In 2020, the City of Calgary implemented a strategy called Rethink to Thrive, designed as a guide to managing growth in the city through improvements to internal systems at city hall. According to the city’s website, “Administration's Rethink to Thrive Strategy is our guide to building a stronger, more innovative organization. The strategy is intended to provide focus to employees to seek new, collaborative solutions to making lives better for the citizens we serve and to outline how we will work together to deliver on council's direction.” There is only one outcome of a bureaucracy looking inside itself with the idea of making itself more efficient. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines bureaucracy as “an entire body of unelected government officials; a problematic system, often filled with red tape that may result from administration by bureaucrats.” Succinctly, the only outcome is increased bureaucracy as borne out in the Rethink to Thrive restructuring, that created seven new departments and shifted internal reporting structures. On Tuesday, at a meeting of Calgary city council’s executive committee, two councillors, Sonya Sharp (Ward 1) and Andre Chabot (Ward 10) brought forward a Notice of Motion to do a deep dive into 2020’s organizational realignment, saying Calgarians deserve clear answers on whether the changes have actually improved services or just grown the bureaucracy. .The difference this time is Sharp and Chabot are calling for a third party, independent review. Separate internal departments are protective, distancing themselves from each other, even after the Rethink to Thrive Strategy said Sharp in a media scrum. “Members of the public are questioning the strategy.” said Sharp. “There are still siloes. There are still departments working away from each other. There are things happening in a different building than in another building.” “We have examples when the pipe burst last summer where departments weren’t really talking to each other. I see it day to day, when I’m dealing with applications in my ward.” “I started to question things as an elected official especially when the strategy started to cost money on our first budget in 2021. There were subject matter experts put together as a team of people to execute this and so did they have a hand in, let’s call it, empire building in their departments? They could have.” .The notice of motion also calls for the review to include city administration positions created since the implementation of the strategy. “This is about basic accountability,” said Chabot. “The public deserves to know if this reorganization is actually working, or if it’s just costing more without improving services. An independent review is the right step to get those answers.” “For years, we’ve heard from frontline staff and citizens that this realignment has created more confusion, more layers of management and not enough visible improvement to public service,” added Sharp. “Council has never received clear, public reporting on what’s been gained, or what it’s actually costing taxpayers. That’s unacceptable, and it’s time for a full, independent review.” If a review shows the Rethink to Thrive Strategy is achieving its intended goals, then fine, say Sharp and Chabot. But the review is needed to part the dark, low hanging clouds of bureaucracy. “Let’s see if that’s working, if not, fix it. It’s actually going to cost more money as we continue it,” says Sharp. “There’s also been layers of bureaucracy in some of the higher-level departments. We need to understand what those positions are doing.” “And so, we just need to understand if you’re putting more people to do certain jobs are you executing a more efficient service delivery?” .The largest hindrance to a bureaucracy is the bureaucracy itself, said James Madison, fourth president of the United States, known as the ‘Father of the Constitution.’ “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed and in the next place oblige it to control itself,” said Madison. That last part about government obliging to control itself has yet to materialize. The notice of motion received unanimous support from the executive committee and will go before the full city council on July 29.
