Full text (pdf)

By Daniel Livermore
Background Document to Blog Post, May 2018

• In 1983, Peter Hancock was the head of the department’s Foreign Policy Secretariat (as the Policy Planning Staff was then called). Over the course of several weeks, he discussed issues of management and values with other staff members, as well as key senior members of the department. He then shaped the outlines of a paper entitled “The Crisis of Quality,” invited further input and circulated drafts for comment.
•  When Hancock finished the “The Crisis of Quality,” he sent the paper to the Deputy Minister and to all members of External’s Executive Committee, with a covering memorandum that described the paper as “both a diagnosis and a constructive prescription” for enhancing the daily work of the department. “You will be attracted by some ideas,” the covering memo suggested, “and repelled by others.”
• “The Crisis of Quality,” however, is still relevant today. It’s relevant to GAC in kick-starting a debate about purpose and mission. It’s also relevant for those trying to re-build professional capacity and move the department beyond an obsession with process and procedures that has supplanted the logical and simple pursuit of clear objectives. It’s a long document, even by the standards of 1983. The argument is clear. And if it addresses the issues of 2018 as clearly as it confronted those of 35 years ago, words of appreciation can be directed to its author, Peter Hancock, for pushing this issue as far as he could and saving the document for future use.

Daniel Livermore is an honorary Senior Fellow at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.

Read the blog post here.