TORONTO, Feb. 4 /CNW/ - Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty today thanked Ontario public servants for their tremendous support for the government's Ideas Campaign, which generated a flood of excellent suggestions to improve
government services.
"When we launched the Ideas Campaign, we wanted to hear from the employees themselves - the people who work with citizens - about how to improve government services while living within our means," said Premier McGuinty. "I had no doubt that public servants would respond. And the response
has been overwhelming."
Employees contributed their ideas through an intranet website, a call centre and seven regional ideas conferences. Over the course of the six-week campaign, more than 11,000 ideas were received and meetings were filled to
capacity.

Some of the ideas suggested include:

- Enabling citizens to renew their driver's licences and health cards at the same time.
- Replacing older government vehicles with gas-electric hybrid vehicles to reduce emissions and save money.
- Eliminating printed phone directories within government to save paper and costs.
- Combining internal services among ministries such as human resources,facilities management, business planning and regional offices.
- Working with the federal government to share locations for public services.

"Our public servants are dedicated and committed to providing high-quality services for Ontario citizens every day," said Tony Dean, Secretary of the Cabinet. "This campaign has ignited a spirit of innovation and
participation. Our employees want to make a meaningful contribution to shaping the transformation of public services to meet government priorities."
Ideas generated through the campaign are being tabulated now and will be used by ministries as they develop their plans for the coming budget year.Ideas about government-wide matters will be used for service reviews and
strategic plans that are being developed as the government prepares for its first budget.
Premier McGuinty said he would be announcing details about the public phase of his pre-budget consultation next week.

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