The Voluntary Sector Initiative Process Evaluation
Final Evaluation Report

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Introduction: The VSI as an Experiment in Two Dimensions

In Canada, as elsewhere, the roles of both government and the voluntary sector – and the relationship between the two – are undergoing important changes. In recent years, governments have recognized that they cannot go it alone in policy development or service delivery, but need to work cooperatively with the private and voluntary sectors to achieve their desired results. For its part, the Canadian voluntary sector, like those in other countries, has begun to act more collectively as a sector and is seeking a stronger voice and more active participation in policy processes. The five year, $94.6 million Voluntary Sector Initiative (VSI) that was announced in June 2000 is an unprecedented exercise in working together for the Government of Canada and the voluntary sector. The objectives of the VSI are to strengthen the voluntary sector's capacity to meet the challenges of the future and to enhance the relationship between the sector and the federal government.

The VSI is unlike any exercise in joint work between government and the voluntary sector that has ever been undertaken in Canada, or elsewhere for that matter. It is first of all distinguished by its scope. As part of its overarching goals of capacity and relationship building, the VSI undertook a wide range of specific tasks: developing an Accord between the Government of Canada and the voluntary sector and associated codes of good practice related to funding and policy dialogue; improving the sector's access to the benefits of technology; increasing recognition of the sector among the public and government; developing new knowledge and research about the sector; enhancing human resource and other skills; promoting the role of volunteerism as a legacy of the United Nations International Year of Volunteers in 2001; improving the regulatory climate; and enhancing the ability of voluntary organizations to participate in policy development. The VSI is not only comprehensive in its objectives, but it is also fundamentally about building a better relationship between the Government of Canada and the voluntary sector. In this sense, both product and process are important.

Second, the joint process for achieving these objectives is innovative. In the first phase of the VSI, from the fall of 2000 to the fall of 2002, six "Joint Tables" and a joint coordinating committee worked together to deliver on this broad agenda. Each Joint Table was comprised of 14-16 members chosen in equal number from the public service of Canada and the voluntary sector, and each was co-chaired.

The third defining feature of the VSI is its scale. The Joint Table phase of the Initiative was aimed at engaging the Government of Canada, as a whole, and Canada's voluntary sector, as a sector. This scale meant that both a large number of federal departments and the broad diversity of the voluntary sector needed to participate in some manner or be consulted as part of the Initiative.

The Joint Table phase of the VSI was thus an exercise in collaboration and in horizontal management. The first could be thought of as its vertical dimension – working jointly between government and the voluntary sector. The second is its horizontal dimension – managing the process across government and within the voluntary sector.

A Process Evaluation

This evaluation is part of the ongoing learning process of the VSI. It was commissioned in the spirit of the VSI itself as a joint undertaking by the Government of Canada and the voluntary sector. This report is an evaluation of the process of the VSI. Its purpose is to assess how the VSI worked and how well it worked up to the end of the two year Joint Table phase that ended in October 2002. The evaluation considers all of the components of the VSI except the program known as Sectoral Involvement in Departmental Policy Development (SIDPD) which has been evaluated separately.

In examining the process, the evaluation focuses on assessing the conduct of the VSI from the perspective of those who were directly involved because they had some responsibility for carrying out work on behalf of the Initiative. While not strictly a self-evaluation, the insights of participants are valuable because they have first hand knowledge of what was effective and what was not. In addition, because they are senior public servants and voluntary sector leaders, many of whom had previous experience in working collaboratively, they are well placed to provide critical judgments and make constructive suggestions for improvements.

This evaluation draws on multiple sources of evidence including a full review of the documents produced for the VSI and an extensive set of interviews. A total of 102 structured interviews, lasting on average one hour and twenty minutes, were conducted from mid February to mid April 2003 with a cross-section of VSI participants drawn in roughly equal number from the Government of Canada and the voluntary sector.¹

Four key evaluation questions are addressed:

• How effective were the structures, policies and operations of the VSI in helping the Initiative achieve its objectives?
• What were the success factors and what were the barriers to effective collaboration and horizontal management?
• What could have been done differently and more effectively, and what were the realistic, practical alternatives?
• What are the lessons learned for future, sustainable collaboration between the Government of Canada and the voluntary sector and for horizontal management within each?

The Components of the VSI: An Overview

The VSI was designed both to facilitate joint work and incorporate a broad basis of participation across the federal government and the voluntary sector. The VSI was intentionally decentralized, meaning that its responsibilities were spread across a number of joint mechanisms and federal departments.

Joint Mechanisms

The primary vehicles for collaboration between the Government of Canada and the voluntary sector were six Joint Tables:

• Joint Accord Table (JAT)
• Awareness Joint Table (AJT)
• Capacity Joint Table (CJT)
• Information Management/Information Technology (IM/IT)
• National Volunteerism Initiative Joint Table (NVI)
• Joint Regulatory Table (JRT)

Several smaller collaborative mechanisms focused on specialized and often pre-existing work, such as the Canada Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating and an Experts Group on Non-profit Law and Liability.

Separate Components

In addition to the matters addressed in a joint manner, there were several separate activities. On the voluntary sector side, these included two Working Groups (on Advocacy and on Financing) and two Reference Groups (representing the Aboriginal and visible minority communities). On the government side, there was a Study on Funding, the development of a Satellite Account at Statistics Canada, and ongoing work at Industry Canada on reform of legislation governing federal incorporation of nonprofits.

Coordination and Governance

A Joint Coordinating Committee (JCC) was charged with responsibility for coordinating the various components of the VSI. For the Government of Canada, political leadership was provided by a Reference Group of Ministers and by an Assistant Deputy Minister (ADM) Executive Committee. They were assisted by a broader ADM Advisory Committee and by three interdepartmental committees. On the voluntary sector side, leadership was assigned to a body known as the Voluntary Sector Steering Group (VSSG). It was built around a core group, the Voluntary Sector Roundtable, which was an unincorporated association of 12 representatives of national organizations and coalitions from the major parts of the sector that had provided policy leadership for the sector since the mid 1990s. It also included the sector co-chairs of the Joint Tables, the chairs of the sector only Working and Reference Groups, and the sector members of the JCC.

The main components of the VSI are illustrated in Figure 1.

Departmental Decentralization

Because the Joint Tables and other collaborative mechanisms were not themselves legal entities, they could not hold and administer their own budgets, so ten government departments played important roles in financial administration and as secretariat support. These departments tended to act relatively autonomously in serving their Joint Tables and managing their funding envelopes. This autonomy was reinforced by the fact that they were under no requirement to report to any central body of the VSI on their activities.

Secretariat Support

Staff resources for the VSI were structured so as to support both its joint and its decentralized nature. The Initiative was supported by two main secretariats. The Voluntary Sector Task Force (VSTF), housed at the Privy Council Office, coordinated and supported the government's VSI activities and its relationship with the voluntary sector. An innovative feature of the VSI was the creation of a separate secretariat for the voluntary sector, the Voluntary Sector Initiative Secretariat (VSIS), that was responsible for supporting the sector's participation and for communicating with and engaging the broader sector. Both jointly served the JCC and the Joint Accord Table. Most of the other Joint Tables had their own secretariats which were housed in departments and staffed mainly by public servants, although several hired some members from the voluntary sector as well.

Results of the VSI to the End of the Joint Table Phase

Although this evaluation is not an assessment of the products or the outcomes of the VSI, it is helpful to have a sense of what has been achieved to the end of the Joint Table phase. These impacts can be measured in several ways.

Objectives Met

The first test is whether the work got done. And, for the most part, it did. However, it took much longer than initially expected to get the Joint Tables up and running. There was then a lengthy period – some 10 months for most – of relationship building, visioning, discussion of mandates and development of workplans. So, completing work to schedule did not always go exactly as planned.

A Better Relationship

A second test is whether, at the end of two years of working together, participants felt that the relationship between the Government of Canada and the voluntary sector had improved. The general view held by both sides is that the relationship was moderately better at the end than it had been at the beginning.

Perceptions of the Process

A third measure is the self-assessment by participants of how effective the VSI was as a process and in accomplishing its objectives. In general, both process and outcomes were rated as moderately effective, on average 6.9 and 6.7 (out of 10) respectively. Finally, was the VSI seen to be a worthwhile endeavour for: the voluntary sector; the Government of Canada; and participants themselves? The answers are a definite yes on all three counts, as expressed equally by the voluntary sector and government participants.

The Key Evaluation Questions

The four evaluation questions addressed in this report are intended to explain the factors that account for both the successes and the shortcomings of the VSI process.

1. How effective were the structures, policies and operations of the VSI in helping the Initiative achieve its objectives?

As governments and the voluntary sector have gained experience in working collaboratively, some of the important factors that contribute to success in collaboration and horizontal management have become clearer. These include:²

• Acknowledgment of the Need for Collaboration and Horizontality
• Clarity and Realism of Purpose
• Establishment of Clear and Robust Arrangements
• Commitment, Ownership and Leadership
• Development and Maintenance of Trust
• Governance, Accountability and Organizational Learning

To what extent did each of these factors contribute to the effectiveness of the VSI?

1.1 Acknowledgment of the Need for Collaboration and Horizontality

The commitment to working jointly and the means for achieving this were shaped in important ways by several developments in the five year period leading up to the creation of the VSI in 2000. During this period, the relationship between the voluntary sector and the Government of Canada underwent significant change. The early to mid 1990s had been a difficult period in their relationship. Federal Program Review imposed significant cuts on the funding of a wide variety of voluntary organizations, particularly on those engaged in advocacy, and their legitimacy was questioned by portraying them as "special interests."

The first major step in changing the relationship was taken in 1995 when leaders representing most parts of the sector came together to form the Voluntary Sector Roundtable and it began to assume a critical role in providing policy leadership. Following the 1997 election, the federal government began to take steps to implement commitments made to better engage the sector. An interdepartmental committee of ADMs, led by Revenue Canada (now the Canada Revenue Agency), was at first put in charge of this process. The committee did not make significant progress, however, because it had no dedicated staff resources and because Revenue Canada's mandate was too narrowly focused on charities to build a broad community of interest across departments. It was evident that a more central focus was needed, so in 1998 the Voluntary Sector Task Force, based at the Privy Council Office, was established.

As government moved forward in implementing its commitments, it took another innovative step. Rather than preparing the standard Memorandum to Cabinet which would have entailed strict requirements for secrecy, a less formal 'Aide Mémoire' was developed that enabled public servants to test ideas with voluntary sector leaders. It is an example of how traditional mechanisms of policy development can be made more flexible in order to accommodate greater openness and collaboration.

The Voluntary Sector Roundtable had undertaken a crucial step of its own during this period by setting up the [Broadbent] Panel on Governance and Accountability in the fall of 1997. This independent panel of experts was tasked with conducting research, consulting broadly, and making recommendations on improving accountability in the voluntary sector. The Broadbent Panel saw its mandate as an opportunity not only to consider how governance and accountability might be enhanced within the voluntary sector, but to address how the sector's relationships with governments, particularly the federal government, might be improved. Its February 1999 report, containing more than forty recommendations, was a milestone for the sector, both because it set out an agenda for action and because it gave the sector confidence and greater cohesion.

At this point, both government and the sector recognized that the best way to proceed was in a joint manner. An innovative idea for a structure for how to do this – the concept of a "joint table" – was proposed. In the spring of 1999, three co-chaired Joint Tables, known collectively as Working Together, were created with seven members each from government and the voluntary sector (as chosen by the sector). From all accounts, Working Together was highly successful, affording open and honest dialogue about policy issues and, in a mere four months, arrived at a set of a 26 consensual recommendations for improving the relationship, building capacity and reforming the regulatory framework.

Following the release of the Working Together report in September 1999, there was a long hiatus as government developed a Memorandum to Cabinet, and by requirement did so in secret. Before finalizing it, government officials took an unusual step in consulting with the voluntary sector representatives who had participated in Working Together. The sector leaders suggested certain financial targets and they were accepted. Because almost a year had passed by this time, the Government of Canada and the voluntary sector wanted to move quickly in establishing the VSI, getting it funded, and being able to produce some early deliverables. Therefore, some critical decisions regarding its structural design were based largely on the success of past experience. This run-up period set a positive tone for what would follow and ensured that the first principle of effective collaboration – acknowledgment of the need for joint work – was met and sustained throughout the ensuring process.

1.2 Clarity and Realism of Purpose

Most of the goals and objectives of the VSI were taken directly from the recommendations of Working Together, carrying forward approximately 60 percent of its proposals. Because there appeared to be an open policy window at the time, all of these objectives were pushed through it at once, without establishing priorities among them. This made for a broad agenda, perhaps necessarily so given the work of its predecessor.

Was the mandate of the VSI too broad? The majority view among participants is that the VSI suffered from goal overload. While Working Together had been focused around three themes –relationship, capacity building, and regulation – the mandate of the VSI appeared diffuse and without clear priorities that were sequenced in time. Of course, assessment of whether a mandate is too broad depends in large part on the time frame. Most VSI participants felt that, given the broad mandate, more time was required. This was particularly so because considerable time was spent at the front end in developing relationships and building trust within the Joint Tables before they turned to the content of their work. If the mandate had been more focused and issues prioritized, however, a two-year period would probably have been sufficient.

Perhaps a more significant factor than the breadth of the mandate was how adequately it was communicated to those responsible for carrying it forward and the extent to which there was a common agreement between both partners as to what was part of the mandate and what was not. Clarity of purpose was hindered by an initial lack of focus on outcomes. At the start, no one defined what success would look like and there was no clear 'endgame' in sight. Visioning exercises were eventually undertaken and these were extremely useful, but they were introduced relatively late in the process.

The mandate was also clouded by the status of three of the voluntary sector's key issues: 1) the regulation of advocacy; 2) access to tax benefits; and 3) financing the sector. Whether the government had stated unequivocally that these were off the table for discussion, or whether ministers were prepared to discuss them at a later point, albeit not initially, remained ambiguous to most of the voluntary sector participants, and thus became an ongoing source of criticism.

Clarity of their own mandates had an impact on the work of the Joint Tables. The clearer its mandate, the more swiftly a Joint Table got on with its work. Several Joint Tables spent considerable time, in some cases more than a year, debating, defining or redefining the mandate. In part, this may have been due to a sense among some participants that they had a certain luxury of time. Members of two Joint Tables believed that they had five years, not two, in which to complete their work. This confusion is understandable given that all of the public announcements described the VSI as being a five year initiative, and the reality was not clarified or, at least, was not fully processed by Joint Table members.

The Joint Regulatory Table ran into a serious crisis – indeed, almost imploded – as a direct result of the lack of clarity of its mandate. The problem was that the mandate was contained in the Memorandum to Cabinet and thus could be read only by the government members. The JRT had begun its work quite promptly, taking a broad interpretation of what it presumed to be its goals. Some eight months into this process, a new government member noted that the actions being pursued overstepped the mandate, and these had to be curtailed. Means of communicating the mandate beyond the Memorandum to Cabinet, such as a briefing for the table members or establishing written terms of reference, might have gone a long way to averting the crisis.

1.3 Establishment of Clear and Robust Arrangements

The four main challenges for the VSI in establishing a structural framework were to:

• develop mechanisms for collaboration;
• involve a broad range of participants from both the voluntary sector and government;
• create means for coordinating the various components of a decentralized initiative; and
• provide adequate financial and staff resources to support its work.

The Joint Work

As a vehicle for collaboration, the Joint Table model that had been so successful in Working Together, seemed to be the obvious choice. Based on the assessments of both government and voluntary sector participants, it was a good choice. The Joint Tables facilitated frank discussions that promoted the development of trust and greater mutual understanding.

The nature of the tasks assigned to the Joint Tables varied greatly from policy work, such as developing the Accord, to more operational activities such as designing specific projects to enhance capacity. The working styles used by the Joint Tables for accomplishing their work also differed. Two of the Joint Tables (Joint Accord and JCC) described their approach as being akin to a policy board in which the members gave directions to staff, reviewed their work and took action based on it. Several others took a more operational approach in which members were very hands-on, dealing directly with details that a policy board might have assigned to staff. Others used a combination of the two styles, depending on the task at hand and evolving over time.

Was one style more effective than the others? Not necessarily. The Joint Tables that seemed to be most successful both in relationship building and in achieving their goals were those that were more policy oriented than operational, that made effective use of staff, that had clear mandates to begin with, and that had strong leadership from the co-chairs.

Involving the Voluntary Sector and Government

In an initiative intended to bring together the voluntary sector, as a sector, and the Government of Canada, as a whole, an important question is: who legitimately represents and speaks for each? This is necessarily a more complex issue for the voluntary sector than for government.

The VSI explicitly chose a model of representation that focused on individuals, not organizations. It brought people into the process who collectively represented a broad, diagonal slice of the sector. Ensuring broad representation was the responsibility of the voluntary sector. An independent selection committee was charged with managing an open and inclusive nomination process and selecting individuals according to a matrix of criteria (such as region, size of organization, sub-sector, etc.).

A remarkable aspect of this process was the level of interest within the sector. The call for nominations received an enormous response, with more than 1000 applications received. Drawing from this list, the voluntary sector achieved a reasonable degree of representation for their 65 places on the Joint Tables and Working Groups, although the Aboriginal and visible minority communities were initially under represented and the Initiative never managed to maintain strong participation from Quebec.

The disadvantage of this diagonal slice approach is that it did not necessarily bring people to the table with broad leadership and policy skills. The representatives of small organizations who had no previous experience in policy development or in working with the federal government sometimes found it a challenge to contribute effectively in this context.

On the government side, some 23 departments were involved, but there was only one participant from outside the National Capital Region.

Structures for Horizontal Management

The recommendation of the Working Together report had been to have a central implementation team, supported by the Voluntary Sector Task Force. This was considered by government to be impractical because the Privy Council Office does not have the program authority to hold funds. In addition, there had to be incentives for relevant departments to come on board in the implementation phase. This would be facilitated if they had direct involvement and some control over financial administration.

In setting up the VSI, a key issue then was to determine how many Joint Tables would be needed. From the perspective of the VSTF at least a joint table with responsibility for developing the high priority Accord and a joint steering committee were required. The departments charged with various pieces of the VSI signaled that they also wanted to adopt the Joint Table model. This led to the establishment of six Joint Tables, each of which was affiliated with a department rather than being under the direct control of a common centre.

The complexity of this decentralized design was problematic from the perspective of both government and voluntary sector participants. The structure was commonly described as being laborious and cumbersome. Simply put, more structure meant more process. Because the Joint Tables were 'owned' by departments, neither the JCC nor any other central body could drive the process; they could only monitor it. This produced a general sense that an inordinate amount of time had to be spent in process – in coordinating, communicating, managing the information flow, and so forth.

Financial and Staff Resources

The VSI had a total budget of $94.6 million over five years. The amount allocated to the two year Joint Table phase (excluding the funding for SIDPD) was approximately $58.1 million. In total, the funding was allocated among the activities shown in Figure 2.

FIGURE 2: Allocation broken down by activity (in millions)

The overall amount of funding for the VSI was seen by participants to be wholly adequate. The distribution of resources, both across the different activities of the VSI and over fiscal years was an issue, however. The main challenge stemmed from the fact that the budget allocations had to be established at the outset, long before the specific objectives and work plans that were to be developed through the joint process were known. In addition, funding went to individual departments and not to the horizontal initiative as a whole so it could not be easily moved across departments and programs. For many of the Joint Tables, the process of building relationships and learning to work together took more time than had been anticipated. Consequently, the budget profile did not match actual spending needs very well, particularly in the first year, which resulted in some funding being lapsed (meaning it was not spent and was returned to the government's Consolidated Revenue Fund).

For the most part, the staff resources of the VSI were also seen to be adequate to very good indeed. Where problems arose with the Table Secretariats it was mainly because personnel were not hired soon enough or in adequate numbers, or the type hired did not complement the working style of the Table. In particular, when a Joint Table tried to work as a policy board of directors, the Table would have benefited from having the equivalent of an executive director among the secretariat staff, and few departments hired at this level.

The most serious challenge of staffing, however, was turnover at the VSTF, particularly as the Joint Table phase was winding down. Although the rate of turnover at the VSTF may have been no higher than it is in most government departments at the present time, the temporary nature of the task force ensured that the length of staff appointments would necessarily be for short, fixed terms, usually no more than a year. The turnover of VSTF staff at Joint Table meetings was confusing for the members and provided little incentive to make effective use of these staff resources.

Although the existence of two primary secretariats created some role confusion, particularly in their support of the JCC, it resulted in relatively little duplication of effort. The two Secretariats appear to have worked closely together at the Executive Director level, but less effectively at the working level where there were sometimes clashes over responsibilities and styles.

1.4 Commitment, Ownership and Leadership

Although the VSI was targeted at the voluntary sector and the Government of Canada as whole entities, the actual process of relationship building was done by people, not sectors. This meant building commitment, a sense of ownership over the process and effective stewardship of it.

Building Commitment

The VSI worked as well as it did mainly due to the strength of personal commitment by both public servants and voluntary sector representatives. People dedicated considerable time to the VSI on top of their regular full-time jobs. The amount of time they spent on VSI work varied enormously, ranging from a half day to 20 days per month. In most cases, this was much more than had been anticipated when people agreed to be part of the process.

Although there was a sense that people were committed to the VSI, maintaining continuity of participation over time was a challenge. Over the twenty months in which the Joint Tables met actively, roughly a third of the total membership changed. This turnover was much higher on the government side which had a 50 percent turnover, compared to 10 percent for the voluntary sector. Although several Joint Tables tried a variety of strategies, with differing degrees of success to mitigate the impact of such turnover, it remained a serious concern and was raised officially with senior management in government on several occasions by the VSSG and the JCC.

Creating a Sense of Ownership

An important objective of the VSI was to inform and engage the voluntary sector beyond the immediate participants in the collaboration, thereby creating a sense of ownership over the process. Several innovative approaches helped to achieve this.

A major experiment of the VSI was to operate a joint website that proved to be a very popular vehicle of communication with over 136,000 visitors from January 2001 to July 2002. Although the website was jointly operated, government communications policy required that all postings be approved by the VSTF. This created a challenge in finding common language that would resonate with the voluntary sector as well as with the government's intended message. Eventually, the voluntary sector developed its own newsletter to reach out to its constituencies. In this regard, the partners learned over time that they could speak independently without contradicting each other.

In managing the process of engaging the voluntary sector, the Voluntary Sector Initiative Secretariat made a strong effort to encourage province-wide participation and to involve parts of the sector that are normally difficult to reach, namely Aboriginal and visible minority communities, and small community-based organizations. There was also an attempt to ensure that the consultations afforded opportunities for genuine, two-way dialogue. As much as possible, the VSIS tried to work through provincial and regional networks, and hired local voluntary organizations to organize and host local events. In total, 140 consultations were held across the country, in large and small centres, in which over 5,200 people participated.

The levels of participation met expectations reasonably well, with a few exceptions of under represented groups, and the sessions provided a foundation for local and regional network building. The most effective consultations were those that rooted the VSI and its potential in the realities of local communities, and where the process was taken on board by these communities for their own future. One problem was that the consultations were time pressured. This was particularly true for the Joint Accord Table that was the first out in the spring and early fall of 2001 and that faced a deadline of having a final draft of an Accord ready for governmental approval by late October.

Responsibility for engaging federal departments and regional offices as well as the provinces and territories was a sole government responsibility, organized by the VSTF. Public servants in the regions appear to have been informed about the work of the VSI, but they were not engaged in any sustained way. Involvement of the provinces was also limited. That said, the VSI was never meant to be an intergovernmental undertaking. Its goal was to enhance the relationship of the voluntary sector with the Government of Canada, not with all Canadian governments. There may very well be a lasting impact of the VSI at the provincial level, however, because in several provinces and cities it has served as a catalyst to undertaking similar initiatives.

Fostering Leadership

The creation of a Reference Group of Ministers to provide a focal point for political leadership on behalf of the government was an innovation that broadened the base of support beyond a single minister and that could be more flexible than the full Cabinet Committee on the Social Union, to which it reported. Although the VSI had the advantage of ministerial support, it did not make particularly good use of it. With the exceptions of approval of the Accord and funding for the Canada Volunteerism Initiative, the VSI process created little necessity for Ministers to meet to make decisions. Given the decentralized structure with departments and 'their' Joint Tables dealing with individual pieces of the VSI, relatively few major crosscutting issues needed to be delegated up to the ministerial level. As a result, the RGM met only seven times between February 2001 and August 2002.

Unlike government, the voluntary sector does not have a comprehensive authority or leadership structure, so a leadership mechanism, the Voluntary Sector Steering Group, had to be invented. The leadership exercised by the VSSG was rated very highly. In particular, it succeeded in helping the voluntary sector to be strategic, identify problems and facilitate discussions when things were not going well. It provided an important conduit for information to the JCC and gave its sector co-chair the authority to raise issues there that helped to keep the momentum of the process going. The VSSG also had an important role as ambassador, providing liaison between the sector and the Reference Group of Ministers, although this connection was not as solid as the VSSG would have liked.

In effect, the VSI created a paradox for the leadership of the voluntary sector. On the one hand, the VSI gave the sector a venue, within limits, to have its issues addressed. On the other hand, by being so consumed with the process of the VSI and being so much on the inside, the voluntary sector diminished its advocacy role outside of the VSI. The VSSG tried to use the VSI as a channel for dealing with emerging, difficult policy issues. Most notable was the impact of the stricter accountability regime imposed on grants and contributions that occurred around the same time the VSI was established. It did not succeed, however. When such issues could not be dealt with through the VSI mechanisms, the VSSG was either unwilling to step outside the process or found it difficult to meet with ministers directly. Officials did not encourage ministers to meet with sector leaders until the contentious issues were resolved by the VSI and, as the issues were not being resolved through the joint processes, few such meetings occurred. As a result, it was noted by some sector participants that, in their view, the voluntary sector lost its political voice.

1.5 Development and Maintenance of Trust

When participants were asked what were the successes of the VSI, the development of greater understanding and trust was a close second to the creation of the Accord and the Codes of Good Practice. What contributed to the development and maintenance of such high levels of trust? Above all was a sense of sincere commitment to the process by the participants on both sides. The Joint Tables reinforced this and were an excellent venue for facilitating constructive discussions. Although there were some cultural differences between government and the voluntary sector, it became apparent that the actual people involved were not so different. The voluntary sector discovered that many of the public servants are also volunteers. The public servants learned that many of the voluntary sector representatives run large organizations and hold the equivalent levels of responsibilities as they do. In many respects, the voluntary sector representatives who run large organizations shared more in common with their federal counterparts than with the sector representatives from very small organizations.

The willingness on the part of public servants, particularly at the JCC, to share information as much as possible and find innovative ways (such as the use of an Aide Mémoire and later an invitation to the sector co-chair of the JCC to brief ministers about a Memorandum to Cabinet), also contributed to building trust. Experimentation in openness was not a uniform process, however, as the Privy Council Office tended to work under more traditional norms of government confidentiality. The requirement for confidentiality at certain times in the midst of a collaborative process created a number of challenges for both parties. The experience of the National Volunteerism Initiative Table is a prime illustration. The recommendations of the NVI were to be used in writing the Memorandum to Cabinet for the Canada Volunteerism Initiative in the fall of 2001. When it came to writing this, the process naturally became highly confidential and its contents could not be shared even with the members of the Joint Table. Consequently, most of the Joint Table members saw the final draft of their own report at the same time that it was released to the public.

The aspect that most often made voluntary sector participants feel that they were not equal players in the process and that led to considerable discontent was the governmental system of financial administration and accountability. Because public money was involved, the federal government was naturally required to exercise appropriate controls and accountability over its use. Many of the standardized practices and requirements of financial management that were second nature to public servants appeared unduly restrictive to voluntary sector participants who were unfamiliar with them. Although cross table information sessions around financial management had been proposed, it was decided instead that each department would ensure the explanation of procedures for its own Joint Table. Such education appears to have been uneven at best.

Not all of the issues of trust were between government and the voluntary sector. Given the builtin diversity of the voluntary sector, many small voluntary organizations held concerns that the process was dominated by representatives from the larger charities, an impression that may have been unfounded but was difficult to shake. Another fissure was based on geography and the sense that the process was Ottawa-centric. Although several of the Joint Tables held meetings in various parts of the country, most occurred in the National Capital Region with the result that participants from elsewhere shouldered the burden of travel time.

1.6 Governance, Accountability and Organizational Learning

The mechanisms for governance and accountability process are what provided coordination within the VSI and connected it with the authority structures of the Government of Canada and the voluntary sector. This was challenging because the VSI was a joint initiative, making it difficult to have non-governmental players accountable to government authorities and vice versa, and because it was decentralized, involving many components within the Initiative and departments within government. Also, it was around the processes of governance and accountability that the vertical authority structures of the Government of Canada bumped up against the flat, horizontal nature of the voluntary sector.

The Governance Model

It is not surprising that a process which was simultaneously joint and decentralized would face challenges of governance and accountability. The low marks given by participants to the governance and accountability mechanisms of the VSI (a mean of between 5.5 for governance and 5.2 for accountability) reflect several shortcomings.

The role of the JCC was not clear initially: The challenges of coordination were in large part structural, built into its design of the JCC. Initially, the mandate and role of the JCC were ambiguous – unclear whether it was to provide mere coordination or assume strategic leadership. In addition, it had no overlap of membership with the Joint Tables. Consequently, the JCC was at first reluctant to intervene or take an activist role, partly because it rightly did not want to interfere when things were going well, and partly because its legitimacy to do so was not well established. In spite of its initial limitations, the JCC eventually hit its stride. It conducted a visioning exercise and began to ask for work plans and progress reports from the Joint Tables (which were resisted by some as they felt the JCC had no authority to do so). And, eventually, it began to troubleshoot more effectively. This occurred to a large degree because its members realized what was at stake and that they had to take concerted action. It demonstrates an important way in which the VSI was able to learn and adapt as it went along, but also indicates that overall stewardship had not been well planned at the outset.

The boundary between joint governance and government authority was ambiguous: It was often difficult to tell where joint accountability ended and internal government accountability began. One reason for this was that the requisite approvals for key products of the Joint Tables had not been clarified in advance. The issue of who had authority and accountability for what, and when, was most pronounced in the process of approving the Accord and later the Codes. Members of the Joint Accord Table, including the ADMs, were able to fairly readily agree on a draft of the Accord (and subcommittees subsequently produced drafts of the Codes on Policy Dialogue and Funding), and these were approved by the JCC and ADM Executive Committee. Because the Accord involved commitments by government, Ministerial endorsement was required. Many believed that at this stage, however, the drafts would be approved quite smoothly by the Reference Group of Ministers and the process would be complete. When the central agencies – the Privy Council Office, Finance and the Treasury Board Secretariat –reviewed the Accord and played their traditional challenge function, they asked for changes. It took not only strategic intervention and fast work by the JCC, VSTF and key individuals, but intense negotiations almost daily over several weeks to reach agreed terms so that the revised versions could get through the governmental approval process in time for the signing of the Accord on December 5, 2001 and the unveiling of the Codes at the last All Tables meeting in October 2002. At several points it looked like the issues might not be resolved and parties started working out 'collapse' scenarios.

The ADM Executive Committee and the Deputy Minister community could have been more engaged: Although an essential component of the governance process, the ADM Executive Committee was not engaged as fully as it might have been and did not grapple with the tough policy issues of the VSI. Many ADMs did not attend the Committee meetings with great regularity, often sending substitutes, due to the other demands on their time and lack of direct accountability to Deputy Ministers regarding VSI responsibilities. The VSI had no strategic plan for approaching Deputies, and never managed to engage them or encourage them to be champions of the process. The lack of involvement by Deputy Ministers often put their ADMs (especially the Joint Table co-chairs) in a difficult position, caught between dual accountabilities to the VSI and the Deputy Minister. As a result, neither Deputies nor the ADM Executive Committee could be particularly effective in helping the government clarify its collective position on the policy issues or in exercising strategic leadership. This contributed to the sense that until late in the process, the intended outcomes were not well defined.

Accountability for Spending

Perhaps the most serious challenge of accountability was the transparency of financial management. This was a direct result of the decentralized nature of the Initiative. In setting up the VSI there was a desire by both government and the voluntary sector to move quickly so, rather than create new programs or institutions for purposes of financial management, the various departments that held funds on behalf of the VSI used their existing programs. As a result, the terms and conditions and other requirements on spending varied from one Joint Table to another, depending on which department was the 'banker' and what kind of program it used to manage the funds. This created some confusion across the different tables, particularly for the voluntary sector participants, although for most public servants these differences were not particularly problematic.

The lack of transparency was most evident in comprehensive financial reporting. Indeed, there is no single roll-up of expenditures that is agreed to by the main parties to be accurate and complete. This does not imply that there was any mismanagement of funds. Nor did this evaluation, which is not a financial audit, find any indication of mismanagement. The issue of transparency is simply that departments used different systems for financial reporting, and they were not compelled to report to a central body during or at the end of the VSI on how they spent 'their' money. Although the JCC, the VSTF and the VSIS all tried to develop tracking systems and to put together a comprehensive report on spending at the end of the first two years of the VSI, they could not get the information from departments to do so.

Organizational Learning through the Transition

Although the VSI is a five year initiative, the Joint Table phase was to last only two years. At the end of that time, the completion of outstanding work was to be carried forward by government departments or by voluntary organizations under contract. The assessment of VSI participants is that transition management was not done well at all. In fact, planning for the transition was rated the lowest of all the aspects of the VSI process, receiving a mean rating of only 4.4 (out of 10).

There were two main problems with how the transition was managed. First, the original budget had not provided funding to enable continuity of the secretariats through the transition. The VSIS and VSTF had only been funded for two years, ending in June 2002, even though the work of the Joint Tables and other mechanisms was not complete. In order to extend their working life to March 2003, they had to greatly reduce the number of staff, often leaving them with too few bodies for the work to be done and providing little continuity with their successors. Second, there was a long period of uncertainty about what would happen in the second phase in terms of where responsibilities would be assigned within government and how some of the joint work would be continued. Decisions for the machinery for the second phase were not made until September 2002 and not communicated publicly until the last All Tables meeting in early October. This created considerable, unnecessary fear among participants that all of their work to date would be lost.

In the next section, these various elements are briefly synthesized into success factors and barriers to an effective process.

2. What were the success factors and what were the barriers to effective collaboration and horizontal management?

2.1 The Success Factors

The main factor that contributed to the success of the VSI relates to the people involved – to their level of commitment to the process and the individual leadership they demonstrated. This was aided by the positive experience of the earlier Working Together process that gave both sides the sense that collaboration could be a positive experience and could produce substantive results. This commitment helped guide the process through some tough spots. The willingness of key participants to be creative and take some risks enabled them to adapt structures, such as the JCC, or to come up with innovative solutions, such as an Alternative Mechanism for dealing with the outstanding issue of the regulation of advocacy.

2.2 The Barriers to Success

The constraining factors derive mainly from the complexity of the structure. When asked to list the shortcomings of the VSI, the overwhelming response from participants was that the structure was "too complex, too bureaucratic." This perception was compounded by the broad mandate and the fact that in order to get the VSI implemented quickly, the roles of some of the key structures, such as the JCC and the overall governance model, were not as well planned as they might have been. The apparent absence of buy-in and leadership from senior management within government did not help forge a focus out of the complexity.

The other main barrier was a lack of communication, particularly around the mandates of some of the Joint Tables, the time frame in which they had to work and governmental requirements for financial management. The lack of understanding of government rules regarding financial management created a sense among many that the process was rule bound. More significantly perhaps, the rules and instruments for financial management did not provide as much flexibility in moving funding across activities or fiscal years as was needed in a multi-year, multi-faceted joint initiative of this nature.

A decentralized structure without a strong coordinating centre, a clear governance model or consistent political support from the ministerial and the Deputy Minister levels meant that the process seemed at times over-processed, that paper moved but often not enough action followed.

3. What could have been done differently and more effectively, and what were the realistic, practical alternatives?

In considering what might have been done differently in the VSI, it must be remembered that the Initiative was experimental and a testing ground in so many respects. It was about finding new ways of doing things in the relationship between government and the voluntary sector. It was not always clear, therefore, that there were well defined right and wrong ways of doing things, and the process either picked the 'right' way or it did not. Rather, decisions about key components of structure, policy and operations often had to be taken with a number of tradeoffs or competing objectives in mind and approaches had to be tried without strong historical precedent to follow.

In retrospect, there are some things that the VSI could have done more effectively, given the goals, structures and tradeoffs that it set for itself. There is a second set of alternatives that might have made the VSI more effective, if it had weighed some of the basic tradeoffs differently.

3.1 Improvements within Existing Parameters

Within the policies, structures and strategic tradeoffs made by the VSI, several alternatives might have been more effective.

A Strategic Vision and Outcomes

There is an age-old debate in public administration: whether it is better to try to affect major comprehensive reform all at once, or to proceed in a more incremental manner through smaller steps. The VSI took on a very broad package of reforms, in part out of respect for its predecessor, the Working Together process, that had put many issues on the agenda. Whether the VSI should have taken on as much as it did is debatable. What is evident is that it needed to formulate its mandate as a strategic vision very early on. The JCC managed to do this eventually, but it could have happened much earlier. This could have been facilitated by having the JCC in place before the other Joint Tables were established, enabling it to develop its own working relationships, overall vision and set of outcomes.

A related matter is that there were several key longstanding contentious issues about the regulatory framework and the funding relationship between the Government of Canada and the voluntary sector that were left ambiguous as part of the mandate. The government could have been clearer with its voluntary sector partners about what they were prepared to do on these matters within the VSI, or if the sector should plan to move these issues forward through alternative means. Such clarification might have removed these as ongoing sources of confusion and irritation.

Better Communication

There were several lapses in communication within the VSI, as noted already. Better communication through workshops, briefing sessions or other means could have rectified all of these.

A Stronger Governance Model

Given the decentralized model chosen for the VSI, it needed a stronger centre to provide coordination, oversight and leadership within the VSI. The terms of reference of the JCC could have articulated such a role and the JCC could have been better connected to the other parts of the VSI, perhaps by having its own dedicated secretariat and better means of connecting with the Joint Table co-chairs. As it was, the JCC had to struggle to carve out a leadership role, and this took precious time. In addition, the governance model could have better delineated where joint responsibilities and authorities ended and where those of the Government of Canada and the voluntary sector kicked in.

As part of governance and leadership, the expectations of how the political leadership of the Government of Canada and the voluntary sector would interact could have been better articulated. During the Working Together process, several well attended meetings between sector representatives and Ministers created certain expectations that similar meetings would occur during the VSI. Only one such meeting took place during the two years of the Initiative, however, creating disappointment and some frustration on the part of sector leaders.

A Single Secretariat

Would the process have been better served by having only one secretariat serving all of the tables? The minority view is that, from the perspective of efficiency, a single secretariat may have reduced some of the demands related to communication and coordination. There are a number of logistical issues that would have had to be sorted out in this scenario, however, and, even those respondents who strongly supported this approach had no recommendations on how a combined secretariat might operate. The majority view is that a separate secretariat for the sector helped "keep the voluntary sector in the VSI" and enabled it to participate fully. A middle ground could have been to have one government-side and one voluntary sector-side secretariat that were co-located, that could also have provided support or at least greater connections with the Joint Tables and other mechanisms.

Better Representation of Minority Communities

The participation of minority communities could have been enhanced by making more effective use of Reference Groups, as well as including more minorities in the initial selection of participants. The Reference Groups could have been established earlier, been given more adequate funding (their budgets were carved out of the existing funding for the voluntary sector's Secretariat), and been afforded regular channels into the work of the Joint Tables and other mechanisms so that the perspectives of these communities became part of the mainstream of the VSI.

Greater Continuity of Participation

The issues of attendance and continuity of participation of government members were raised by the co-chairs of the JCC with the Clerk of the Privy Council, but were never fully resolved. The challenge relates to the demanding schedules for senior public servants that are often out of their control and the high levels of mobility within the public service. Because most exercises in collaboration or horizontal management are seen to be 'add-ons' to regular work, they are often dropped when people are reassigned. This suggests a tradeoff in collaboration: while it is desirable to engage senior level people from both sectors in order to give substance and political clout to the process, the higher the position of the participants, the more difficult it becomes to sustain participation over time. It also points to the need for senior management to create incentives and rewards as part of personal performance reviews that recognize the value of participation in collaborative and horizontal initiatives.

Greater Transparency of Financial Management

Enhanced financial transparency involves creating mechanisms for common and centralized reporting in a decentralized structure. For the first year there was no formal financial reporting system, although both the VSTF and the JCC worked hard to rectify this. Once common reporting templates were developed, they were not always used by departments, nor did all departments report on their expenditures to the VSTF in a timely manner at all. Clearly, a user friendly financial reporting system should have been in place from the beginning. It appears that more than moral suasion was needed to get departments to use it, however. One alternative might have been to sign a memo of understanding at the outset that committed relevant parties to report to a central body on expenditures.

Earlier Planning for Transition

The transition from the Joint Table phase to the second phase of the VSI could have been handled more effectively in several ways. First, it should have been clear to all participants that they had two years, not five, to complete their work so that they could plan how to wrap up. Second, the original budget could have provided funding to enable continuity of the secretariats through the transition. Third, the uncertainty about what would happen in the second phase could have been reduced if its structures and funding had been announced earlier. Admittedly, this was difficult for the Government of Canada to do as there were many factors to be weighed until very late in the process, but it speaks to the need to plan for the transition itself and an initiative's successor machinery at an early stage.

3.2 The Alternatives of Different Routes

The above set of alternative practices assumes that the Joint Table phase of the VSI was structured more or less as it was, and that some improvements were made within these parameters. What if somewhat different choices about some of the basic parameters had been made? In this case, more far reaching alternatives might have been tried.

Making the Structure Less Complex

The structural design could have been simplified if the VSI had followed more closely the recommendation of the Working Together report which was premised on a distinction between policy and operations. A Joint Steering Group, supported by a secretariat could have been charged with overseeing the major policy files, research and consultative dialogue, while the more operational tasks could have been left to task forces, departments or voluntary organizations working collaboratively in less formal ways than through Joint Tables. This probably would have required a more strategic vision in which priorities were established and tasks were more sequenced over time. It would also have been facilitated by the ability of the Privy Council Office to have the program authority to manage funds.

Enhancing Policy Capacity in Joint Work

In appointing members to the Joint Tables, the sector chose to have a broad cross-section of people participate. This had the advantage of reflecting the diversity of the sector. It also meant that some members did not have the level of policy experience and expertise required and were unable to contribute effectively. One means of bringing more policy relevant experience and knowledge to the process would have been to select representatives of regional, provincial or national umbrella organizations as participants, an alternative that would have been facilitated by a simpler structure. In order to ensure these organizations were connected with the rest of the sector, they would have had to assume responsibility for being a conduit of communication to broader constituencies and networks and for being accountable to them.

Making Funding more Flexible

The advantages to the system whereby departments held the funding for the VSI activities were that it allowed the VSI to get operating quickly as no new parliamentary vote was required and it actively engaged departments because they managed the funding. The disadvantages were that it made it difficult to reallocate funds among various activities of the VSI if they crossed departmental boundaries and it reduced transparency in financial reporting. An alternative would have been to have the funds managed through a central program (with a sunset clause). This would have required upfront time to create such a program and would have entailed developing means by which a secretariat housed in the Privy Council Office could manage such a fund.

The fact that the VSI lapsed funding in its first two years indicates that the budget profile did not match well the actual timing of activities and that more flexibility in the ability to move funding across fiscal years or among activities was needed. In the context of collaborative arrangements, it would be helpful for the federal government to develop more flexible means of reprofiling funding from one fiscal year to the next.

There is also a need to develop instruments that are more flexible than contribution agreements or contracts for funding the work of third parties in a collaboration where the deliverables and outcomes are to be identified through a joint process, and thus cannot be specific in advance, as is the current standard.

4. What are the lessons learned for future, sustainable collaboration between the Government of Canada and the voluntary sector and for horizontal management within each?

No matter how successful the VSI is assessed to be, any future collaborative action is not likely to take exactly the same form because mandate and context, among other things, are likely to be different. Nevertheless, the VSI provides some useful guidance as to the paths to pursue and the routes to avoid for both collaboration and horizontal management.

4.1 The Value and Limits of Collaborating

An overwhelming lesson from the VSI is that collaboration is worthwhile. If taken seriously, working together enhances understanding and trust among the participants and sets the foundation for a better relationship over the long term. Not all issues are best dealt with through joint processes, however. Collaboration, especially if it is to involve senior public servants and executive directors, may be better suited to the development of policy recommendations and priorities rather than to operational tasks around policy implementation.

There may be some particularly contentious issues that a collaboration would be better off to set aside as they will never be resolved jointly. Such issues might be better left to processes of public policy advocacy. How to balance working on the inside as a partner and on the outside as an advocate is an important issue of strategy for the voluntary sector when involved in collaborations with governments. It needs to be clear to both partners, however, which issues are on the table and which are not. If either party is unwilling to even try to address the key issues that matter to the other, then the sense that this is a genuine collaboration may be greatly diminished.

Within a collaboration some things will be joint and others separate, perhaps done by each side in parallel. It is important to determine and communicate what needs to be done jointly and what can be done independently, as well as when joint processes end and unilateral decision making kicks in. Once inside a collaboration, it is difficult to impose unilateral decisions without compromising underlying trust and the sense of being a genuine partnership.

4.2 The Challenges of Policy, Structure and Operations

The key lessons for the policy, structure and operational aspects of a collaborative, horizontal initiative include:

Policy: How big a mandate in how long a time frame?

The very fact that an initiative is being managed horizontally suggests that it is tackling some big goals and multiple objectives. The first lesson regarding policy then is to be strategic about these goals and about what can realistically be accomplished in a given time frame. Second, the time frame needs to be long enough to achieve the mandate, but not so long as to lose political support – and these may not always be compatible objectives. Third, whether the mandate is narrow or broad, it needs to be transparent and communicated to all the participants.

Structure: A decentralized process needs a coordinating centre and a strong governance model.

Structure matters and needs to be planned up front. Ideally, in a collaborative process this would be the subject of joint discussions. Those structures that work when the goal is to develop policy may not be well suited to processes that implement policy and thus involve program expenditures. Effective mechanisms for coordination, governance and accountability are essential, both within the collaboration and to connect the collaborative process to decision making within government and within the voluntary sector. The VSI experience suggests the value of keeping the overall structure as simple as possible, however. More structure means more process. In part, the ability to keep the structure simple depends on how the funding is managed.

The location within government of the central authority and secretariat support for a horizontal initiative is an important design feature. The home of the initiative in a central agency helps to keep the process as connected as possible to the political level, as well as getting the attention of departmental officials. The current central agency machinery is not particularly well suited to managing the funds associated with such initiatives, however. Review and reform of the central agency machinery or identifying ways to replicate its political advantages in line departments could be helpful in planning for future horizontal undertakings.

Operations: Planning for results by balancing process and outcomes.

Process is important: there needs to be sufficient time for people to build relationships and learn to work together. Such process needs to be built into overall planning horizons and into the budget so that money is not lapsed during the early stages if these preliminary tasks take longer than anticipated. But, process is not enough. There also needs to be a sense that this process is moving toward and, will deliver, concrete results in terms of the original objectives.

Collaborative and horizontal processes are by nature temporary, designed to accomplish certain things and then wind down. A successful transition can be aided by determining and communicating as early as possible the nature of the machinery and the funding that will support the work in the next phase and by providing secretariat support throughout the entire transition to facilitate a smoother hand-off.

4.3 Supporting the Process and Maintaining Momentum

Establishing a joint, horizontal initiative is one thing, keeping it going and on track is another.

Representation is not the same as leadership.

It is a platitude to say that leadership counts, but this is one of the clear lessons from the VSI. To enable leaders to emerge, the participants, especially co-chairs of collaborations, need to have the right set of skills, appropriate interpersonal styles, know how to move things through the policy system, and be able to build support more broadly across government or the voluntary sector. It was not the seniority of position that made the real leaders in the VSI, but a deep commitment and willingness to take some risks that made certain people stand out. For public servants, an important factor in promoting leadership was recognition and support from senior management that participation in this sort of work was valued.

In collaborations that are intended to involve the voluntary sector as a sector, a challenge is how to adequately represent this diverse sector. When the goal is to ensure that the full spectrum of perspectives from a community or sector are heard, then a model that brings together individuals from a broad cross-section of that community or sector probably works well. If the goal is also to undertake effective policy work, then more consideration needs to be given to ensuring that the participants have the relevant experience and knowledge, ability to network with their constituencies and means of being accountable to them. This could be accomplished through the selection process or by providing orientation and training to those with less experience.

Political support needs to be engaged and managed.

Even when an initiative has initial political support, such support needs to be nurtured and managed in order to keep it alive among the many things that compete for the attention of ministers. This means planning decision points at which ministers will be involved and when they should meet the political leadership of the partner sector. The involvement of Deputy Ministers is also vital, as without it, the governance structure can become ambiguous. Under the best circumstances, political support can seldom be maintained indefinitely, however. There is a tradeoff between having long enough to get the work done and maintaining interest of ministers and Deputies, and two years may well be pushing the limit.

Sustaining participation presents different challenges for government and the voluntary sector.

Given the lack of control that senior public servants have over their schedules and the high levels of mobility in the public service, maintaining regular attendance in the short term and continuity of participation over the longer term may be challenging. The longer the time frame, the higher may be the change in membership. The more senior the participants, the more likely that irregular attendance will be an issue. For the voluntary sector, the main issue is the capacity of the home organization to operate with an Executive Director absent for periods of time. These challenges need to be considered in how collaborative processes are designed and how participants in them are selected, recognized and compensated. While it is easy to articulate the nature of the challenge, there appears to be few easy fixes for it.

Secretariat support is essential.

In the VSI, there was a direct correlation between the support of a strong secretariat, in place from the beginning, and how quickly and effectively a Joint Table was able to get on with its work. Given the high levels of mobility within the public service and the temporary nature of most collaborative initiatives, maintaining continuity of staff may be a challenge and staffing mechanisms should provide for as much continuity as possible. A separate secretariat for the voluntary sector was an important innovation of the VSI and, while it added to the complexities of horizontal management, it greatly increased the capacity of the sector to participate fully in the process.

Engaging broader communities helps the process stay grounded and facilitates learning.

The process of consulting with and engaging broader constituencies was an important aspect of the learning process of the VSI. It is evident that effective engagement takes time, dedicated staff resources, multiple routes, coordination and good information provided well in advance so that participants have time to read, discuss and react to it.

An initiative that tries to roll out engagement at a national scale not only requires more time, but is likely to reach a point at which its core communities feel fully and adequately engaged, while those more distant (either by geography, knowledge or interest) may only be learning about it. Consequently, the latter may feel that the process is coming to an end just as they are gearing up to participate. The purpose of community engagement and how it will inform decision making thus needs to be considered and planned early on, including a vision of how far engagement should extend, and when it has extended far enough.

It is obvious that government departments will want and need to engage with the voluntary sector at various times around many different topics over the coming years. These should not be considered one-off events repeated over and over again. A more sustainable approach would be to consider what kinds of longer term investments might equip communities, their organizations and members to engage more effectively. It appears that the kinds of investments that could pay off in the longer run are helping the sector to build its network capital, its knowledge about policy processes and its ability to use technology for purposes of communication.

4.4 Financial Management and Transparency

One of the greatest challenges for a multi-year, multi-faceted, horizontal initiative is to provide a degree of flexibility of funding in a governmental system that is not designed for such flexibility and to ensure transparency of financial reporting in a decentralized structure in which departments control their own budgets. Much has been said already about how financial management might have been done differently in the VSI. The lessons boil down to several things:

• Building in as much flexibility as possible so that funding can be moved across fiscal years and across activities as needed without compromising overall accountability;
• Communicating governmental requirements for financial management (which are likely to remain quite standardized and inflexible) to non-governmental participants;
• Developing a more flexible financial instrument than the standard contribution agreement or contract to make it easier to flow funding to non-governmental parties in a timely manner; and
• Creating common reporting templates and centralized tracking of expenditures to ensure transparency and accountability in a horizontal initiative.

Conclusion: Looking to the Future