Alternative service delivery — responding to global pressures

Abstract

The new integrated global environment has resulted in a paradigm shift from the nation-state to the international community as a driver of change, an unprecedented degree and speed of change, the replacement of single policy issues with cross-cutting ones and a demand by citizens for improved service delivery. In response, governments are creating alternative service delivery (ASD) arrangements. Jurisdictions using ASD can be placed on a continuum of organizational change. There are slow starters in which all service delivery is state-owned, operated and designed around government needs. There are structural changers that pursue a formulaic approach to organizational change. Finally, there are transformational changers that take a principles-based case-by-case approach to organizational renewal, ensuring that each initiative responds to the particular challenge of the nation and its entities. In Canada, the Policy on Alternative Service Delivery provides guidance for jurisdictions contemplating organizational change with the Public Interest Test.

This article will examine the role that organizational change plays in countries that are implementing major governmental change initiatives. It will review the influence of an increasingly integrated global environment on government change and examine how ASD can act as an organizational response to this environment. It will look at the governance issues that countries face when implementing ASD and propose a typology for classifying countries as change agents. Finally, it will reference a principles-based approach for implementing organizational change through ASD that is being implemented in Canada.