Commission on the Reform of Ontario's Public Services

ServiceOntario Transformation
Chapter 16: Operating and Back-Office Expenditures
ServiceOntario was originally given a mandate in 2006 to become the provincial government’s
public-facing delivery organization, with responsibility for delivering information and highvolume
routine transactions, to individuals and businesses. ServiceOntario operates nearly
300 locations that provide the public with such services as health card and driver’s licence
renewal. ServiceOntario is estimated to have reduced costs per transaction for driver, vehicle
and health card services by about 7.6 per cent. It now provides innovations such as online
service delivery, kiosk services, cross-government services, service guarantees and service
consolidation, establishing ServiceOntario as a leader in client-focused public services.
Looking ahead, the <strong>Commission</strong> believes it will be important to continue this success and
broaden the mandate of the organization to reduce overall expenditures, increase productivity
and improve service delivery to the public.
A. Expansion of ServiceOntario Services
Recommendation 16-1: Expand the services ServiceOntario delivers. This includes pursuing
additional partnerships for service delivery within the Ontario Public Service, and furthering
service delivery partnerships with municipal and federal levels of government.
A crucial part of the expansion of ServiceOntario is the growth of services both horizontally
(i.e., across provincial ministries) and vertically (i.e., in conjunction with federal and municipal
services). This one-stop interface is more productive for clients and efficient for government.
The efficiencies gained by integrating health card and driver’s licence renewal to one window,
for example, could be replicated by migrating additional transactions such as tax collection,
employment training and benefit administration to ServiceOntario.
For an example of the scale of just one site of possible integration, in 2010–11 Ontario
provided citizens with nearly $18 billion in benefits through 37 income-based programs.
Some of these programs were provided through 163 Ontario Works offices. ServiceOntario
could deliver these services in a more integrated, seamless, timely and ultimately more costefficient
manner.
The government should pursue additional partnerships within the OPS, such as transferring its
call and Internet-based enquiries on employment standards and occupational health and
safety from the Ministry of Labour to ServiceOntario. Expanding current ServiceOntariomanaged
databases to occupational health and safety inspectors would also permit more
efficient management of enforcement activities.
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