Transcript
Transcript: Panel Session on Adaptive Policies and What They Mean for Implementation
[00:00:00 Video opens with animated CSPS logo.]
[00:00:07 Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are shown seated together on stage.]
Gail Mitchell: Hello everyone. Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Gael Mitchell. I've been working in the federal government for about 25 years, and I've had the opportunity to work in the policy and operations sectors. So, I've really experienced the challenges in developing and adapting policies to deliver results.
[00:00:27 Gail Mitchell appears full screen. Overlaid text on screen: Assistant Deputy Minister, Women and Gender Equality Canada / Sous-ministre adjointe, Femmes et Égalité des genres Canada.]
Gail Mitchell: So, thank you for being with us today for this panel. As you know, everyone is accelerating these days. The gap is widening between ideas and their implementation. The challenge is to adapt policies to new situations without losing sight of their main objectives.
[00:00:51 Overlaid text on screen: Wooclap.com; CODE: PCPO6.]
Gail Mitchell: So, how can we use past experiences to develop better policies in the future? Today, we're going to talk a little about this gap between policy objectives and implementation in the context of adapting new technologies, developing new relationships and meeting the needs of Canadians. Our panelists will share their views and experiences, drawing inspiration from real-life stories. The discussion will include an interactive question session with Wooclap, allowing participants to interact directly with us.
[00:01:38 Split screen: Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage, Jutta Treviranus appears in a video chat panel.]
Gail Mitchell: But before we begin, I'd like to ask each panel member to take two minutes to introduce themselves, and provide their initial thoughts on their approaches to balancing stability and flexibility in order bridge the gap between strategy and field experience. Roda, I'd like to start with you. Next, I'll turn to Utah, who is joining us from outside of Ottawa, and then Darren. The floor is yours.
Roda Muse: Thank you. Hello. It's really a pleasure to be with you today. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the Policy Community Partnership Office: Catherine Charbonneau, Serge Bijimine and their teams.
[00:02:18 Roda Muse appears full screen. Overlaid text on screen: Deputy Minister, Government of Ontario. / Sous-ministre, Gouvernment de l'Ontario.]
Roda Muse: Thank you for this invitation. I would also like to take this opportunity to greet my co-panelists: Darren, who is here, and Utah, who is online, as well as our facilitator, Gael. I'm the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Francophone Affairs in Ontario. In this capacity as well, I sit on the Government of Ontario's Social Policy Council, as well as on the Service Delivery Committee and the Deputy Ministers' Committee. Both consist of deputy ministers. And what's interesting is that this helps me to understand the policy continuum from policy development through to service delivery. I've also worked at the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, where policies and strategies are broader in scope. These are strategies, initiatives and policies that are adopted internationally by the member states. I have worked in the federal government for 21 years. I was at Innovation, Science and Industry (ISED) at the start of the pandemic, and I was on the teams that were intended to provide fast Internet access during the pandemic.
And this was mostly for rural and remote communities. It was a policy that had actually been—that needed to be implemented for long time coming. But what was remarkable—and that's when I said to myself that anything is possible—is that, within a few months, we were able to provide connections, get out of contracts and do great work. Our teams were multidisciplinary: engineering, people, policy, programs and finance. Where there's a will, there's a way. And, during the pandemic, we were able to see that the policies that were intended to ensure that Canadians were protected and had access to specific types of services that were really—that were necessary at that time—had been deployed very quickly. So, we can implement policies very quickly. The lesson I draw from this is that it's important to assess urgency in relation to the needs of our fellow citizens. And that helps. If we have this ability to measure, we are able to do what we can.
[00:04:51 Split screen: Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage, Jutta Treviranus appears in a video chat panel.]
Gail Mitchell: Thank you very much. Very interesting points. I'm going to turn now to Jutta. Go ahead.
Jutta Treviranus: Thank you. I'm the director of the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University, and a professor in inclusive design.
[00:05:15 Jutta Treviranus appears full screen. Overlaid text on screen: Professor, Inclusive Design Research Centre. / Professeure, Inclusive Design Research Centre.]
Jutta Treviranus: We were established, or I helped to launch the IDRC approximately 30 years ago. Our primary vision and mission is to proactively ensure that emerging systems and practices are designed inclusively. We are very much aligned with the presentation that was previously presented by Terry Irwin; in that we also follow a systems-thinking model. I have also worked on creating a practice of inclusive design that is implemented by quite a number of enterprise companies and public sector agencies as well.
Even the best conventional policies are generally designed for the majority, whether motivated by efficiency or economies of scale. And this means that policies are a bad fit. Wrong or exclusionary for people who are different from the perceived represented majority. And those are the people that we're concerned with.
The people we generally work with are the individuals that are outliers or tiny minorities within any population. And over my 40 years in the field, I've collected data on what different people need to survive and thrive. And when I plot this data on a multi-variate scatter plot, this looks like a starburst, or a three dimensional normal distribution. I call this the human starburst. 80% of the needs are clustered in 20% of the space in the middle, and the remaining 20% are scattered across the remaining periphery, spanning the additional 80% of the space. And the needs in the middle are close together, meaning they're very similar, and that's who we tend to design for.
As you move from the middle, the needs get further and further apart, meaning they are increasingly different. Because of the way policy is designed; decisions are made; knowledge is obtained; programs are funded; representatives are voted in; tools are designed and marketed; information is communicated and disseminated. The needs in the middle are generally well met, but the situation is worse as you move from the middle.
This is especially the case for individuals who are outliers or who don't fit in recognized protected identity clusters. One group is people with disabilities. Disability is at the margins of every other justice deserving group. And this policy mismatch intensifies disparities. As we double down on evidence-based governance this mismatch is formalized. And when the power tools of AI are used for decisions at mass, this is even further automated and amplified.
My contention is that the people who are currently marginalized are the most valuable stakeholders in the system, to Terry's discussion earlier. They have the best view of the unexplored terrain, and they're aware of the earliest warning signals of what can go wrong.
[00:08:32 Split screen: Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage, Jutta Treviranus appears in a video chat panel.]
Gail Mitchell: Thank you. Thank you for that. Now I'm going to turn to Darren Swanson, who is a Senior Associate with the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Darren, over to you.
[00:08:44 Darren Swanson appears full screen. Overlaid text on screen: Senior Associate, Novel Futures Corporation. / Associé, Novel Futures Corporation.]
Darren Swanson: Well, thank you very much, Gail, and to the policy community for the opportunity here today. In the work that I do, the policy research work and the consulting that I do, I have the pleasure of working at all levels of governments. From working with First Nations communities on risk assessment for climate risk assessment for infrastructure, for example, on the ground, all the way to working with United Nations agencies around the world on providing training for how they support national governments in strategic planning for sustainable development.
I think, at the outset, I wanted to emphasize that the theme of this panel right now on bridging the gap between policy objectives and implementation is really top of mind at the international level, too. And I wanted to highlight that the United Nations Secretary General this year released the Global Sustainable Development Report. And aside from its conclusions about how the world is off track, in meeting the sustainable development goals by 2030, it offers a really practical set of policy levers for how to navigate transformation and accelerate progress toward these wicked problems, as we talked about this morning. It's a really practical set.
It lists five levers to help with transformation in the report. But the fifth lever in particular, and it's relevant for this conversation here today, is about capacity development within government. And it lists five specific capacities that are really important to navigate these transformations and accelerate progress. And those five capacities are related to strategic direction and foresight. Also, about innovating to scale. We heard this morning about the innovation cheerleader from the student who won the competition, David Jones. So, that's important. Another area that is highlighted in the United Nations report is about systems thinking and identifying synergies and trade-offs and issues. We talked a lot about that this morning in the presentation. It's also about identifying and overcoming impediments to acceleration. And then finally, the report talks about enhancing resilience, so capacities for enhancing resilience in policy making, whether that's to deal with diversity in policy responses, redundancy, decentralization, or continuous monitoring and learning.
That's a real mouthful, I know. But, I'll expand a bit more on those throughout the panel discussion based on some work we've done at the International Institute for Sustainable Developments on a book that we published, back in 2009 now, on creating adaptive policies, which was meant to help provide a guide for policy makers in complex and uncertain situations. So, I'll touch back on those.
[00:11:40 Split screen: Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage, Jutta Treviranus appears in a video chat panel.]
Gail Mitchell: That's great, thank you. What an amazing panel we have here today. I'm just going to look at wooclap. I know folks are still inputting – the questions are there.
[00:11:49 Overlaid text on screen: Panel Discussion, Canada.ca/School; Adaptive Policies – What they Mean for Implementation; Policy Community Conference 2023. / Discussion en groupe, Canada.ca/Ecole; Politiques adaptatives – Ce qu'elles signifient pour la mise en œuvre; Conférence de la Communauté des politiques 2023.]
Gail Mitchell: In your public service experience how often does implementation match the intention? We've got a lot of people converging around sometimes; a bit of rarely, and then some not sure. So I think that kind of takes us in a direction that we're going to explore through the conversation. Why is that? And what can we do about that?
So, we've talked about the gap between theory and practice, and I think that's what we're all touching on here, is how do we make that transition in a policy context? What are some of the factors that shape and influence implementation and service delivery? We know these are multifaceted. We've talked about – I really like that image of the human starburst – you have this range of space. You have convergence in the middle. How do we then understand the wicked problems that are so entrenched? How do we start to pull apart what the causes are, that takes us towards multiple solutions?
And again, there's so many layers. This can also generate gaps. And then our understanding of the issues are therefore – there's gap areas in that understanding which again, takes us into that space where, what are happening to the citizens who were at the end of that policy cycle. So, let's jump in.
I'll start with Roda. What reference tools and strategies can the practitioners and decision-makers listening to you today use to create policies that are agile and adaptable to changing circumstances so that they remain relevant. The floor is yours.
Roda Muse: A key aspect of policy development is interdepartmental collaboration.
[00:13:41 Roda Muse appears full screen.]
Roda Muse: I work in the Ontario public service, and there is a culture of being able to work like a business, like an organization, "as one enterprise." So, there are no silos at the deputy ministers' table. When an issue arises, for example, in Ontario, everyone is immediately mobilized around this issue. Everyone has a voice, even if your ministry doesn't have this expertise or your ministry may appear to be one that has little relation to the issue being discussed. Everyone automatically comes to the table to engage. What does this offer? This offers diverse perspectives. First of all, one thing is that the people around the table—I'm talking about the Deputy Ministers' Committee—it's a committee with diverse members from various places, so one with very significant representation—very strong representativeness of Ontario society.
So, you see, these colleagues don't just come from various places. They come from the outside. They come from the private sector. They come from hospitals. They come from the army. So, having these different perspectives makes it possible to approach any issue in a very strategic manner and to cover all angles, to also make a policy to be developed adaptable and also to allow these deputy ministers to say, "You should ensure that this will change." What happens at that point? It doesn't stay above, it trickles down. There is a culture of back and forth between senior management and the teams. And there isn't this culture of "Okay, we're going to work on a horizontal initiative. We're going to take our time. We're going to draw up terms of reference." No. It's really organic. And my colleagues told me that it wasn't like that all the time—that this way of operating like "one enterprise" is very recent. You said it well, Gail. Nowadays, circumstances are changing. The issues are complex. It's multifaceted and it's really important to work together in order to be able to properly respond.
So, that's what makes—that's the greatest strength: it's really this collaboration. And in this respect, we have a very worthwhile reference tool, and I encourage you to consult it. It's "Accountable Leaders" by Dr. Vince Molinaro. It's really a matter of senior leaders who are responsible, who are, as they say, "accountable" and who can bring this accountability down to the levels of their teams as well. This also requires strong knowledge of our environment and maintained relationships with stakeholders. We have access to advisory committees, such as, in addition to the organizations, our respective stakeholders in the ministry. For my part, for French service issues, I have access to information—for example, from the advisory committee that works with the Minister of Health. And, at the level of, say, my ministry—we have an advisory committee that works with our minister, and these committees really allow us to have contact—to have information. And we also ensure that that committee has diversity in order to have the facts on whether the policies that we want to put forward are relevant.
This is also—and this is very common in Ontario—to encourage teams to think outside the box and openly discuss options. There is no fear, we can make mistakes and we can put forward options. And that what I find is that, to really have these flexible, adaptable policies, it's really—it's tied to leadership style and it's very, very important. And this leadership must also trickle down. Lastly, there is a very practical tool for analysts who are young, who are juniors, who are just starting out. And it's one that I really like and that I used a while ago. It's a really very interesting document, and it's the Quebec' government's guide to public policy development. It's really very practical, especially for our young analysts.
Gail Mitchell: Thank you. Very, very, very interesting.
[00:18:33 Split screen: Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage, Jutta Treviranus appears in a video chat panel.]
Gail Mitchell: Darren. I'm wondering if you can talk to us a bit about reference tools that you would recommend to practitioners and decision makers to help advance that agile approach?
Darren Swanson: Yes, of course. I mentioned the levers of transformation that the Global Sustainable Development Report talked about by the United Nations.
[00:18:55 Darren Swanson appears full screen.]
Darren Swanson: But I'll focus on seven things that we landed on in the book that we wrote back in 2009. This is with colleagues at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, together with colleagues at the Energy and Resources Institute in India. And this was with support from the International Development Research Centre, here in Ottawa.
So, back in 2004, we set out to triangulate a set of policy design and implementation principles for policies that worked well under conditions of surprise and change. And we did that by taking a really deep look at complex adaptive systems and how is success achieved in those types of assistance. And we heard a lot about that this morning in the discussion by Professor Irwin.
And we also looked at policies, in both Canada and India, in agriculture and water resources management that were working well under these conditions of surprise and change. And so, we triangulated a set of seven principles that we saw as quite common across the complex adaptive systems literature and in policy practice. And we stockpiled those in the book that we wrote and published in 2009 called Creating Adaptive Policies.
The first principle that we came across was the importance of integrated and forward-looking analysis in policy design. That is basically systems thinking and foresight. Using that to really see all the multiple factors that affect the performance of a policy and how those factors might evolve over time, and how they evolved in the past, as well, being as critical.
A second thing that we landed on was the idea of multi-stakeholder deliberation: to really understand the multiple perspectives that are involved in the issue. And that was talked about this morning in terms of a lot of the stakeholder analysis, stakeholder mapping, to really get a handle on the transition system. So, that was quite key.
A third thing was about enabling self-organization, which is all about ensuring that existing social capital remains intact, and even helping to enhance that social capital to leverage that real self-organizing capacity on the ground where change happens first.
Another principle that we saw, that was common across policy and the complex adaptive systems literature, was this idea of decentralization of decision making. Now to the lowest, most accountable and effective unit of governance, where change is experienced first and surprise happens. And so, it's important to have decisions that can be made close to the ground, and we see multiple examples of where that's effective.
A sixth item is promoting variation in policy response. And we talked a lot about that this morning in the presentations about how, with complex systems and wicked problems, we don't get to decide what works. It's the system that will give us feedback in terms of what works. So, promoting variation and a mix of policy responses, and then understanding and monitoring what works and what doesn't, helps us to refine successful approaches.
And then the last tools, or principles if you want to call them, that we noticed were about formal policy review and continuous learning. We hear that a lot, but it's about doing that even when things are working fine. It's doing that regularly to detect emerging issues and make the adjustments. And also the idea of automatic policy adjustment. We've seen some examples of how that works where we can anticipate the known knowns, and maybe develop things in advance. So, there are a number of approaches that are helpful in complex systems and wicked problems, and they start to repeat themselves.
So, you've heard a lot of these same terms come up in this morning's presentation on transition management. We hear some of the same approaches and tools in the United Nations new levers of transformation, and the capacity they want to build in governance. And Jutta also is landing on a lot of these same principles. So, I think that's good news that there's a set of principles and practices that can help. That doesn't mean they're always easy, but they're out there.
This idea of adaptive policy policymaking. And, in fact, we do take a look at this in the book, how it really did start to emerge back in the 1920s where we heard the first actual written guidance on how to consider policies as experiments almost, in terms of learning, and then learning how to adapt as we learn about the experience. And then in the 70s and 80s, the likes of Buzz Holling and Kai Lee doing this in the Natural Resources sector, adaptive management, where they say, no, policies and programs should be looked at as hypotheses that need to be proven. So, if we think about policies as hypotheses all the time, then we're always looking for information. Is it working or not? And I think that was the key part about adaptive policy making when it started to emerge early on.
[00:24:21 Split screen: Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage, Jutta Treviranus appears in a video chat panel.]
Gail Mitchell: That's great. Really interesting points. Those principles are so practical. There's really a nice structure there. And, as a long time ago policy analyst, I wish I'd had that kind of recipe to help guide me in my work.
Okay. Let's take a look at what we're seeing on the panel. And maybe I'll turn to you, Jutta, to react. If you can't see it, I can run through it for you. But we're really seeing a lot of convergence around, how often does it line up, with the vision and the outcome? Sometimes. It seems like we're <laugh> that's not a compelling outcome from where I sit, as a senior leader in the government. I don't want to have to brief a minister saying, well, yes, sometimes it works out. Any thoughts?
Jutta Treviranus: Yes, actually if I can take a moment to comment on wooclap itself, and how we're gathering input.
[00:25:18 Jutta Treviranus appears full screen.]
Jutta Treviranus: I think wooclap is – and the previous use of it where the words and contributions could be added in single words or phrases – is probably an example of how we use tools to, in effect,
[00:25:35 Wooclap survey results appear on screen: In your public service experience, how often does the implementation of a policy initiative closely match the original intention? / From your perspective, as a public servant,.; 1. Rarely / Rarement (19%); 2.Sometimes / Parfois (65%); 3. Often / Souvent (7%); 4. Don't know / Je ne sais pas (9%)]
Jutta Treviranus: not intentionally, but unintentionally marginalize people that are different. We're amplifying average voices. We're driving attention and influence to majority voices, while causing the novel, unique and outlying to disappear,
[00:25:49 Jutta Treviranus appears full screen.]
Jutta Treviranus: because we expand the words that the majority is saying, we bring them to the middle. And so that drives a convergence on those majority voices.
One of the things we've been doing is we've created a tool that reverses that, so that you can see it from both perspectives, that you can see the novel, unique, and outlying answers as well. And they are centred and grow to grab attention, so that it isn't always that we are ignoring the individuals that are contributing what we see as highly valuable input.
One of the things that we found is that the Pareto Principle, as determined by Richard Koch, often rules. In that, people ignore the struggling 20% who take 80% of the effort. But one of the things we've found is that if you only design for that majority, then your best laid plans start to fragment. You have to continuously support people, you have to add patches and hacks onto the system. And your wonderful policy design reaches end of life much more quickly.
If you design things from the beginning such that it encompasses that entire range, and especially those 20% that may require a lot more time and effort initially, you're going to save time. The longevity of the system that you've created will last longer and you'll save in costs. But that, of course, is not built into the nature or the mindset of many of our institutions at the moment.
[00:27:38 Split screen: Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage, Jutta Treviranus appears in a video chat panel. Overlaid text on screen: Wooclap.com; CODE: PCPO6.]
Gail Mitchell: I think those are really important points, and I appreciate your comments on the tool and really making it real. As you were commenting on it, it really brought me into thinking it through and absolutely those voices that are in that zone outside of the middle start to feel like they're just not visible. So, thank you for that.
Let's talk a bit about the data piece, and how do you actually achieve that balance around inclusivity? Some of the points that you've just highlighted for us, Jutta. There is no shortage of data to satisfy policy makers these days. But the challenge is, how do you weigh it? How do you compile it? How do you assess it?
[00:28:29 Gail Mitchell appears full screen.]
Gail Mitchell: How do you stack it up? And then how do you even become aware of where those data gaps are? And how do you start to unpack those gaps and equip yourself as a policymaker to put some light onto those pieces?
I managed to catch some of Terry Irwin's presentation earlier and was intrigued with the very large mapping that she talked about, and how that really gives us the opportunity to make visible, the pieces that are there, but also the gaps.
So, I'll start with Darren and then I'll turn back to Jutta. But Darren, you've been in this space, you've given us some great sort of parameters around some principles.
[00:29:17 Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage.]
Gail Mitchell: You've worked with a lot of different organizations over the years. How do you tackle both the masses of data, but then also keeping yourself sharp to the gap areas? What are some of the systems that you've used? And secondly, what have you done when you faced those data gaps?
Darren Swanson: This is a really good question, and I think it leads to a couple of important insights.
[00:29:47 Darren Swanson appears full screen.]
Darren Swanson: One is, I'm going to build off with what Professor Irwin started with this morning. I think when faced with data gaps and evidence gaps, a really good place to start is to engage people on the ground. Engage stakeholders on the ground, to gain multiple perspectives. So, I guess in the context of say agriculture and water resources management, this is meeting in the field on the hood of a truck with the map spread out, asking water resource managers and Ag producers, what are your best practices? What's working and what's not? Getting that type of insight is really quite critical. And the stakeholder is different in every situation.
We saw this, and we document this in a few case studies in the book. For example, I'll draw on a local one for me, being from Winnipeg, the Manitoba Conservation Districts are one example where groups get together to talk about water management and soil management issues particularly nutrient management. And it's meeting in the field, on the ground, around the situations where it's happening, where a lot of the insights take place.
Also, looking at the Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association, and their role in, really, the epic scaling of reduced tillage practices in the prairies where gone are the days where, as a child, you watched black smokes of soil covering and creating zero visibility. We don't have that now in the prairies because of a landscape level scaled change in practice. And that association, that really brings stakeholders together: on the ground, farmer to farmer networks, annual sort of conferences where producers and new researchers get together to talk about practices. So, getting on the ground, I think, is quite critical.
In the context of First Nations, this is about – First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people – the approach of two I'd seen that I think many people have heard about really gets to understanding multiple perspectives. It brings traditional ways of knowing and knowledges together with conventional knowledges and really starts to paint a more robust picture. But I think that also ties into my second point is, how to get at that from an analytical side, too. How do we get those multiple perspectives from an analytical side? And that's where this practice of integrated and forward looking analysis, or systems thinking and foresight comes into play and becomes really important. And one specific example of this, to make it kind of real and practical, is benefit cost analysis.
So, right now and particularly in the context now, we're hearing a lot about nature-based solutions, and how it has good ways to get a handle on climate change mitigation and adaptation. The colleagues at International Institute for Sustainable Development right now, through its Natural Infrastructure for Water Solutions Initiative, are looking at this benefit cost analysis and how it needs to have a broad lens looking at the economic, social, environmental benefits, both from a short and long-term perspective, and how to bring that into the mix. So, it's really an integrated view, multiple lenses in benefit cost analysis.
And to make this even more current and real, this is something that the Biden administration is really focusing on right now. They've just issued a roadmap on scaling up natural infrastructure for addressing what they call the big challenge in the United States, of course dealing with climate change mitigation and adaptation, but how to use natural infrastructure for that.
But the data and the analysis is where the gap is to build the business case for that. And benefit cost analysis done with this integrated view is really where a lot of that information comes from. So they've actually proposed updates to the guidance for departments for doing benefit cost analysis for nature-based solutions, in addition to providing guidance on appropriate discount rates for thinking far into the future. So, we've got this forward looking and this integrated view that's becoming a big part of it. And just to mention the other practical aspects of that, the Biden administration and, particularly, the Office of Management and Budget, is laying out new guidance on how to do a full accounting of the benefits: economic; social; and environmental benefits for nature-based solutions.
So, that's that integrated view in a practical sense, and in a tool that a lot of people are used to, but maybe not seeing a lot of it. I recently did a benefit cost analysis for an engineered wetland and water retention site in rural Manitoba. And, in addition to its targeted benefit of helping to manage water and flooding on the landscape, it also provided economic benefits to the local dairy producer in enhancing productivity. There were research and education economic benefits for it being a demonstration site. It was helping to reduce nutrients to Lake Winnipeg, multiple benefits that, if you're not looking, if you're only looking at the targeted benefit, you'll miss a lot of the other multiple benefits. So that's a key thing. And what this all means is if all policy issues are wicked and complex adaptive systems, I think if you haven't met in the field on the hood of a truck with stakeholders, or done some form of integrated and forward looking analysis, you probably have a data gap and you don't even know about it.
[00:35:31 Split screen: Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage, Jutta Treviranus appears in a video chat panel.]
Gail Mitchell: I think those are really good points for us to consider as policy makers. Jutta, in your work that you do around designing inclusively, are there things that government is doing right, in terms of the service delivery piece? And, of course, what could we be doing better?
[00:36:03 Jutta Treviranus appears full screen.]
Jutta Treviranus: Yes, there is a trend towards consulting with marginalized groups and trying to engage people who are currently left out. But I find that the way it's done is quite problematic. The why, who, what, how of consultation is not actually achieving what the intent is. Often, it's done to confirm a decision that's already been made, rather than giving people a chance to help frame the problems, and the possible ways to address them. Often the consultation consists of checking off a set of identity check boxes or demographics and calling in the usual people who are asked to represent that identity. And take disability: One person with a disability can only genuinely represent one person with a disability. We need to find the people that face the greatest barriers, whether it's on the hood of a truck or somewhere else where they feel comfortable.
If, by chance, people are consulted and are called on to do more than confirm a predetermined choice, they're often constrained in what they can contribute, reduced by the choices of binary alternatives or constrained fields. And even worse, we ask people to pick a winner rather than a spectrum or range. And often the methods of consultation present barriers to the people who feel the greatest impact of the decisions. Participation is inaccessible, unaffordable, unreachable, and at times it's impossible.
As an alternative, we've been engaging in community-led co-design: the communities most impacted by the policy who are currently most marginalized frame the problem. An example, yesterday we heard about the concern for privacy, and there was a great deal of discussion about the need to protect privacy if we're going to be using data.
What we found in community led co-design is that the reality is, for people with disabilities, privacy protections don't work. Anonymization at source doesn't work because you can be re-identified because you're highly unique. If you're the only person in a neighbourhood purchasing, say, a colostomy bag, you can be re-identified. Differential privacy, which is the other strategy, removes the data that's needed to make the AI actually work for you. And the other reality we learned is that most people with disabilities have already bartered their privacy for essential services. Most of the services that are offered give you a binary choice, either you get the service or you don't. If you don't give your data, and give up your privacy, then you don't get the service.
So, we need protections against data abuse and misuse. We need ways to punish violators and ways to assist people when privacy is breached. We need to assume breaches and figure out ways to learn from them, prevent the next breach and assist those who are most vulnerable. And that's what we learned through not actually coming for confirmation of what we see as the problem.
[00:39:26 Split screen: Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage, Jutta Treviranus appears in a video chat panel.]
Gail Mitchell: Jutta, can I take you a bit further down that track around – you mentioned AI – so do you have any examples or stories where you've seen policy implemented effectively that leveraged AI? And are there things that we can learn from that approach as we go forward?
Jutta Treviranus: <laugh> That's a difficult question. One of the things to note is that if you're highly unique, if you are an outlier, you feel the extremes of both the benefits, and the risks of AI. We've talked a lot about data deserts and data gaps, but in order to achieve equitable and accessible AI, it requires far more. The AI harm is more than human bias being codified in algorithms, various proxies, to replace missing data or bias labels for categorizing data and the lack of proportional representation in data, which seems to have been the primary discussion here. Even if, by some miracle, we achieve full proportional representation in data, the data of the majority will outweigh and obscure the needs of the minority if we stick to statistical reasoning.
And so, while people with disabilities are often the poster child of AI, because there are miraculous things that can be done to translate modalities, allow you to see patterns, and to translate from something that you can't do, to something that you can do.
[00:41:06 Jutta Treviranus appears full screen.]
Jutta Treviranus: But unfortunately, AI is frequently used to find; match; sort; label; measure; optimize; calculate; analyse people at scale, and there lies the greatest harm of AI. So, we're working with Accessibility Standards Canada to develop an accessible and equitable AI standard that will be part of the Accessible Canada Act. And this is layered on top of the other AI protections that currently are there, which don't recognize the thing that most people with disabilities are vulnerable to, which we call statistical discrimination, the way that statistical reasoning addresses outliers and small minorities.
Unfortunately, what we found as well is that AI ethics protections and AI ethics guidance – including what Biden has put out, including the ADA, including the risk framework, you name it – do not attend to this particular vulnerability.
And so, what we're hoping to do, and what we hope Canada will be a leader in, is looking at, how do we address this fundamental thing within AI that is amplifying, accelerating, and automating discrimination? And of course, it comes from far before AI. AI is just doing it more accurately, more consistently, and more efficiently, but it is driving us towards greater and greater disparity with respect to equity.
[00:42:52 Split screen: Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage, Jutta Treviranus appears in a video chat panel.]
Gail Mitchell: Thank you. That's a very sobering reminder of how we all need to pay close attention to developments in AI. Thank you for that.
Roda, I'll turn to you. Based on your experience, how can we ensure that we respect the views of Canadians who may not be able to provide data to support their concerns? How do you address the issue of inequity in citizen services?
[00:41:06 Roda Muse appears full screen.]
Roda Muse: It is in fact very important when we want—when we talk about adaptive policy—it's very important to also have the views of marginalized communities. But I'm going to be a little blunt too. If, for example, our teams are homogeneous, if the people with whom we work have like identities and the same perspectives, experiences, knowledge and cultural references, I think it will be seriously challenging to understand the complex and changing world in which we find ourselves, which presents challenges to which we are not accustomed. The world is changing and we also need to reflect. Because when you have teams that represent, for example—that are very representative, you have this ability to like seek out these marginalized voices. If you have teams that are homogeneous, you may always move toward the majority. "The voices that count," as Utah said. So you have to have this courage as a leader to seek out this diversity so that you can also, in the context of policy development, be able to have the connections, the relationships that help you to seek out these marginalized voices, and to understand that voices are absent, that there are perspectives missing, because this is a reflex.
I look around a bit. For example, as Deputy Minister of Francophone Affairs, I'm obligated, within the predominantly English-speaking Ontario government, to sound the alarm, to keep warning, to say, "Did we consult the Francophones? Who did you consult? Have you spoken to my team?" So, it is very, very important to have this diversity of views in order to actually seek out these marginalized voices. And it's true that, when we develop policies, if we don't have an ongoing dialogue with our stakeholders, we risk hitting a stumbling block at some point because we want to have flexible policies that can be changed, adapted and improved. But if this back-and-forth dialogue with these marginalized voices does not exist, we cannot succeed. So, for me, this is my perspective.
[00:46:10 Split screen: Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage, Jutta Treviranus appears in a video chat panel.]
Gail Mitchell: Very, very interesting. Thank you. Okay, let's take a look. I think we have another question.
Roda Muse: I just want to add something.
Gail Mitchell: Oh, okay. Go ahead! Yes, I apologize.
[00:46:24 Roda Muse appears full screen.]
Roda Muse: Also, it's... In Ontario, for example, we see that, at the community level as with the federal level, we have multiple lenses. But I don't know if you've often noticed that the lenses—whether they be GBA Plus or lenses for Francophones, racialized people, Indigenous Peoples or accessibility—are something that come last. It's a checkbox. It's often at the end that we say to ourselves, "Oh yes, that's true. We looked." But this doesn't have much impact. And we provide this little sentence, which enables us to advance our policy. And that's an issue. It's a refusal to recognize diversity, a refusal to recognize—how should I put it—different perspectives. And at the moment, at the Ontario level, what we're doing, my colleagues and I, is we're examining how we can carry out this, this process—how we can work with these lenses at the start, when we're thinking about it, when we move on to the policy. And how we can make it systemic. We can keep them throughout the process, and we can make a common tool that encompasses all of this but in a very strategic way. Also, I heard Utah talking about artificial intelligence. We have a whole team that is also thinking about this, about artificial intelligence, uses, habits and standards. So, also how to make sure that we can use it. Sure, this is going to be something very complex, but the work and thinking is being done at this point.
[00:48:16 Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage.]
Gail Mitchell: Thank you. Okay, let's go back to our feedback tool, although now I'm thinking about how it's got these limits in it, and I feel uncomfortable, <laugh> but we'll stick with the plan. I'm not going to look at this in the same way. This is an open-ended one. What feedback mechanisms ensure policies remain adaptive and responsive to changing need and circumstances? So, we put that out there, folks can sort of mull that, and input some stuff. But I'll turn it to –
[00:48:51 Split screen: Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage, Jutta Treviranus appears in a video chat panel.]
Gail Mitchell: I know, Jutta, you've got a time stop at two o'clock, which is a little bit before we end up, so maybe I'll ask you to tell us a little bit about your journey in the work you've done in this program space, and how have you kept your eye on the objectives of that program? Have you kept a steady focus? In other words, how has the practitioner brought the practice into your own space around adapting, and tracking? You've been in this space for quite some time, so tell us a bit about that journey.
[00:49:25 Jutta Treviranus appears full screen.]
Jutta Treviranus: Sure. So, one of our primary compasses is to value diversity. And, of course, valuing diversity also means that we are not misinterpreting evolution, or change, or adaption, to be survival of the fittest. It is more, none of us are safe unless all of us are safe. Which we were supposed to have learned during the pandemic, but which we seem not to have learned. So, rather than staying steady, which you asked in your question, we aim to stretch and expand to encompass greater diversity: to constantly ask, who are we missing?
I know that design thinking has been very popular within the public service. And design thinking has an iterative design squiggle where you iterate towards a winning solution. We don't believe in solutions. The problems that we're addressing are wicked problems. And they're not things you can fix. They're sort of like doing the dishes or child rearing. They need continuous vigilance.
So, rather than the design squiggle, which iterates competitively to a winning solution – of course, when you have winners, you have losers – what we have is what we call the virtuous tornado, where we begin with the people that face the greatest barriers. We design with them – co-design, community led co-design with them. And at each iteration, we ask, well, who are we still missing? And so, rather than iterating towards a single winning solution, we try to create a system that has sufficient choices that it can stretch further and further to encompass that human starburst that I was talking about before.
And we like to say we have a wabi-sabi approach. Wabi sabi is a Japanese aesthetic, but you can apply it to other things. It's valuing the imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. If you have perfection, it prevents people from investing and participating and feeling like they have agency. But if you have something that you invite people to that is still imperfect, that is impermanent and ready for change, and that is incomplete because you don't have all the answers, then it invites participation, personal investment, and continuous learning. And we want to give agency to the community, which, as Terry said, is what's needed to sustain the change beyond the current administration, beyond the very short timeframe that someone that is elected into office has a view of.
[00:52:34 Split screen: Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage, Jutta Treviranus appears in a video chat panel.]
Gail Mitchell: Thank you. And that last point around the balance between a need for continuous learning and then the shorter cycles of government. Which is where I have spent my career, is supporting governments that come and go. <laugh> same thing <laugh>
So, we'll come back to that if we have time, but maybe Darren, I'll turn to you to talk to us a bit about foresight. You've mentioned it a couple of times. What are you seeing as some of the most significant trends impacting that policy to implementation phase? You mentioned the UN report focusing on this, and do you think that the public sector is particularly vulnerable to some of these challenges around that transition to implementation?
[00:53:26 Darren Swanson appears full screen.]
Darren Swanson: Yes. I think one of the big trends that I'm seeing right now is the idea of just transitions and also specifically in the context of transformations. I think that's a really big part. The Global Sustainable Development Report that I mentioned, that was issued by the UN Secretary General.
In addition to the levers that I talked about, it also has some other practical pieces in it on what's called the S-curve of transformations. And some people may have already seen that in different language, but what it highlights is something really quite important, that there's two things happening at the same time in transformations, which leads to the importance of just transitions. It outlines the S-curve.
So, the S-curve, if we're implementing, trying to achieve a new practice, or to introduce a new sustainable practice, for example, a lot of times what we have is sort of the emergence of a new practice. And the acceleration of that new way of doing something, and then the stabilization of it, that appears as a classic S-curve.
But the important thing is, what happens at the very same time in most wicked problems is that there's the opposite curve. Where an existing, perhaps unsustainable practice then becomes destabilized and then breaks down, and then it reaches a new equilibrium, maybe at a smaller scale. I think the important thing – and that's where just transitions come in – a lot of times we're always thinking about how to address the wicked problem with a new, great solution, but not understanding that something is being destabilized at the same time.
So, more specifically, a couple weeks ago I was facilitating the United Nations Sustainable Development Transformations Forum, it's called. This was in Korea. And one example came up where it was about trying to really accelerate progress toward the circular economy in a developing country. And they were specifically looking at how just to ramp up a formal recycling system in a city to really scale up the practice of recycling. But what they didn't realise is what they were destabilizing was an existing practice in the informal sector where poor and vulnerable households were, in fact, out collecting recycled materials from garbage landfills and from littered areas, and then bringing that in for refund. And that's a significant source of livelihood.
So, while it was a great idea to really accelerate a formal system within the city setting to scale up recycling, it was destabilizing something and causing a severe hardship. So, they started to put in place policies that really helped ease that transition, the loss of that livelihood source at the same time as they were trying to accelerate the practice they wanted, that was going to be the more efficient scaled up version of recycling.
That's just one specific example, but you can see that now in the context of, let's say broader context like climate change. At the same time as we're trying to introduce renewable energy and clean fuels in the cities to reduce air pollution and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we're also destabilizing all the industries and businesses around carbon source fuels. I think the point is, if we're thinking about policy gaps with implementation, if we're not thinking about both transitions at the same time, an acceleration and a deceleration, and treating that with policy in the same way, we're constantly going to be sourced with policy gaps and unintended consequences that will have severe consequences to the different stakeholders.
So, I think that's an important tool, and I encourage participants to look at the global sustainable development report and that S-curve nature of transformations. I think it's a very practical tool and a good insight for the policy gap issue itself.
[00:57:26 Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage.]
Gail Mitchell: Thank you. That's a really interesting example that you gave us to sort of think it through. We often talk about unintended consequences but gathering that information about it is sometimes so far down the track that, it sort of comes back to your point, if you're not out there on the, in the field, in discussions with groups, you'll miss signs—those early signs of that disruption.
Okay, I don't know if we have any results on wooclap that we can look to. The question was, what feedback mechanisms:
[00:58:06 Wooclap survey results appear on screen, as described.]
Gail Mitchell: continuous engagement; user feedback; evaluations; feedback loops; DM performance reviews; policy review with consultations; building relationships; performance measurement.
These are all things that we see in the context of public policy development. Those are fairly standard patterns of activity. Maybe, Roda, what do you think of the comments we've seen?
[00:58:36 Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage.]
Gail Mitchell: What approaches do you use?
Roda Muse: Personally, ongoing dialogue, ongoing consultations and maintaining relationships
[00:58:47 Roda Muse appears full screen.]
Roda Muse: are very important. I would also look at "GM performance." Because I find that, when we want to have leaders who are truly responsible and who focus on results but results that are not obtained by killing teams along the way, ones that are obtained in a really proactive way, in a way that engages the team. I would be more for GM performance for dialogues. The other element too is that I also really like the role of—when they do audits, when they do checks—I find that it's also a way to improve. I never saw these evaluations, these checks, these audits, as a problem. Rather, they help us to get back on track. But definitely, as Darren said, it's to have this ability to look around and really avoid the negative effects of changing the policy to be carried out. It's really good to be in contact with the—how shall I say—the key, major stakeholders.
Gail Mitchell: Yes, you really have to be listening...
Roda Muse: Listening, exactly.
[01:00:21 Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage.]
Gail Mitchell:... to what is going on. And the concept of formal evaluations—sometimes they're very, very far off, in three years, in five years. So, we see that the impacts of current policies can be...
Roda Muse: Further off.
Gail Mitchell: Right. So, we really need to keep our eye on that timing.
Roda Muse: It could take a decade too.
Gail Mitchell: That's right.
Roda Muse: But trying to have this in measurements, in the deputy minister's performance, is important. It's a way of also monitoring progress.
Gail Mitchell: Yes. Yes. Okay, let's see. We've got some time left, and hopefully we can get to some questions.
[01:01:04 Gail Mitchell appears full screen.]
Gail Mitchell: Uncertainty. This is part of our world, how we operate. Organizations face unforeseen circumstances daily. It's just part of how we have to operate. And so, it really does bring us that importance of foresight, contingency planning, and having that capacity organizationally to plan for the unplanned, invest in multiple scenarios. But, in our current environment, and we've come out of a big event in the pandemic where we had to adapt and change.
[01:01:48 Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage.]
Gail Mitchell: But the question that I would put to both of you is, you're in government, you're working with governments. Let's start with the working with governments and different types of entities in the public space. What would your advice be to us in, how do we stay alive to that challenge of uncertainty in an environment where we're being driven to achieve policy outcomes?
So, we have ministers, we all work for departments that are headed by ministers, and they have a time horizon that's limited. But we all, as policymakers, we have to give the advice and we have to be able to frame that contingency in a way that the political imperatives can understand. So, I'm really wondering, when you've seen it happening, when you've been giving that advice, what are some of the best ways that policymakers can bring the full picture to politicians and still give them something that they can work with in the moment?
[01:02:54 Darren Swanson appears full screen.]
Darren Swanson: Well, I continue to lean on a lot of those seven principles for adaptive policy making that we observed back when we published the book in 2009. And I continue to work with those different pieces. It's like juggling seven balls or batons at the same time. There's some things that we can anticipate through good analytics systems thinking foresight, and multi-stakeholder deliberation, really meeting with multiple stakeholders to really understand perspectives. There are things we can do to detect things and anticipate and build that into how we design and implement policy. But then there's just the unanticipated. No matter how much you do, something's going to happen, surprise, that just is out of left field completely. But those are things that can help as well.
So, I mentioned things like enabling self-organization, really understanding how to leverage social capital on the ground where surprising change happens, and there's a real – it's like a [INAUDIBLE]. And the policy research initiative here did a lot of work on social capital and its value to public policy back a long time ago. And that was a really good, useful tool, I thought.
One example is Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, when the flooding occurred, and a lot of the infrastructure failed in New Orleans, and everything was out. All public services were out completely. It was the on-the-ground, informal networks, faith-based groups that just were socially connected, those were the groups that were able to respond on the ground quickly to something that was completely a really unanticipated, complete systems failure. That social capital that exists becomes super important in dealing with unanticipated issues. And it exists on the ground. We don't want to undermine it. We want to enhance it. The other aspect, of course, is the decentralization of decision making as much as possible to the ground levels where change is happening. And there are some examples where that really works well. And sometimes, for example, crop insurance is federally mandated and then provincially run, but then run through district offices, so there's ways to really have that on the ground view or something like that. There's ways to do that. And, of course, that's a difficult thing to do.
Promoting variation was another one I'd mentioned. And we've heard that a lot from most of the speakers, the importance of variation in policy approaches. And that's important because, again, I think I mentioned that before is, it's the system, it's the wicked problem or the complex system that will tell us what is working, and what is not. If we're always just going for that silver bullet that Professor Irwin mentioned, at a specific problem, that's just going to be almost luck if it works. And then we just view failure as failure and as a negative. But we should be looking for that information. Variation is a good form of risk management. Redundancy is obviously important, but that looking for information, treating policies as hypotheses, and then we can learn and strengthen the ones that are working well.
So, those are all important. I guess looking back now, that was 15 years ago when we were thinking about a lot of those things and observing those, what makes more sense to do now than later? They're all important. One thing that I've really focused on is using systems thinking and foresight scenario planning, because that brings together a lot of tools, including the deliberation with stakeholders. You can't do good foresight in scenario planning with an organization if you haven't engaged a lot of different perspectives. And it helps to really detect multiple issues. So, we spent a lot of time on that. And we're seeing this in government. Of course, we've seen the federal government here has dabbled with foresight units in the past, and some have come and gone.
And a lot of times I think things die under their own weight. When we get a good idea and we do something, and maybe create too big off the start and it gets a bit cumbersome. But there are examples where these things are working well.
At the UN forum I was just facilitating a few weeks ago in Korea, we heard from the government of Peru. They've embarked on a national strategic plan, and they're implementing a lot of different pieces, but they have a national observatory of foresight that is really – it's a platform for future oriented decision making, and it's for government to use, and the public. So, multiple issues, longer term, high in historical trends and the like. There's examples out there where these things are happening and supporting governments. We heard from the government of Kuwait also who has a national observatory of sustainable development and foresight. So, there's various ways to do this, to kind of help, but not let it die under its own weight.
And just as a last bit, we talked about Artificial Intelligence, and we had this one chapter in our book on automatic policy adjustment where there are some knowns that we know and we can anticipate, and a lot of times policies are built to react to these things and adjust over time, like weather indexed insurance. Even Canada's Employment Insurance has some automatic stabilizers in it. But we can also think that AI could also start to help us in the future, if done properly, to detect signals out there and then work with policymakers to really make some of these adjustments. I think there's real power in AI, if it's done correctly, in terms of this multiple perspectives gathering, and also helping with policy adjustments.
But, just as a final message, in the book we talk about the policymaker needing to wear three hats to create adaptive policies. The first hat being as a systems thinker, and an architect to really look for those mixes of policies, and deploy them, that can search for successes. The second hat is about the policymaker as a facilitator. Facilitating conversations amongst multiple groups and listening to feedback. And then the final is the policy maker as a learner to really respond to information. All constantly gathering information and learning about what works and what doesn't. I think those three hats are really quite useful.
[01:09:22 Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage.]
Gail Mitchell: Thank you. Yes, yes. Roda, as deputy minister, what is your perspective on the tensions between politicians, politics and policies? The Policy Makers, the Policies. Is it that...?
Roda Muse: It's, it's a fine, fine line, as you know. I think building good relationships,
[01:09:48 Roda Muse appears full screen.]
Roda Muse: when we invest in these relationships. Generally, a deputy minister will have to deal with the chief of staff and the minister. So, from the start, really making sure not only to understand each person's role—where each person stands in all these continuums. It's very, very important because once the roles are clear and articulated too because sometimes we don't articulate them. We know that this has to be done, they have to do this and we have to do that. But not articulating them enough is risky because people overstep roles. So, it's very, very important to be clear from the start. Who deals with whom and how? So, for example, for the teams that they have to deal with, when the minister's office needs something, does it necessarily have to go through the deputy minister's office and does it trickle down? So, it's really fine. However, this also depends on the nature of the file. I realized this very quickly while looking at what was happening, around our table in Ontario. There are ministers who will have it easier, who have a lot of contact with, for example, external stakeholders and who continue to have this smooth relationship with the ministries. But, definitely, what I find very important is to clarify the role from the start. Because, if it isn't clarified, this can lead to situations where everyone will encroach on each other's role, where there will be confusion and where, at a certain point, we can no longer move forward with a file. So it's very, very important too. Sometimes, we may need, say, the help of the Secretary of the Cabinet to escalate a situation, to say, "You know, there is a bit of a challenge, can you...
Gail Mitchell: Absolutely.
Roda Muse:... help us with this? "So, we have to know all the mechanisms that are available to us precisely to facilitate this role of back and forth, but the trust that we establish, the credibility and then the good relationships—this is very, very important, and things are a lot easier when you're able to quickly text your minister to say, "Okay, look. There's this—what do you think? Can we meet soon? Can I talk to you?" That makes a difference.
[01:12:29 Gail Mitchell, Roda Muse, and Darren Swanson are seated together on stage.]
Gail Mitchell: Especially in contexts where we have to bring news that may not be...
Roda Muse:... very good.
Gail Mitchell: Absolutely. Alright. I see that we have come to the end of our session. I don't think we'll have time for questions from the floor, but I would like to thank the panel. This has been a really interesting conversation. I've got a lot of notes I've taken and some great tips. I hope that folks were able to jot down some of these things. I'd like to thank Jutta, she has already had to sign off, but I would like to thank Darren and Roda for their insight today and your stories that you brought from the practitioner perspective, from the expert perspective. Really useful. Thank you so much.
[01:13:16 Applause from the audience is heard.]
[01:13:20 The CSPS animated logo appears onscreen.]
[01:13:25 The Government of Canada wordmark appears, and fades to black.]
