Category Archives: Governance

New featured images – Governance

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
April 18 2020

As part of an update to my website, I am revamping all my featured images (https://polywogg.ca/new-featured-images-astronomy/). Having already tackled a small one (astronomy) and a large one (website and computers), I am turning my attention to a different challenge — governance. I actually have multiple categories that fall into a “governance” theme, although in many ways, “government” might be a better term for some.

I have an actual category specifically called governance, and I tend to write about a variety of things related to running a government. Elections, public administration, audits. I have more of a technical bent to my topics, and if I was completely candid, it seems like public administration would be the more likely heading. Except from time to time I go above that and intersect with policy and politics. The running of a government at a level above. Not often, but occasionally, and usually related to how the two realms — politics and public administration — intersect.  » Read the rest

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Government working-from-home in the time of pandemics

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
March 15 2020

I’ve been following the TBS announcements, as most government employees have been, trying to figure out if and when they will tell us simply to work from home across the board. Right now, managers are told to be as supportive as possible for people wanting to work from home. Yet we can’t even call it telework as most of them will have no “tele” options at all — many don’t have a connection or app to connect remotely, and for those who do, most networks don’t have the bandwidth or server power to handle EVERYONE logging in remotely.

On Reddit, one user started a thread and included the phrase:

Let’s be honest – in many cases we actually can work from home and should absolutely be doing so.

Thread | Reddit

I don’t know if they are a manager who has ever managed telework employees or are an employee who has ever worked from home more than a day or two, but the level of assumptions in that statement suggests to me that the answer is neither.  » Read the rest

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I support teachers, not a strike – Part 4 / 5 – Public policy issues are not labour relations

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
March 5 2020

So at this point in my logic chain, I have:

  1. People should support education, which is mostly about teaching (a narrowing);
  2. The Government made a bad policy decision
  3. Teachers are willing to strike for the bad policy decision i.e., the issues

Except the issues aren’t really “strike worthy”. Funding levels are not significantly off from what they were — we’re not talking cuts like Alberta is seeing for health care. Larger class sizes have actually been more or less settled already with the latest offer, regardless of how few schools would actually see those theoretical limits. Layoffs will be done by attrition, local priority funding is going to school boards and has been increased, and violence in the classroom is based on faulty data.

Not exactly a strong rallying cry when you look at the substance. Which leaves only two other items — pay and benefits. The nuts and bolts of labour relations.  » Read the rest

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I support teachers, not a strike – Part 3 / 5 – Are the real policy issues “strike-worthy”

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
February 22 2020

So at this point in my logic chain, I have:

  1. People should support education –> People should support education, which is mostly about teaching (a narrowing);
  2. Teachers disagree with the government’s approach –> The Government made a bad policy decision

The next sub-element is that teachers believe the government made a bad policy decision.

Bad policy

In order for us to decide it was a bad policy, let’s first articulate what exactly the elements of that “policy” are that are irking the teachers:

  1. Education funding levels;
  2. Larger class-sizes;
  3. Firing teachers;
  4. Non-renewal of lapsing “local priorities” funding;
  5. Violence in the classroom; and,
  6. Salary increase of 1%.

I confess in advance that I’m going to fall off the logic chain pretty fast in this list. Let’s start with the overall heading — education funding.

Education funding

While the Government is claiming an increase in education funding of $1.2B, it’s a misleading figure, mainly as it includes a lot of money in there for child-care.  » Read the rest

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I support teachers, not a strike – Part 2 / 5 – The government made a policy decision

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
February 14 2020

In my post earlier this week (I support teachers, not a strike – Part 1 / 5 – Education is mostly about teaching), I was okay with the argument that education is important and teachers are responsible for the most important part of the delivery network. So I’m still on the logic train the teachers union argue leads to people needing to support a strike. The next link in the logic chain is:

  • Teachers are striking to change the government’s bad approach to education

That is a very complicated sentence that has three components:

  1. The government decided
  2. They chose a bad approach to education
  3. Teachers are striking to change it

For (a), it is easy or even popular to say a specific person (the premier, perhaps) decided something. The chain is that this one person were wrong, so let’s change things. Except that is highly misleading. And doesn’t reflect the basic tenets of democracy in Ontario.  » Read the rest

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