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During the June election, Doug Ford’s Conservatives ran on a promise that they would streamline government services and find efficiencies, specifically up to $6 billion worth of them.

Now they’re asking for the public on ideas on how to go about doing just that.

The Ontario government has launched an online consultation survey in order to gauge public feedback on what is needed to improve government services, as announced recently by Treasury Board President Peter Bethlenfalvy.

It's time the People had a say in how we create a more effective and efficient government. Our Consultation for the People is your opportunity to tell us how we can improve government services for you. Take the survey here: https://t.co/TAIVzlvAQn #onpoli pic.twitter.com/4aNPZahAl4 — Peter Bethlenfalvy (@PBethlenfalvy) August 30, 2018

The survey takes approximately 15 minutes, so I took the liberty of completing the survey in order to find out its contents; here’s a summary:

The first part asks you “how easy is it to access services, how fast are services delivered, and do services provide the best results for users?” You are asked to categorize services such as Health Care, Education, Social Services on a scale of 1 to 4, from 1 being the least effective to 4 being extremely effective.

You are also asked how you prioritize these services, and how often you interact with them, on a scale of 1 being low priority to 5 being high priority.

The second section in the survey asks for ideas from you on how to improve government services, but the scope was very specific, and clearly leaning toward a conservative political slant.

Those government planning goals were the basis of allowing you to submit your three ideas in the survey:

Improving existing programs and services

Closing out programs and services that are not meeting their intended purpose

Combining programs and services that can do or achieve the same things

Exploring the best way to deliver programs and services, including the most appropriate delivery channel

Increasing public and stakeholder input in decision-making

Making government spending more transparent

Paying down the provincial debt

However, those ideas must:

not ask for funding for a specific individual, group, organization, company and/or business

Be within scope of the Ontario government to deliver, so please check to make sure your idea is not the responsibility of another level of government (federal or municipal)

Follow the government’s terms of use - your idea will not be considered if it violates those terms

be feasible, practical and affordable for us to implement in the short term

be sustainable and provide long-term benefits

You are then asked to categorize which service your idea falls under and then to write down specifically what your idea is. Each survey allows for three ideas to be submitted, but each space allows up to 2,000 words per answer.

After submitting your three ideas, you are directed to enter your demographic information, such as age, income, and where you live, although it is entirely optional if you want to put this information down.

So if you have ideas on how the new Tory government can improve services, you have until September 21 to complete this survey.

It will be intriguing to see what plan the government comes up with to “find efficiencies” based on the survey’s results, and if they truly put into consideration the feedback “from the people”.