Every day in communities across Ontario local governments work hard to deliver crucial services to their citizens. Most of this is tangible and visible: garbage trucks collect trash, police officers patrol the streets, and road crews fix potholes. However, a key feature of municipal service delivery – municipal reporting to the province – is not visible to even well-informed citizens. Municipal reporting is both important and necessary. It helps the province to ensure accountability, monitor the performance of funded programs, and ensure that transferred money is being spent appropriately.
However, over time municipal reporting has become unwieldy. New regulations, funding agreements, and programs have made municipal-provincial relations more complex. As new requirements were added, too few were taken away. Steadily municipalities became deeply over-regulated and burdened with requirements to report to the province on hundreds of programs and services.
Far from achieving the goals of good governance and accountability, municipal-provincial reporting in Ontario now hinders the ability of municipalities to function like responsible orders of government. Reporting threatens to weaken municipal productivity at a time when municipalities must modernize to face increasing demands. Based on interviews and focus groups with municipalities, this report provides an overview of the municipal reporting burden summarizing the full report, Bearing the Burden: An Overview of Municipal Reporting to the Province, previously put forth by AMCTO.
I. Implications of the Reporting Burden
The key findings of the full research project are presented below.
Reporting negatively impacts service delivery and prevents municipalities from innovating and preparing for the future
Alarmingly, reporting to the Province has negative consequences in terms of the ability of municipalities to deliver services effectively to their residents, as well as to plan and innovate for the future. For example, nearly half of municipal practitioners surveyed agreed that their ability to deliver public services effectively is hindered by provincial reporting requirements. Specifically, when asked whether provincial reporting requirements impacts their ability to productively deliver services, 48 percent agreed, 33 percent were neutral, and 19 percent disagreed.
Additionally, day-to-day compliance requirements are burdensome in that they prevent municipalities from being forward-looking and proactive. Instead, time and resources are spent on keeping up with reporting requirements. Oftentimes, balancing service delivery and reporting requirements are managed by working overtime or hiring consultants. However, both solutions are financially costly, diverting scarce municipal resources away from core service delivery.
Reporting is onerous and excessive
The number of reports sent to the province each year is large. A conservative estimate pinpoints the number at 422, including 225 separate reports, collected monthly, quarterly, biannually, and annually. Municipalities, for example, must complete reports for each environmental-related site, wastewater facility, or long-term care home in their jurisdiction – and this number does not include one-time reports or those submitted with a unique frequency, such as those completed for grant-based reporting.
While no single municipality is responsible for filling out all 422 reports in any given year, we know from other estimates that some municipalities complete more than 200 themselves. The amount of reporting a municipality completes generally depends on the set of services they are responsible for. Some are required to complete as few as 90 reports, while others complete more than 200.
Indeed, 63 percent of survey respondents agreed with the statement that there are too many provincial reporting requirements. There is more reporting now than three to five years ago, and the trend seems to be for the province to consistently add new reporting requirements without taking many away.
The purpose of reporting is often unclear
While the process of reporting can help municipalities become aware of inefficiencies, measure their progress, inform program decisions, or learn more about potential problems with the programs and services they deliver, our research suggests that this is the exception rather than the rule. Respondents painted a clear picture: in most instances, municipalities derive little benefit from the reporting that they do, rarely have a good sense of what it is being used for, and are deeply skeptical that the information is actually being used. If reporting was useful for both the province and the municipality, respondents indicated they would be more enthusiastic. However, public servants consider reporting to bring little or no value to their work, with only 21 percent of respondents agreeing it is beneficial.
One of the reasons why reporting brings little value to municipalities is that the information reported to the province is rarely shared back with them. If the data reported to the province was published or shared in some form so that municipalities could benchmark or compare themselves against other municipalities, respondents indicated that reporting would be much more useful. As it stands, however, reporting is often a drain on resources without much positive output.
Municipal-provincial reporting is highly fragmented
One possible reason why the province has been unable to communicate the value of reporting is that it is so fragmented that even the province doesn’t have a clear picture of the scale and scope of municipal reporting. Municipalities submit reports to at least 34 different ministries and agencies. Many ministries and agencies approach reporting in different ways, sometimes resulting in redundant requests for the same information.
The features of each report can also differ greatly making reporting even more onerous for municipalities. Reports are submitted to different provincial ministries or agencies at different points in time, some monthly, some quarterly, some bi-annually, and others annually or a combination. The reporting architecture is so fragmented that municipal staff spend time seeking clarification from various agencies and ministries, reporting the same data multiple times, and constantly grappling with new and inconsistent reporting formats.
Municipalities think reporting is important
Finally, despite all the concerns that respondents expressed, and all the issues currently associated with reporting, there is a strong belief amongst municipal public servants that reporting is important. In fact, 80 percent of survey respondents agree that reporting is important; only 8 percent disagree. However, the elements of reporting that are useful are vastly overshadowed by the elements that are illogical and deeply frustrating to municipal officials.
As noted by one focus group participant, “most public servants want to serve their communities, not fill out reports.” The important challenge going forward is to identify and preserve the important and productive elements of reporting, and look for opportunities to streamline and improve the duplication and waste.
II. Precedents for Reform
While bringing meaningful change to the municipal reporting burden will be no easy task, there are examples over the past decade demonstrating that the Government of Ontario has successfully tackled similar challenges.
Open for business strategy
The Government of Ontario has made a valuable contribution to reducing and streamlining regulation and reform for the private sector. The Open for Business Strategy was implemented in 2008 in an effort to create a regulatory environment more conducive to businesses. The government-wide strategy seeks to reduce the burden on the private sector and modernize services. It includes the government’s Red Tape Challenge, Regulatory Centre of Excellence, Regulatory Modernization Committee, Government Modernization Fund, and Regulatory Burden Reduction Team. According to the Ministry of Economic Development and Growth, the government has achieved 50 percent of its target to reduce the burden on businesses with $100 million in savings by 2017. In 2014 alone, five ministries worked together to help save $6 million and 150,000 hours for the businesses in Ontario. Similarly, in 2015, 17 ministry initiatives saved $44 million and 2.3 million hours.
The Transfer Payment Administrative Modernization Initiative (TPAM)
Run by the Government of Ontario’s Treasury Board Secretariat, TPAM is designed to streamline and modernize the government’s approach to managing its transfer payments. An integral element is the Transfer Payment Common Registration system (TPCR), a one-window, online portal that enables organizations that receive transfer payments to maintain a single profile and allows this information to be accessed and used by all ministries. One of the goals of TPAM is to allow transfer payment recipients, such as municipalities, to spend less time on administrative processes and more time on delivering services.
III. Recommendations
It is clear there is much room for improvement. In order to modernize and streamline municipal reporting requirements, the following recommendations could be implemented by the province:
1. Establish and maintain a comprehensive list of provincially required reporting for municipalities.
The province should work towards creating a cross-ministry list that catalogues all the reports that provincial ministries require municipalities to submit. The Treasury Board Policy Suite’s Inventory and Schedule of reports that the federal government is required to produce would be a good model to follow.
2. Explore more forms of reporting.
There are a number of ways that the government could ensure that it is accomplishing its goals of monitoring policy progress, compliance and accountability at the local level, while not requiring municipalities to fill out an endless number of reports. For example, one option would be to establish a list of priority indicators that municipalities report on, allowing the multiple provincial ministries and external stakeholders to easily access data, and removing the requirement for municipalities to report the same data multiple times to multiple ministries.
3. Recognize the burden and look for opportunities to streamline and reduce the regulatory and reporting regime for Ontario’s municipalities.
The province needs to demonstrate that any new reporting requirements are necessary and recognize that reporting imposes a heavy burden on municipalities.
4. Communicate the purpose and value of reporting and look for opportunities to share aggregated reporting data with municipalities.
For reporting to be successful, both the province and especially municipalities need to understand why data is being collected, or what it is going to be used for.
Recognizing and making changes to improve municipal reporting will not automatically solve the bigger policy issues that municipalities are tasked with, but it will give them the opportunity to mitigate barriers to effective service delivery. It will allow them to move away from focusing on historic activities and free up staff time and resources to develop innovative solutions that improve the lives of their citizens.
