In this two-part episode of The Path of Public Service, we feature Arthur “Art” Daniels, retired Assistant Deputy Minister (Ontario Public Service Excellence and Innovation Office, Centre for Leadership, Ontario Public Service Restructuring Secretariat, and Cabinet Office). Art dedicated 40 years in Ontario Public Service, and years since volunteering to causes and organizations like Applaud (formerly QCC) where he served as member of its Board of Directors. In this episode, Art warmly reminiscences, tracing a career defined by practical reform, inclusion, and trust in public service.
In Part Two of Art Daniels’ conversation with Katie Jensen, Art reflects on the bold government reforms that defined the next chapter of his public service career. He describes rebuilding Ontario’s Registrar General from the ground up by flattening hierarchies, hiring a more inclusive workforce, and replacing paper-based systems with digital imaging to better serve citizens. The conversation then follows Art’s reform work beyond Canada, including partnerships in Lithuania, Ukraine, Qatar, Egypt, and Kazakhstan, where he helped advance transparent, citizen-centred, and corruption-resistant public services. Art also revisits the evolution of Applaud from a long-service OPS club into a broader movement recognizing public service across sectors. The episode closes with his advice on vision, storytelling, and culture change. Lasting reform depends not only on new systems, but on helping people imagine a better way forward.
[00:02:00] Rebuilding a department from scratch
[00:04:00] The technology of change
[00:06:00] Modernizing public service in other countries
[00:10:00] The trustworthiness of Canadian Public Service
[00:13:00] Public service enabling economical growth
[00:18:00] How Applaud has evolved
[00:22:00] Visionaries are storytellers
Disclaimer:
Any statistics, facts or data references mentioned in this episode have not been independently verified and may not reflect the most accurate, complete, or current data. Please consult reliable sources for up-to-date and authoritative information.
[00:00:00] Katie Jensen: I'm Katie Jensen, and this is The Path of Public Service from Applaud, celebrating people who have spent their lives working in Ontario's public sector.
Art Daniels: The public needs to know that it has the best public services, it has a trustworthy public service, it knows it doesn't have to waste money on bribery or time lining up in an office, waiting and being mistreated.
Katie Jensen: That's Art Daniels, government reformer and the man behind Applaud.
Art Daniels: My name is Art Daniels. I'm a former civil servant with the Ontario Public Service, and now I'm a retiree living in Toronto.
Katie Jensen: In part one, we followed Art from badge-covered Boy Scout pondering a job in the great outdoors but navigating somewhere very different.
[00:01:00] Art Daniels: Ended up getting a call, and he said, "Art, you're gonna join the Department of Reform Institutions," which is prisons. And I thought, "What? That's a long way from the idea of me working in the woods."
Katie Jensen: Once he got there, he started rewriting the rules about who got hired.
Art Daniels: All of a sudden, I'm driving to work, and he said, "Art, do you know you hired an Indian?" I said, "Yeah, he's very qualified, and he'll do great."
Katie Jensen: Art grew up working construction for his father. He never stopped building. Today, we'll hear how he bet his whole career on tearing a government department down to the studs.
Art Daniels: One of my fellow ADMs said, "Art, you either get a gold medal or you'll get fired."
Katie Jensen: We'll hear about the work he did to reform other governments worldwide.
Art Daniels: And a lot of those countries now have really first-class public servants.
Katie Jensen: And the message he'd tell his younger self.
Art Daniels: You can't have a vision without a story.
[00:02:00] Katie Jensen: We're picking it back up in the early 2000s when Art was in full demolition mode. The government handed him a blank page, an entire department, the Registrar General, births, marriages, and deaths. A department that was moving to Thunder Bay with almost none of its staff.
Art Daniels: None of the staff in Toronto wanted to go to Thunder Bay. It was just too far away. So I thought, "Well, what a great opportunity. I can hire a whole new staff. And create a whole new organization.”
Katie Jensen: He rebuilt the department from scratch, flattened the hierarchy, and made sure that a third of the new hires were folks with disabilities and a third were indigenous.
Art Daniels: Now, the old registrar general was made up of layers and layers of clerks. Clerk one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. There were 10 hierarchical staff levels of clerks, and then there were managers, supervisors, chiefs, all assistant directors, all these titles. And I thought, "Why do we have such a big structure for one product?" I flattened the whole organization to one job, and then I created teams of people, so they only needed one leader, a team leader, not a supervisor.
[00:03:00] Art Daniels: And then there'd be the director. Three jobs out of what were 50, 60 jobs. People paid the same, and therefore, when you had workload problems, people could fill in for each other 'cause they're all the same class. They're all the same job. In the old structure, somebody would get sick, they couldn't be replaced 'cause that person had a different classification, a different name, a different function. You know, it didn't make sense. So I switched everything, I called them customer service representatives. No longer officers. But the title reflected the outcome: customer service rep. You represent the customer. You don't represent the government, you represent the customer. It was a lot of interesting power to change a workplace.
[00:04:00] Art Daniels: And oh, at the same time, change the whole technology. 'Cause you gotta remember, I was gonna hire disabled people. People without limbs, people who are in able lift. The old registrar general was all paper. Everything was in big ledgers and books, and weighed a ton. But we moved to imaging.
Katie Jensen: Like microfiche?
Art Daniels: Better than microfiche. They were on giant CD-ROMs, and it's images, images, like digital imaging, like a digital camera. And the company at the time I was using microfiche was Kodak, and I said to them, I said, "Are you gonna go to digital imaging?" And they said, "Nah, we're gonna make better fiche." So now there is no Kodak. They didn't follow that trend. Interesting, eh? And yet, if they had even thought about it... And I was able to see that this could easily replace paper, so you- we don't need paper anywhere in government. Everything can be stored and recovered easily. So I did that at the same time So we changed the technology, we changed who the people were, we changed the structure.
[00:05:00] Katie Jensen: Did you get any pushback around all that change at once?
Art Daniels: Oh, yeah, lots of people thought it was nuts. One of my fellow ADMs said, "Art, you either get a gold medal or you'll get fired." And I ended up getting a gold medal from the Institute of Public Administration.
Katie Jensen: Yes, you did.
Art Daniels: So it was better than getting fired. But, um, not everything moved smoothly either. There were, you know, bumps in the road, but we got through them all. But I think it showed people that you could create an organization that is much more outcome driven. And this whole idea of customer-centered or citizen-centered government became quite important to me, and other countries are still following our lead. And Canada was a world leader and won the first international gold medal from the Commonwealth of Nations for citizen-centered government.
[00:06:00] Katie Jensen: That's great. At what point did you start thinking forward to doing work outside of the country?
Art Daniels: Well, actually, it started inside government. Um, I wonder, it's a good story too. Although these are, these are stories, they're kind of fun. I was working, at that time, I had moved to Cabinet to head the government reform called the Ontario Restructuring Secretariat. I was their first ADM. We're just getting off the ground, but I was going around, my job basically was to get people ready for the new, flatter, more decentralized, customer-driven government with quality civil service.
Art Daniels: So I had quality, innovation, excellence, all these things were part of the mandate, and we created things like shared services. So we stopped working up and down the silo. We created Service Ontario, shared services, integrated policy, integrated regulatory services, horizontal government. So countries heard about this and started visiting my Restructuring Secretariat office, so I got to meet lots of different countries or speak to different countries about what we were doing.
[00:07:00] Art Daniels: And one of my staff back in Corrections, the world is small, was a probation officer, but she was from Lithuania like I was. She came to see me, and she brought the Minister of Reform from Lithuania. Now, what she had done when the Soviet Union finally collapsed, and Lithuania was part of leading that whole... It wasn't just the Berlin Wall. It was actually started by the three Baltic countries, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. They began the fall of, of the Soviet Union. Anyway, this young lady went back to Lithuania. She was born in Canada, but she went back 'cause she still spoke Lithuanian and became the Prime Minister of Lithuania's executive assistant.
[00:08:00] Art Daniels: And she was obviously, because she had worked in Ontario, knew about public service, so she brought the, the Minister of Reform from Lithuania to see me, and I told her all about what we were doing and the whole reform of government. The Lithuanian government went back and got permission from Canada to do a partnership to help modernize their public service to get Lithuania into the European Union and as far away from the Soviet Union as they could to de-Sovietize their government and to make it much more Western.
[00:09:00] Art Daniels: So they partnered with the Ontario Public Service. So we were still in the civil service, but we were sending over our civil servants to Lithuania to work with their public service to help modernize it, and it was a great project. And later on, the, chancellor of Lithuania told my boss, the Secretary of Cabinet, that it was thanks to the Ontario government and the Ontario Public Service that Lithuania was able to get into the European Union. And I feel good about that.
Katie Jensen: I really hope that Ukraine can as well.
Art Daniels: Yeah. Well, I worked in Ukraine too. I was in Kiev. One of the very first things that IPAC did, the Institute of Public Administration, part of my job was, as president, to go to various projects. We had a project in the Ukraine, working mostly with the Albertan government, because there were mostly Ukrainians living in Alberta.
[00:10:00] Art Daniels: I went over there, though, to Kiev, and part of it was to train the public service to be neutral, to serve the public, to not be politicized. Because under the Soviet, it's the exact opposite of citizen-centered government. He thinks about rules, regulation, structure. I, again, was teaching them about ethics in government, and not to be corrupt, accept bribes, and... because, you know, in some countries, corruption is rampant in public service. But Canada, we're one of the most trusted countries in the world because the public service is trustworthy.
Katie Jensen: Mm-hmm.
Art Daniels: It's incorruptible. Mostly incorruptible. It's kind of shocking to Canadians if a civil servant is found to have been corrupt. I think it would drive Canadians nuts. They trust their public service. They always have. Governments make mistakes, but the public service has to be neutral. It has to be bipartisan. It has to be driven by the customer. And we did Ukraine when I was in government. But I did a lot of my work after I retired.
[00:11:00] Art Daniels: So with a company called BearingPoint, which was part of, used to be KPMG, then became Deloitte. So in a sense, I worked for all of the Big Four. But BearingPoint still exists in Europe, and is very, very successful. And I was in the company called Developmental, where we worked with developing countries. So they sent me, my first project was Qatar, to build the new public service in Qatar, where you hear about Qatar all the time nowadays.
Art Daniels: Back then, it was just a little country in the Middle East, but it was rich with oil, and I was able to implement a lot of the things we did here. One-stop shops, integrated government, service quality, all these things are part of the Qatar public service today. And then I went to Egypt. Egypt is an ancient and wonderful country, but it's the most corrupt country in the world.
[00:12:00] Art Daniels: They even have a word for corruption for public service called baksheesh, that you can pay to get anything. I could not believe, I'm there teaching them about ethics, and my luggage gets lost in Alexandria. And the airport in Alex is miles out of town. So my luggage finally arrives, so I take the cab out all the way back out to the outskirts of Alexandria, and the customs officer in uniform with the flag of Egypt on his arm and wearing a uniform, asking me for money to get my own luggage that their airline had lost. I said, "You know, does this make sense to you, that I'm gonna pay you for losing my luggage?" And, uh, my job was to create business licensing without corruption and to make sure that the regulations and rules and things were done transparently and were done as a single window, and that you would get your business license without having to bribe anybody, without having to wait two years, get it in within hours.
[00:13:00] Art Daniels: In Ontario, we have business licenses guaranteed in less than 24 hours so that the economy can grow. Where a country like Egypt, two years to start a business? No wonder they were in the toilet at the bottom of development in the world, 'cause corruption of their public service held back their country, even though they had oil. They had things that are really worthwhile, but the country was held back by its inability to have a transparent public service.
Katie Jensen: What's the extent of what you've seen in terms of non-functioning governments around the world?
Art Daniels: I remember I said to you about how corrupt Egypt was.
Katie Jensen: Yes.
[00:14:00] Art Daniels: So countries, or like I said, I was in different countries in Africa watching people line up in government offices, sleeping there day after day, waiting for services that may not ever come, or seeing paper stacked and going moldy. And paper would be your land, your property. The country is gonna be built on who owns what land. People have to recognize that information will create the economy if people have ownership of their business, of their property, of their name. These things are important, and government guarantees it. But if it's a corrupt government, then that paper's gonna disappear, or you're gonna have to pay more money for something that should be free.
Katie Jensen: Yeah.
[00:15:00] Art Daniels: My job was to travel the world and to try to end corrupt governments, make governments transparent and trustworthy. So I was very lucky. I traveled to, I think I kept track, close to 75.
Katie Jensen: No way.
Art Daniels: Yeah, 75.
Katie Jensen: That's like a third of the world.
Art Daniels: Yeah, a third of the world, at least. And I was able to see things happen because the influence that Ontario had, and Canada had on the governments. Countries like Singapore, who are now past us. Singapore was really adaptable, probably one of the best countries in the world for adaptability, for learning other people's best practices. One of the things about being a civil servant is to know what the rest of the world is doing, and to read and to study, and to do best practice, not to stay hidden. A lot of governments get the idea that, you wouldn't let civil servants go to conferences. Don't let civil servants learn anything. Keep them restricted. How stupid was that, you know? For me, learning about best practices around the world and applying them in Ontario, or vice versa, helping other countries learn from what Ontario had done, would make the whole world better, and it does.
[00:16:00] Art Daniels: So when I was in... My last visit overseas was in, like, a former Soviet country, still kinda connected Soviet-wise, called Kazakhstan. I went to see their one-window services, and it was very impressive. A lot of the things that we had talked about in Ontario, they had adopted. They had these integrated services for driver's license, birth certificates, health cards, all the things that all governments do, and we can learn from each other, and to focus on the outcome and not the input. Kazakhstan had a wonderful one-stop shop. Better services to the citizens of their country. That was my last visit, and I felt really good that as you reflect back on the things you've accomplished.
[00:17:00] Katie Jensen: I'm curious about what brought you back home. Was it your family?
Art Daniels: No, I, I love Canada. I'm very proud to be a Canadian. I'm glad my grandparents immigrated to Canada at the turn of the century. They made great, you know, the fact that I can be very proud of my heritage and proud that, of what my grandfather accomplished by starting a company and going from nobody, a little carpenter from Lithuania, to owning a business and running a company of hundreds of people. My mom and dad, all the things that they succeeded in. No, I'm very proud. I'm happy to be a Canadian.
Katie Jensen: Can you tell me about the idea for Applaud?
[00:18:00] Art Daniels: As a civil servant, I was also the president of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada. I was the president of what's called now Applaud, but it, back then was called Quarter Century Club of Ontario, and we changed it over time to be more integrated across boundaries. When I joined Quarter Century Club, long time ago, you had to have 25 years public service, and you had to be in the OPS. And so I thought, why does it have to be 25 years? Why does it have to be the OPS? Why can't it be public service in general? And that's what Applaud is now. It doesn't worry about false structure, old structures. It recognizes and applauds public service in all its formats, federal, provincial, municipal, not-for-profits. All of these things are all part of the same thing.
Katie Jensen: What's something that's true about a life in public service that people outside never get right?
[00:19:00] Art Daniels: Well, the, I think the, the biggest thing people misconstrue about government is how hard civil servants work. People always sort of think of us as making them wait. Did you ever see the first Zootopia?
Katie Jensen: Yes, it's very funny.
Art Daniels: Yeah, and guess what the worst thing a civil servant could be? A sloth. Department of Motor Vehicles. If you remember the guy, the sloth at the Department of Motor Vehicles, the driver's license. 'Cause that's how people think of civil servants. I remember as a kid growing up in Ontario, before I was able to bring, we did all these changes, lining up in the freezing cold. The government had the great idea that driver's licenses in Ontario would all expire on the same day. February, the last day of February.
Katie Jensen: No.
[00:20:00] Art Daniels: In Ontario, has to be one of the coldest days of the year. So why not have all our driver's license, every citizen in Ontario that drove, had to go to the government office on the coldest day of the year and line up outdoors for hours and hours and hours in a slow-moving line. And that's how people used to see civil servants. We called ourselves officers. We actually fed into it. Everybody was called an officer. Human resources officer, personnel officer, finance officer. What's that say? My job is to be officious, to tell you the rules. Here's the rule. Here's how you do it. You'll follow this instruction. You'll wait in line. You'll line up. You'll waste your life away, hours of your life doing nothing that's productive.
[00:21:00] Art Daniels: We need to tell people we've moved on from that bad image, that we are now very much focused on the citizen, getting things to you quickly, bundling your services around your life. Like, part of Service Ontario is having a baby, putting things like marriage and caring in, into one-stop shops. Everything's about you as a citizen, not about the rules of government, not around the institution. And again, this goes back to my very first job. The worst thing you can do to a person is treat them like an institution, not as a human.
Katie Jensen: If you had a piece of advice for your younger self in the '60s or the '70s, what would it be?
Art Daniels: To always have a vision. Some people think in boxes. I always think out of the box. I like to think of ways to do things differently, to see things differently, to sort of see things over the wall, not behind the wall. To break that wall down.
[00:22:00] Katie Jensen: Sometimes a visionary can be met with a group or a team that's not ready or can't see the vision. So what are some of the ways that you bring in other soft skills to help people enact the vision they might not totally see?
Art Daniels: A visionary person, a person with a vision, has to be a storyteller. You've gotta get people to be excited about the vision you have. You've gotta be able to paint that vision. To have a vision is good, but you gotta be able to communicate vision, you gotta be able to tell the stories, and storytelling is probably the best skill a visionary can have.
[00:23:00] Art Daniels: The rules-based person doesn't have a vision, it has a book It doesn't have a picture. It has a bunch of regulations. It's a mountain, cold and stark and in the way. That's an officer. That's a regulator. A visionary has a forest, trees, animals. You're walking through it. You're rejuvenated. You're happy. You look at a mountain, you're cold. You're blocked. You're frozen. You haven't got any ideas. Lie down and freeze to death.
Katie Jensen: Wow, that's deep.
Art Daniels: It is, eh? (Laughing).
Katie Jensen: And poetic in its own way.
Art Daniels: Yeah, it is kind of poetic, isn't it?
Katie Jensen: You have great stories, and also the part that you were mentioning about being a visionary and being a good storyteller resonates a lot, and I think it's important to hear, 'cause most folks would probably, like, ascribe different traits to being a visionary, like, I don't know, boldness or bravery, just some of the things that you think of off the top of your head. But I don't think storytelling is one that most people connect right away, so I really liked that.
[00:24:00] Art Daniels: Yeah, you can't have a vision without a story, and you can't change culture, and that's what our job is. That's why Applaud is really important. It's about cultural change, and it started out as just being for OPSers who had 25 years service.
Katie Jensen: It's so much more now.
Art Daniels: It is so much more.
Katie Jensen: So kudos to you, really.
Art Daniels: Well, part of the journey years ago.
Katie Jensen: Thanks for listening. Applaud is proud to showcase the dedication of those who make decisions for the greater good and strive to leave the world a better place for all Canadians. All personal views expressed by guests and our host are their own. Applaud will continue to recognize those in public service, offer a kaleidoscope of perspectives, and operate in good faith to build trust with Applaud members and all public citizens. You can share feedback on this episode by visiting applaudpublicservice.ca.