefit from extensive training in PM techniques. More importantly, public servants need to be overtly encouraged to use them in parallel with the RMB. for three consequent phases: execution, monitoring and controlling, and for the closing phases. Lessons to be learned Comparing project closure or evaluation reports to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) norms reveals sev- eral short comings. The biggest deviations between project management norms and management practice in Canadian gov- ernment departments result from omit- ting, or shortening, the initiation phase and from blending the planning phase with the execution phase. This leads to confusion in many knowledge areas and severely impacts both project scope and cost management. A good illustration was the Government of Canada’s aim to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees between November 2015 and February 2016. It was a political commit- ment and major election issue in 2015. All parties presented their competing visions how they would respond to the crisis. The most ambitious plan in terms of volumes and timelines was presented by the Lib- eral party, committing to bring in up to 25,000 refugees from Syria under less than two months (from November to end of December 2015). What was less specific was the expected cost, the government’s capacity to deliver on the commitment or the impact on refugees. The planning and execution of this project was not entirely thought through, with no clear criteria provided for estimating the project’s suc- cess rate. It was no surprise that the final reports of the Operation Syrian Refugees (OSR) reveal that the project suffered from a lack of interdepartmental coordination during the initiation and planning phases. While the whole of government approach to the resettling of refugees would require extraordinary planning efforts, involving dozens of agencies and departments, in reality, there were significant consultation gaps between the government depart- ments. Lack of proper planning resulted in unclear responsibilities and competing priorities between different government departments. The planning model used by the lead department IRCC did not sufficiently ad- dress the significant efforts required on behalf of other agencies, for example, the requirements to set up operations abroad to select the suitable refugees. The necessary activities to abroad were not properly planned out, which means that associated costs, task durations, nec- essary human resources, risk ratings or communications requirements to other stakeholders were not planned out. The bottom line is - managers cannot manage unplanned tasks effectively or efficient- ly. In the field, it means extremely high stress and burn-out threat for our officers. The recently published IRCC Rapid Im- pact Evaluation Report [1] of the Syrian Refugee Initiative further confirms that there was insufficient planning: forward- looking resettlement preparations and early integration phases were lacking in the first few weeks of refugee arrival in Canada. It is noted that ‘the expedited nature of the initiative made it challeng- ing for the settlement sector to effectively plan for the delivery of in-Canada servic- es’, and that ‘the quick pace was difficult on refugees’. In short – the project suf- fered under the lack of proper planning, which made the execution phase difficult. A second gap between project man- agement norms and actual practice re- lates to efficiency, i.e. how the total cost of projects is estimated in the Canadian public service. The OSR reports revealed that cost planning is conducted through “guess-estimations” by a budget office as opposed to rigorous activity-based cost- ing by the project team. Budgets were often division-based instead of activity- based. Financial efficiency was thus im- pacted by estimates not sourced from individual project activities. Faulty project initiation and plan- ning makes it near impossible to assess whether the project was indeed a suc- cess. Accordingly, the IRCC Rapid Impact Evaluation report on OSR concluded that one major area, which should have taken into account to help ensure successful resettlement and settlement results was “the need for end-to-end planning”. Unre- alistic timelines and overwhelming scope specification led to significant frustration, including among refugees. Nevertheless, the report declares that “the whole of government initiative was a great success in many regards” without specifying in which regards exactly. Conclusion As illustrated above, the public sector needs to establish project management logic - initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. It will help mitigate many problems, es- pecially those linked to effectiveness and efficiency. Perhaps the Treasury Board of Canada 2016 “Policy on Results” has not paid sufficient attention to basic project management principles? The PM Body of Knowledge offers a systemic approach to managing en- deavours that are temporary, unique and have a clear beginning and an end. These include measurable guidelines for creating progress reports and closing all tasks. Employed in government depart- ments, PM tools can thus offer increased efficiency and effectiveness in deliver- ing outputs. The public sector would benefit from extensive training in PM techniques. More importantly, public servants need to be overtly encouraged to use them in parallel with the RMB. Neither alone is a sufficient condition for success. Taken together, their strengths reinforce the probability of achieving relevant results effectively and efficiently. M arje A ksli is a CES member, and an independent evaluation analyst special- izing in international development and public-sector program monitoring and evaluation. Public Service