Quiet Revolution

With a new government comes new priorities, and there will be corresponding changes to the public service. My interests come from twenty-five years of administrative service, experiencing directly the results of shifting party policy. Some changes made us smarter and sharper, others were comical. The challenge for every public worker, no matter where they work in the heirarchy, is to find meaning in their role, often lacking in power to eliminate the ridiculous.

The freshening United Conservative Party will be bustling to make their mark, and in some cases, to reverse the reforms instituted in the past four years. The public service will struggle to keep up.

I've watched with interest in the past four years as the NDP absorbed some agencies back in to public service. Of note, the Alberta Environmental Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Agency and the Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency both dissolved  back in to their parent departments in 2016. In addition, four innovative agencies were combined in to one, Alberta Innovates Corporation. With these changes and others, the number of agencies in the past four years was reduced by seven, which would result in a reduction in administrative costs.

I like seeing this sort of cost reduction by reducing complexity. It's a sort of quiet revolution that rarely makes headlines.

The new government has promised to keep a hold on spending,

"Maintain operating spending at current levels as part of a realistic plan to balance the budget by 2022/23 without compromising core services" United Conservatives - Alberta Strong and Free" p. 101, 2019

I will watch with interest if the new party will restrain themselves when tweaking the organization of the public service, if they create or disband any existing agencies, and if they trend towards efficiency and simplicity.