This scenario is for department and public entity employees.
It will help you explore some good governance practices that support departments and public entities to share information with each other well.
We use a scenario of when a public entity and department must work together to appoint a new board member. But you can apply this advice about sharing information to many other contexts.
Either as a group or on your own:
Months in advance, a department and public entity start to plan how they’ll appoint a new member to a board vacancy.
The department works with the current board to write a position description.
Through a recruitment process:
No one from the department keeps the public entity advised on how the board appointment is progressing.
The minister announces the appointment of the board member before they:
The board chair and CEO learn of the news through the minister’s announcement.
The board member learns of their appointment at the time of the minister’s announcement.
The board chair and CEO are unprepared to:
The relationship between the department and the public entity becomes strained.
Use these questions to self-reflect or guide discussions in your team:
The department and public entity should have considered having the board chair or a member of the board’s recruitment committee on the selection panel.
Everyone involved should have agreed who would communicate with the public entity and preferred candidate at all stages of the appointment.
This should have included a discussion between:
The public entity should have confirmed with the department who would give them and the candidate updates, if they felt this wasn’t clear.
The department should also have updated the board chair and/or CEO at each stage of the appointment — keeping cabinet-in-confidence sensitivities in mind.
At a minimum, the department or minister’s office should have advised the board chair and/or CEO when they received cabinet and Governor-in-Council approval of the appointment and before a media release.
Departments and public entities should have maintained communication throughout the recruitment process.
This would have ensured they were both prepared to support the new appointee and manage any other issues that arose.
Cabinet decisions are confidential.
You can’t share an appointment widely before the Governor-in-Council approves it.
But you can prepare a media release in advance of a decision and send it after the Governor-in-Council decision.
Some appointments have a greater public interest than others so will be more sensitive.