Leadership Network (Canada) : The Leadership Network (TLN) was created under Order in Council P.C. 1998-952, 3 June 1998 (as a direct institutional descendant to the La Relève Task Force which initiated its activities in January 1997). The new separate agency received a mandate that refined and extended aspects of the original mandate of the Task Force. The Leadership Network was essentially designed as a mechanism to sustain momentum and ensure that reform of the public service under the rubric of La Relève was consolidated in order to avoid the fate of the unsuccessful antecedent public service renewal effort known as Public Service 2000 (circa 1990-1993).
From 1998 until April 2001, The Leadership Network operated with the status of a departmental agency reporting through the Prime Minister's portfolio (with administrative support from Privy Council Office) but with its substantive reporting relationship to the Committee Of Senior Officials, an interdepartmental committee of senior Deputy Heads supporting the strategic planning role of Clerk as "Head of the Public Service". Under Order-in-Council P.C. 2001-609, 11 April of 2001, the control and supervision of the TLN was transferred from the Prime Minister to the President of the Treasury Board. Its new status amounted to a quasi-independent Directorate reporting directly to the Secretary.
The mandate of TLN does not relate to the whole human resources management function, but rather the much more refined sub-activity of management of the senior levels of the Public Service. TLN executed that function in the context of a reform and renewal initiative that it is explicitly mandated to promote. More generally, it is worth making the distinction that the nature of all the program components is application of a program (not policy development per se). Officially the TLN's market niche is to "foster networks of leaders at all levels." It does so in a pre-established policy framework established by Treasury Board and the Committee of Senior Officials.
The distinct mandate of The Leadership Network is comprised of three interrelated and integrated components, 1. La Relève "action support" across government to develop close partnerships and horizontal links with departments, agencies, regions, functional communities, central agencies and support existing networks 2. "Assistant Deputy Minister Corporate Management" through a distinct single window secretariat and 3. leadership network promotion, development and support. Together the business processes associated with these three aspects of program activity constitute a single small business line.
Central to the status of The Leadership Network as a separate entity is the concept of "Corporate Management of the Assistant Deputy Minister community". In her capacity as head of the Public Service, Jocelyn Bourgon, the Clerk of the Privy Council endorsed this concept in June 1997 after it was developed by the La Relève Task Force and recommended by the Committee of Senior Officials (COSO). The concept involves recasting this cadre of 220-290 most senior program managers, under Deputy Heads and Associate Deputy Heads, as a corporate resource to be maximized in relation to the whole public service rather than in relation to a specific department. The concept emphasizes the value of ADMs as "corporate players" who as a matter of development will assume varying assignments and placement rotation. The program was an extension to senior executive officers of the appointment to level concept introduced under the Public Service Reform Act of 1993. The Treasury Board Policy on deployment of Executives (a TBS mandated responsibility), published 18 June 1997, provides for appointment to level system for ADMs to be managed by Deputy Ministers collectively through COSO. The Leadership Network develops and delivers the actual programs to effect these policy goals while promoting activities designed to foster and subsidize leadership networks across traditional vertical hierarchies. The Leadership Network Web-Site, archival appraisal and records disposition submission documentation, and records of the entity during the appraisal.
