From the Executive Director
I am pleased to report that in 2017-18, the Institute for Citizen-Centred Service (ICCS) experienced one of the most successful years in its history. This success stems from: strong leadership and direction from our Board of Directors; the commitment, dedication and hard-work from our exceptional team; and, a resurgence in the demand for more citizen-centred public services across Canada and globally. Combined together, these key factors point to a future of great opportunity for the ICCS.
This past year, the ICCS implemented a new strategic business plan – its core objectives include: providing a neutral, inter-jurisdictional collaborative platform for learning, sharing and innovating public services; conducting actionable research and offering tools to measure, analyze and benchmark performance to identify key drivers of satisfaction; and, delivering certification and learning programs to improve citizen-centric service leadership skills, knowledge and capacity.
Our new strategic business plan also maps out the specific priorities in each line of business over the next three years. We have also started developing supporting strategies for marketing, digital innovation and human resources. When completed, these strategies will support all lines of business by ensuring that the ICCS operates in a more unified, client-centric approach with a strong and well-respected brand.
Financially, the ICCS had an outstanding year. This marks the fourth straight year of strong financial results, which enables the ICCS to confidently manage any potential future challenges and re-invest in its current lines of services and products, as well create new ones to meet the emerging needs of our clients. We have established a strategic innovation fund to promote re-investment and innovation as per ICCS’ new strategic business plan. This ensures the ICCS remains relevant, effective and well positioned to champion citizen-centric services for years to come.
Our partnership with the Joint Councils’ Co-Chairs and members continues to strengthen. This past year, we introduced a new ICCS services guide to better inform current and new members of the key role we play in supporting their work, and how we can offer additional specialized services to help them succeed with their priorities. Our project management and procurement services continue to see increased demand as the Councils shift their attention to more targeted research and hands-on pilot projects to test new service delivery concepts and models. We anticipate providing more specialized support services to the Councils next year.
I am delighted to report that 2017-18 marked the release of the eight iteration of Citizens First. Following in the long line of ground-breaking research and insights dating back to 1998, Citizens First (CF) 8, introduces a fresh new approach to our world class citizen satisfaction research. Building on the enhancements made in Taking Care of Business (TCOB) 5, CF 8 has been completely redesigned to offer easier access to key findings, insights and takeaways. In addition, CF 8 introduces the use of behavioural insights to provide more powerful recommendations on how to better serve Canadians. We will continue to innovate our research products in the coming year with more frequent and relevant studies.
Government organizations across Canada and around the globe continue to embrace the Common Measurements Tool (CMT) and benchmarking. In addition to our traditional CMT clients, a growing number of new organizations are implementing the CMT to more effectively measure, analyze and benchmark their clients’ levels of satisfaction. We are excited about our current efforts to modernize the CMT; we anticipate in the coming year that the CMT and our benchmarking service will be completely redesigned to offer clients a seamless digital service experience to support all of their measurement and benchmarking needs.
Our Certification and Learning (C&L) program experienced a tremendously successful 2017-18. Growth of the C&L program far exceeded expectations with deliveries of both the Certified Service Professional and Certified Service Manager up significantly from the previous year. This is clearly a testament to public sector organizations across Canada who are committed to investing in their people. We will continue to make our training programs more accessible and better suited to meet the needs of clients – this means more online and virtual training options. In the coming year, we will be piloting newer, more client-centric training solutions, and we will continue to improve and update our training content with our latest research and include more timely and relevant topics to better support our clients’ training objectives.
2017-18 was a very successful year for the ICCS. This success has positioned the ICCS well for future opportunities. The ICCS is ready to capture future opportunities because it has the key components required: strong governance and leadership; a passionate and professional team; and a renewed commitment by the public sector to put citizens first. It is my honour and privilege to be the Executive Director of the ICCS. I look forward to another great year in 2018-19.
—Dan Batista, Executive Director, ICCS