Trudeau recruits Tony Blair’s guru to help Liberals deliver on pledges

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The word most associated with Sir Michael Barber, "deliverology," sounds like a self-help bestseller for bureaucrats, which is sort of what it was. So when Justin Trudeau's government brought him in as a kind of governing guru, it seemed like a government starting out with hundreds of new initiatives was looking for a trendy new way to manage them.

But the striking thing about the message that Sir Michael delivered to Canadian civil servants last week – a how-to approach to delivering on promised initiatives – is that it's such common-sense stuff. When non-wonks listen to his fundamentals, they probably won't find it hard to believe the government wants to adopt them. They're more likely to be surprised it wasn't doing this stuff years ago.

There's a reason why it's happening now. Stephen Harper's Conservatives, believers in government doing less, kept a steely discipline on the number and the scope of initiatives that moved forward through the machinery of government. Mr. Trudeau has instead taken on vast, open-ended pledges, from middle-class opportunity to aboriginal inclusion to combatting climate change, and outlined 300 new initiatives in mandate letters to ministers. No wonder they're interested in the Barber approach, which promises to bring order to the chaos.

Sir Michael created the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit of former British PM Tony Blair, famed for riding herd over ministers and bureaucrats to get what Mr. Blair wanted done. Now, Mr. Trudeau's government is building its own Results and Delivery Unit. Sir Michael led sessions with the whole Trudeau cabinet at a January retreat in St. Andrew, N.B.; last week, he lectured at the Canada School of Public Service and met senior bureaucrats.

His advice should not shock. "Basically it's five questions and getting clear answers to those five questions," Sir Michael said in an interview at Langevin Block, which houses the Prime Minister's Office and the Privy Council Office, the bureaucracy's central agency.

His five questions are exceedingly simple. Clear answers are the point. "Question one is what are you trying to do? Not just in broad terms, but can you define it, can you be clear about the priorities?" he said. A critical point is that a government program isn't the goal – it's what that program is to achieve.

Number two is "how do you plan to do it?" – which means systematic planning. Question three asks "how you will know if you are on track?" – which requires data to measure progress. Question four is, "what will you do to adjust when things are go off track?" Number five is whether you can set up a unit, like Sir Michael's PMDU, to follow up.

That last part created ripples in Ottawa. The Results and Delivery Unit will collect data from departments, and ministers will go before a cabinet committee to report on progress. In Britain, the PMDU was often feared inside government. Sir Michael, 60, says there's always resistance at first, but senior British bureaucrats quickly liked it because it means they face a steady agenda, rather than unpredictable calls from the PMO about a story in the newspapers.

A key issue is data. Government is bad at it. Politicians often don't love objective, revealing metrics. Creating good indicators is not always easy – big companies depend on them, but government missions aren't always as straightforward as profit. Sir Michael's reputation for success (and the term deliverology) came from work in education reforms, a field where demand for test scores led to criticism that education is sacrificed for passing tests. In government, there are similar concerns that what's measured becomes what matters. But tracking progress is an obvious necessity.

The big question for Mr. Trudeau's new government isn't whether Sir Michael's approach is useful, but whether it will be overwhelmed by the multiplicity of broad initiatives.

That's been the shock to Ottawa's system so far. Mr. Harper's government put out fewer initiatives, with controlling instructions, but Mr. Trudeau's government quickly signalled to departments to work on many big things – while in some cases, the policy advisers to ministers who typically help guide such work still haven't been hired. Sir Michael's call for rigour is good, but that doesn't ensure there will be enough of it to go around.