| Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (Policy Coordination Scale) |
| 1. Communication with other ministries (information exchange). Ministries keep each other up to date about what issues are arising and how they propose to act in their own areas. Reliable and acceptable channels of communication must exist. |
CAPAR design was intended to support this. |
| 2. Consultation with other ministries. This is a two-way process. As well as informing other ministries of what they are doing, individual ministries consult other ministries in the process of formulating their own policies or position. |
CAPAR design was intended to support this, at least in part, by fostering a more coherent approach. |
| 3. Avoid divergences among ministries. Ensuring that ministries do not take divergent negotiating positions and that government speaks with one voice. |
CAPAR design was intended to support this. Joint reporting was intended to help the government speak with one voice, although only where the funded initiatives are concerned. |
| 4. Inter-ministerial search for agreement (seeking consensus). Beyond negative co-ordination to hide differences, ministries work together, through, for example, joint committees and project teams, because they recognize their interdependence and their mutual interest in resolving policy differences. |
CAPAR was not designed to support this (a joint committee (the IWG) was formed, but its ToRs do not indicate intention to resolve policy differences). |
| 5. Arbitration if inter-organizational differences. Where inter-organizational difference of view cannot be resolved by the horizontal coordination processes defined in levels 2 to 5, central machinery for arbitration is needed. |
CAPAR was not designed to support this. |
| 6. Setting parameters for organizations. A central organization or inter-organizational decision-making body may play a more active role by setting parameters on the discretion of individual organizations. These parameters define what the organizations must do, rather than prescribing what they should do. |
CAPAR was not designed to support this. |
| 7. Establishing government priorities. The centre of government may play a more positive role by laying down main lines of policy and establishing priorities. |
CAPAR was not designed to support this. |
| 8. Overall government strategy. This case is added for the sake of completeness, but is unlikely to be attainable in practice. |
CAPAR was not designed to support this. |
| Consulting and Audit Canada (Continuum of Escalating Options) |
| 1. Dialogue and information sharing (to raise mutual awareness – no impact on policies/programs). |
CAPAR was designed to support this. |
| 2. Joint projects carried out on an ad hoc basis in areas of common interest (could involve real or virtual teams, task forces, joint research contracts, etc. and may impact policies/programs). |
CAPAR was designed to support this, but only to a limited extent (e.g. preparation of the TB Submission and RMAF/RBAF) and not in terms of other possible joint work, such as joint research projects. |
| 3. On-going joint projects (similar to the preceding option, but more continuous, such as joint funding of an external research organization). |
CAPAR was designed to support this to some degree in the areas of performance measurement, monitoring and reporting, but not in areas such as policy/strategy development or implementation |
| 4. Informal coordination of policies/programs (no formal agreement, but some adjustment to improve coordination by, for example, eliminating overlap and duplication and closing gaps in coverage). |
CAPAR was designed theoretically to support this through information sharing, the intent to establish common outcomes and a common monitoring and reporting framework, although this pre-supposes that the initiatives would be willing to adapt their policies to the framework whereas in practice the task appears to be to adapt the framework to the existing policies. |
| 5. Formal (structured) coordination of policies/programs, while retaining separate implementation of various elements by the participating organizations (agreed-upon common objectives and a common reporting framework). |
CAPAR was not designed to support this (design reflects this only in the sense that its original design was intended to fill gaps in program coverage – there is no ongoing requirement to identify and fill any further gaps). |
| 6. Formal coordination with jointly managed implementation (participating organizations retain their separate identities but might be co-located). |
CAPAR was not designed to support this. |
| 7. Complete amalgamation into a single organization. |
CAPAR was not designed to support this. |
