Backgrounder: Blueprint 2020 – Getting Started – Getting Your Views

Blueprint 2020 Overview

The Public Service evolves with Canadians and has a history of responding and adapting to meet Canada’s needs. Its continual focus on positioning and equipping itself to meet our challenges, ensures that it remains a vibrant and modern organization. In his Twentieth Report to the Prime Minister on the Public Service, the Clerk of the Privy Council called for a clear and shared vision of what Canada’s Public Service should be, and for an action plan on how we will achieve it to be developed. He asked deputies to broaden the conversation so that public servants across the country can join in, and invited all public servants to take part in this important dialogue about our shared future.

The Blueprint 2020 Vision

Blueprint 2020: Getting Started—Getting Your Views sets out a vision of a world-class Public Service equipped to serve Canada and Canadians now and into the future. This is a Public Service recognized as having the best people working together with citizens, making smart use of new technologies and achieving the best possible outcomes with efficient, interconnected and nimble processes, structures and systems. The Public Service’s core objective is to improve the lives of our citizens and secure a strong future for our country.

The Blueprint 2020 vision sets out four guiding principles to help examine how work is done in the Federal Public Service:

• An open and networked environment that engages citizens and partners for the public good.

Together with…

• A whole of government approach that enhances service delivery and value for money.

Enabled by…

• A modern workplace that makes smart use of new technologies to improve networking, access to data and customer service.

And…

• A capable, confident and high-performing workforce that embraces new ways of working and mobilizing the diversity of talent to serve the country’s evolving needs.

The Blueprint 2020 vision was developed by, and for, public servants. The vision provides opportunities to strengthen the Public Service and position it for continued excellence.

• Describing what the Public Service needs to be in the near future;
• Serving as a platform to frame the changes required to get from here to there;
• Using the vision as a guide to transform the Public Service for the long term; and
• Inspiring and reinvigorating people on the important role of the Public Service.

The Blueprint 2020 Engagement Process

Blueprint 2020 involves both a discussion around a vision and the development together of an action plan. Discussions around the Blueprint 2020 vision were launched in advance of National Public Service Week, June 9-15, 2013. This marked the beginning of engagement efforts and organizational activities across the Public Service and in all regions of the country.

Through the Blueprint 2020 engagement process, public servants will contribute to finding innovative ways to uphold the tradition of excellence that is the hallmark of Canada’s Public Service. The goal is to refine the Blueprint 2020 vision and to determine what is needed to make it a reality. From these discussions, a Blueprint 2020 action plan will be built and put forward in 2014.

The engagement process is:

• Public-service driven—scope and profile primarily internal but open to external input;
• Voluntary—an opportunity for input by interested parties;
• Flexible—a process that can be adjusted to individual and organizational realities; and,
• Organic—an approach that can grow and adapt.

All public servants are invited to participate in the discussion and contribute their views. Organizations making up the Public Service in schedules I, IV and V of the Financial Administration Act have been invited to participate and report on the exercise. Other organizations in the Federal Public Administration are encouraged to participate and will be able to access tools by visiting he Blueprint 2020 website. Public Service employees can participate by sharing ideas in their workplaces, in their communities, and through Blueprint 2020 spaces on GCpedia and GCconnex.

Canadians can choose to provide input through the Blueprint 2020 webpage.