Government

WHO

Ontario Ministry and its largest Transfer Payment Agency. Agency operates in 6 districts which don't align with the Ministry's regions. Agency serves 1.600 clients and employes 3,400 staff.

WHAT

Transfer payments to the Agency grew by 200% in the past 10 years. The structure of the Agency had evolved since its inception over 40 years ago, as had the structure of service delivery in the province.

The Ministry determined that it wished to review the governance and accountability relating to the relationship between the Ministry and the Agency to:

Mitigate the Ministry’s risk associated with the rapid expansion of the agency’s size and scope and its associated level of funding
Enhance the ministry/agency relationship through improved transfer payment governance and accountability business processes

HOW

The Osborne Group assembled a team of diverse Principals to work on this project and was the successful proponent in an RFP process. The Osborne team was able to identify:

The degree to which best governance practices in overseeing risk were evident in policy and practice.
The extent to which governance risk management practices recognized and incorporated government risk management expectations.
Where there may be risk that is not adequately reflected using existing tools.
Where the level of risk may indicate a need for increased assessment and vigilance as a result of agency size, growth or impact.
What new or additional tools, governance and/or accountability mechanisms would mitigate this risk.

SUCCESS STORY

The Osborne Group met regularly with the Client throughout the course of the project for discussion of issues, learnings, recommendations and options for implementation.

A comprehensive report was issued upon completion of the work. We met with the Steering Committee at the end of the project for a final discussion of the report’s recommendations and proposed implementation strategies.

A portion of the report (A Jurisdictional Review of Best Practices in Public Sector Governance) was completed as a separate document so as to allow for broad circulation and application in other areas within the Ministry, without breaching Client or Agency confidentiality. This document has proven to be useful in other areas of the Ministry looking at governance, accountability and risk.