Networked learning in complexpolicy spaces: A practitioner’sreflection on the open methodof coordination

Thomas Townsend

Abstract: Open method of coordination (OMC) mechanisms have not gained muchacceptance in Canada in spite of evidence that they could improve policy makingand implementation. In Canada, “learning,” in particular at the political level,occurs somewhat differently from how it was envisaged in the intellectual under-pinnings of the OMC because of the ethos of intergovernmental relations. Theprovinces, territories and the federal government might, however, improve policylearning by approaching the process in a somewhat different fashion while stillbenefiting from the European experience. The market for learning may exist less atthe level of governments and more at a localized practitioner level. Canada maybenefit from taking an indirect approach to the issue and creating institutionalarrangements that will allow civil society groups to engage in mutual learningmore easily.

Sommaire : Les mécanismes de la Méthode ouverte de coordination (MOC) n’ontpas obtenu une grande acceptation au Canada même s’il est prouvé qu’ils pour-raient améliorer l’élaboration et la mise en œuvre de politiques. Au Canada,« l’apprentissage », en particulier au niveau des politiques, se produit quelquepeu différemment de ce qui avait été envisagé dans les fondements intellectuelsde la MOC en raison de la philosophie des relations intergouvernementales. Lesprovinces, les territoires et le gouvernement fédéral pourraient cependantaméliorer l’apprentissage en matière de politiques en abordant le processus d’unemanière différente tout en continuant à tirer parti de l’expérience européenne. Lemarché de l’apprentissage pourrait exister dans une moindre mesure à l’échelledes gouvernements et plus à l’échelle localisée des praticiens. Le Canada pour-rait tirer des avantages en adoptant une approche indirecte à l’égard de cettequestion et en créant des arrangements constitutionnels qui permettraient auxgroupes de la société civile de s’engager plus facilement dans l’apprentissagemutuel.

In October 2003, following meetings of employment ministers at theOrganisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) inParis, I arrived in Brussels to take up a new job with the Canadian Mission

The author is visiting researcher, Centre on Public Management and Policy, University ofOttawa, Ottawa, Ontario. He would like to thank Donna Wood for her comments andguidance.

CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION / ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADAVOLUME 56, NO. 2 (JUNE/JUIN 2013), PP. 338–349© The Institute of Public Administration of Canada/L’Institut d’administration publique du Canada 2013

to the European Union (EU). The Paris session was keynoted with apresentation entitled, “Good jobs and bad jobs” by Richard Layard (2003),later published as an occasional paper (2004). In his presentation, Layardcompared changes in EU member-state policies on active employmentmeasures (policies around training and support for job searches) andcorresponding effects of reflexive policy learning on unemployment. FrankVandenbroucke, then minister of labour in Belgium, chaired the session.Both Vandenbroucke and Layard have played an important role in whathas been my enduring, if sometimes frustrating, interest in the openmethod of coordination (OMC).

In the years since my first encounter with the OMC, it has evolved andbeen applied in an increasing number of policy areas. It has now beenseveral years since my assignment in Europe ended, but Amy Verdun andDonna Wood’s efforts to promote OMC-styled mechanisms in the Cana-dian context revived my interest and I have, once again, found myselfexposed as a practitioner to scholarly debates on the efficacy (Hatzopoulos2007) and practicality of collaborative policy learning among jurisdictions(Kerber and Eckardt 2007).

This article seeks to explain why OMC mechanisms have not gainedmuch acceptance in spite of evidence that they could improve policymaking and implementation in Canada. It also looks at some alternativeways in which provinces, territories and the federal government mightimprove policy learning by benefiting from the European experience. In thefirst section I will look to some of the scholarship featured in this themeissue to understand why OMC-type mechanisms are used only infre-quently in Canada. In the next section I return to scholarship on newopportunities and personal experience to suggest an alternative that maybe better suited for Canadian conditions.

Better policy and the promise ofnetworked learning

The notion of “agents of policy” learning from each other is very appeal-ing. If governments can learn from others it means more effective use ofscarce resources and holds the promise of better social outcomes for thosewho are able to capitalize on the experience of first movers.

The paper presented by Richard Layard to the gathering of employmentministers in the fall of 2003 used this thematic intercountry approach. Hissimple thesis, supported eloquently by the data, showed that relativeunemployment levels increased as countries adopted a passive (pay ben-efits) approach and decreased as they returned to more active approaches(training and job search in return for benefits).

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I left Paris with two questions. The first was “If policy learning werestructured, could the exchange be ongoing rather than waiting for aspecific thematic study to be initiated? If so, might governments be able todetect and act on good ideas earlier?” Using the example in Lord Layard’spresentation, perhaps exploring which employment measures were mosteffective in real time would be possible. The second question was “Couldthe open method of coordination be the real-time policy exchange I wasseeking?”

Making policy in practice involves three equally impor-tant kinds of knowledge: political knowledge, issueknowledge and organizational knowledge. The waythese elements come together will vary from jurisdictionto jurisdiction at any point in time, and the resultingpolicy approach will reflect these differences

While I had exposure to the OMC in Canada through some of the earlyliterature (de la Porte, Pochet and Room 2001; de Búrca and Zeitlin 2003),it was not until I arrived in Brussels that I gained access to the wide rangeof actors who were involved in the creation and promotion of what wasseen as an emerging and promising form of soft governance. What wasexciting about the OMC was its strong intellectual foundation, backedby considerable “learning by doing” knowledge on how to develop themeasurement and review components. In attempting to promote a widerinterest in the OMC to federal public officials, I wrote:

The [OMC] reflects the Europeans’ willingness to stay with a discussion where there is a gapbetween the ways things are and the way they know they might be. They seem more willingthan us to allow through formal processes a chance to find a better way by allowing opposingideas to enrich and enlarge each other until a new vision emerges and a natural convergenceof ideas illuminates a different way. This slow consensual approach that looks for cognitiveconvergence rather than an executive decision is hard for North Americans to grasp and wehave a tendency to decompose the instrument and dismiss it as trivial (old concepts) or assomething we already do. The OMC must be approached in the context of a structure thatsupports a sustained conversation on a matter that all participants agree is important but mayhave very different views on what needs to be done and how to do it (Townsend 2005: 2–3).

Two broad principles were at play. The first principle embodied arespect that the same policy outcome could be produced by differentapproaches. This principle, formalized in Europe through subsidiarity,recognized the importance of context and opened up the possibility of apolicy laboratory with many natural experiments. The second principlewas that of “cognitive convergence,” a term credited to Frank Vanden-broucke, suggesting that an evidence-informed discourse, through time,

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will lead to a generalized acceptance of broad policy thrusts. This strongexploratory element, debating ideas, building knowledge around experi-ments and understanding the context of other interlocutors, was seen asessential. It emerges when policy agents are given time not only to knowone another and build trust, but also to know the issue well enough tounderstand its context-specific elements.

At the time, colleagues in Canada felt that the two principles were notcompatible. A lot of stock was put in “best practice,” a concept that asingle, right solution existed. Best practice is an engineering term takenfrom manufacturing, which had entered the public service vocabularythrough New Public Management. It argues that a careful examination ofevidence will lead the policy maker to the right choice.

Making policy in practice involves three equally important kinds ofknowledge: political knowledge, issue knowledge and organizationalknowledge. The way these elements come together will vary from juris-diction to jurisdiction at any point in time, and the resulting policyapproach will reflect these differences. There is no right policy, only policythat is right for the circumstances.

In fact, the concepts are mutually reinforcing, as revealed by Layard’swork. Localities with different practices create the opportunity for com-parisons that, in turn, tend to move them increasingly in a general policydirection of what works. It is clear that a high-level direction, which can beshared by ministers, is not the same as converging on what specificinstruments would be used, which has much greater sensitivity to localconditions. At one level diversity persists, while at another there can beconsensus.

This point now seems obvious, as we have become more comfortablewith complexity in public policy. In Canada it might allow us to takeadvantage of the large number of natural experiments that take place inmany policy areas while respecting the constitutional and historic separa-tions of activity among the orders of government, although not withouteffort and compromise.

Several authors in this theme issue offer possible reasons for thedifficulty to establish the kind of ongoing policy discourse that the creationof the OMC envisaged in the Canadian context. These reasons reside bothin the structure of Canadian federalism and in the ethos of intergovern-mental relations. Thomas Hueglin (2013) argues that the nature of Cana-dian intergovernmental relations has favoured specific “collaboration whenrequired” arrangements over institutionalized, ongoing processes. HermanBakvis (2013) points to a “shadow of hierarchy” that permeates all federal–provincial relations in Canada. Donna Wood, who looks specifically atlabour market policy, observes that in Canada there is still little inclusive-ness of non-executive players on a pan-Canadian basis, and that much of

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the discussion is about federal/provincial/territorial jurisdictional fundingsquabbles rather than seizing opportunities for collective learning (2013).She further argues that Europe may be in better shape as treaties haveclarified roles and institutions have been created to specifically support theexchange of information and promising practice among jurisdictions. JulieSimmons (2013) examines the health care system in Canada, in which thereare better developed institutions for information sharing through theCanadian Institute of Health Information (CIHI) and the Canadian Institutefor Health Research (CIHR). Even here, however, Simmons is not con-vinced that the depth of learning is that great.

There may be two additional reasons for the problem. The first lies inthe focus on the policy learning mechanisms as “government to govern-ment” rather than looking at a larger system that includes many actors ofwhich governments are a part. A second has to do with the nature of thepolicy discourse, how policy is made and the inherent complexity of manyof the policy problems we are facing.

There are two points that I want to explore further. First, policyprocesses work differently from how they are described. Thus, “learning,”in particular at the political level, occurs somewhat differently from how itis envisaged in the intellectual underpinnings of the OMC. Second, thereare numerous new actors in the game who may be better positioned to takeadvantage of learning opportunities than governments themselves.

A systems approach to learningAs outlined in Heather Millar’s contribution in this issue, the field ofactors in most policy spaces has been expanding (Millar 2013). Govern-ments have been encouraging more and more non-governmental groupsto help in the process of delivering public services and even in designingthose services. So what had already before been a complex space —whether employment services, health care or many forms of socialsupport — is becoming even more so.

There persists, however, an underlying assumption that governmentshold the policy and operational levers. For many reasons this may not betrue and, in fact, it may fail to recognize the full ecology of the policysystem and indeed where and how things really happen. In exploring thisassumption more fully we may be able to gain some insight into why thecurrent mechanisms are not as popular as we would like, and receive somedirection for creating learning environments that are more resilient.

Smart players intuitively understand that linking actions to outcomesworks best when the vector of cause and effect is short. That said, short offixing some high-level framework policies, it is not governments thatdetermine the critical processes of many key social policies. I do not want

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to suggest that there is nothing governments can do; rather, it would bedifficult for governments to ascribe direct impact associated with theirindividual actions to changes, with the exception of framework effects thatoften take many years to materialize. Success at the political level is largelyclaiming credit for positive change while being seen to act in times oftrouble.

So let us return once more to Richard Layard’s presentation at theOECD. Layard’s argument was in three parts: First, he noted that theOECD had documented fully the various approaches to dealing withunemployed people across member countries. Second, he revealed that thedifferent incentives developed by OECD countries helped to explain thevariations in unemployment among them. Third, in response to thesedocumented variations, EU heads of government developed their firstemployment guideline (Layard 2003).

Here we can link government action to results, as the mechanisms atplay in the story were wholly or largely under government control. Todaythere are a surprisingly small number of examples that would fit theconditions of Lord Layard’s analysis. First, the policy delivery structureshave become very fragmented, a fact well described by Donna Wood.Second, Layard’s paper provides a retrospective analysis so there is nocertainty that any ex-ante monitoring system established would haveuncovered the issue and pointed to a remedy. There is even the questionof how governments started coming to the same answer and whether itwas the result of continuous monitoring and analysis or perhaps anotherprocess all together.

[D]oes it take European-style attention to process toencourage learning or can there be learning amongservice-level operators with a more limited “facilitative”involvement of governments?

Federal and provincial–territorial governments have an opportunity,therefore, to reposition the process so that it may be better appreciated andproduce greater impact by involving more of the players and focusingeffort where there will be a natural appetite for learning. Several authorsnote that the Europeans seem to be better able to include civil societyactors in their processes. Julie Simmons notes that the Europeans haveincluded civil society organizations in many of the OMCs, not only becauseof treaty arrangements, but also because of a recognition that there is astrong link between democratic processes and effective power sharing.Rachel Laforest (2013) points out that the inclusion of civil society actorswas encouraged by the European Commission because it has helped

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Brussels to legitimate its own role in pan-European social policy. This inturn has improved transparency, which provides civil society groups moreleverage when dealing with national governments. Here we have a case ofself-interest producing virtuous cycles of knowledge generation andsharing. In Canada this has not worked because the federal governmenthas lacked the moral authority (Simmons) and, especially in current times,the interest (Laforest) to take on a role similar to that of the Commission.

If it is unlikely to happen in a top-down manner, then could some formof collective learning process emerge from a bottom-up process? ElinorOstrom (2009) looked at local systems and concluded that they can selforganize in a sustainable manner. Ostrom’s work is consistent with theOMC principle of subsidiarity — a concept favouring localized decisionmaking and explored through its application in Canada by Erika Arban(2013) in this issue. An interesting reflection of Ostrom’s is that larger scalegovernance systems might either facilitate or destroy these more localizedor focused systems. The practical question is does it take European-styleattention to process to encourage learning or can there be learning amongservice-level operators with a more limited “facilitative” involvement ofgovernments?

Donna Wood notes that, in employment policy matters, there are 37sector councils at the national level, some with corresponding councils atthe provincial level. There are also local service providers who provideservices to particular groups. By extension, there are likely hundreds oforganizations nationally that specialize in a particular group, demographicand, in some cases, fields of employment. So when we speak in systemsterms about jobs, there is a complex pattern of governments (three orders),quasi-governmental organizations such as universities and colleges, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and private enterprises. Each plays arole along with individual job seekers and prospective employers in theproduction of a “new hire.” Governments have progressively played amore indirect role through the development of service partnerships withNGOs as a way of producing jobs. Similar multi-actor arrangements existin other areas of social policy. In this issue, Barbara Haskel (2013) providesus with a brief overview of those involved in the postsecondary educationfield, and Patrik Marier (2013) provides similar information pertaining topensions.

Governments are becoming increasingly more specialized in the man-agement of processes and funding strategies, while NGOs are morefocused on delivery. These distinctions are important because there may bespecific layers at which learning (and different types of learning) occurs. Agovernment may want emulation of promising practice as a way of scalinginnovations while at the same time more reflexive learning on how best tocommission service providers to produce public value. For both forms of

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learning, it may wish that the network expand beyond its own jurisdiction,but on the public management side it needs an expanded field in order tohave an interesting discourse. Requisite diversity of actors is equallyimportant for networked learning, as broad representation of civil societycan satisfy democratic imperatives while offering expertise in terms ofscholarship, operational experience and political insight.

Opportunities for sharing may be greater at the service-provider level than at the governmental level. Govern-ments, however, can play an important role in settingthe structures for such exchanges and can promotelearning networks

In looking for service delivery innovation, larger numbers of actors canmake the process of sharing far less stressful. In Canada there has been areluctance to acknowledge this reality, with the consequence that there aremissed opportunities, both from the perspective of governments, whichprovide the institutional support that encourages learning among theoperators, and citizens, who get less than they deserve by way of knowl-edge being actively embedded in the services they receive. Opportunitiesfor sharing may be greater at the service-provider level than at thegovernmental level. Governments, however, can play an important role insetting the structures for such exchanges and can promote learning net-works. Some of what governments can do is to:

– stimulate the formation of diverse networks, rich in expertise, in impor-tant policy spaces;

– support and manage an information commons that can be used forlearning by all actors and, most importantly, by those directly involved;

– create institutional arrangements that support the exchange of informa-tion among civil society organizations and subject-matter experts topromote the acquisition of good practices; and,

– translate the knowledge that participants bring to systemic improve-ments so that the process reflects in better policy.

An additional benefit of focusing on operators is that it recognizes theinherent complexity of the policy space and can take maximum advantageof an experimental approach without expressly declaring that each opera-tion in its own way is an experiment. The potential for unique discoveryand the opportunity to allow a little more diversity of approach couldbenefit everyone involved. A final consideration is that building a learningnetwork is much less costly than it used to be. Social computing allows forthe structuring of knowledge networks at relatively little cost. Sharing

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across jurisdictions can be accomplished if standard data are collected andmade available to non-government actors.

While there seem to be institutional incentives in the European Union topromote a naturalized system of learning, in Canada the progression fromwhat Herman Bakvis describes as hierarchical approaches to market,network and persuasive approaches may provide the opportunity space. Infields where the foundations of institutional structures exist that couldsupport learning, such as the Canadian Institute for Health Information inthe health field, looking at how the granularity of information can bematched to allow operators to take advantage of the experiments would bean obvious practical advance. In other areas like labour markets, first stepsmay be to encourage forums that bring civil society actors together andallow them to define the types of institutions and research that will servetheir learning needs best.

Formal learning processes, such as the OMC, need tointegrate other advisors and their networks, and look forways of involving civil society actors more effectively

Much of the historical learning around the OMC processes supported itsmovement from a relatively tight partnership between political leaders andthe permanent public service to a more open and inclusive process. TheCanadian reality is that the policy process is becoming much looser and,in many cases, involves outside actors from think tanks, interest groupsand academia. Formal learning processes, such as the OMC, need tointegrate other advisors and their networks, and look for ways of involvingcivil society actors more effectively.

Another of the lessons from complexity is that cause and effect may betoo entangled for us to make much sense of a situation with quantitativedata alone. In a situation where there is a well-developed practitionersnetwork, there is the possibility of using research methods to obtainobservations very close to the ground that can supplement the quantitativeanalysis with qualitative insights. This form of naturalized sense making isgaining acceptance as an effective way to support decision making incomplex areas. Here Rachel Laforest’s concept of facilitating natural polesof attraction for collective action resonates strongly, and it may be thatgovernments have to allow the precise form of the institutional support toemerge rather than creating it through executive action. In this regard, theOMCs have created useful learning for governments in new forms ofgovernance but are in themselves experiments.

While this is similar to several OMC-like processes, it does not presumethat governments would be the exclusive or even primary consumers of

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the learning. Governments to be sure would need to agree on and supportthe conditions for learning to occur but they might do so, as Laforestsuggests, in the spirit of purposeful opportunism.

There is no assurance that a network will emerge and make use of itsexpertise; there is equally no assurance that operators will be able tointegrate knowledge in a way that increases their effectiveness. We doknow that there are strong natural incentives to integrate knowledge intooperational processes at local levels and that self organizing is increasinglyevident in social policy spaces. This takes the burden of figuring it all outfrom governments and provides an opportunity not only for their role inthe governance processes to be more closely aligned with their capabilities,but also for their field of influence to be broadened outward from hierarchyand markets into networks and persuasion, as noted in the Bakvis article.

Governments, for their part, become more focused on the initiatingconditions of a policy intervention and what will constitute impact. Opera-tors conduct the natural experiments within a broad framework, and thefocus of learning is on locating what is working and how it can bereplicated or scaled while dampening unwanted consequences at an earlymoment. This is a new role for governments. Most governments havemoved from direct providers to commissioners of public services. Thesegovernments would want a more reflexive learning that explores andlocates those areas where only governments can add value.

My sense is that the role of government is more “emergent” than we arecomfortable in admitting. While acknowledging that the role for govern-ment is changing, it would be important not to prescribe too much whatexactly the shape of supporting learning mechanisms should be, favouringworking it through as we move forward. So without recommending howgovernments could develop learning environments, the scholars who havecontributed to this theme issue have offered specific insights that Canadacan gain from the fifteen or more years of experience with the open methodof coordination in Europe.

ConclusionWhile I remain an enthusiast for the high intention of the OMC in thecreation of a process of mutual learning, pragmatism suggests that theopportunities for learning may exist less at the government level and moreat the level of service providers. Canada may benefit from taking anindirect approach to the issue and creating the institutional arrangementsthat would allow civil society groups to form learning networks and toengage in mutual learning.

I have wondered out loud about the possibility of governments exploit-ing what can be self-organizing learning circles by shifting their role from

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one of executor of policy to facilitator of the exploration of emergentpractice through stimulating networks and the creation and maintenance ofa knowledge commons. While this may look somewhat different from theOMC process as originally conceived, it keeps its intent while recognizingthat historical changes in the delivery ecology have affected the policyspace.

The important part is that organized policy learning be supported as anessential element in the policy process and that learning occur acrossjurisdictions. I come away from the last several months with a degree ofoptimism about Canada’s ability to learn from the Europeans and to buildthe practical forms of policy learning that fit the specific context of ourfederation.

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