Almost Like a Play’: Discretion and the Health Care Innovation Working Group Emmet Collins

Personal effects

The first issue concerns the impacts of informal relations on a strictly personal level. Good interpersonal relations make for a more pleasant workplace, and while this may not seem like a major impact when considering informal relations as a whole, it can be significant for those who work in the trenches of intergovernmental relations.

Good interpersonal relations were the norm, according to those interviewed. Several officials mentioned that they had enjoyed the work and gotten along with their colleagues. One external stakeholder, who was otherwise skeptical of the work of the HCIWG, still mentioned the good working relationship: “I can say it was a pleasure… and the people from the government, the civil servants… were delightful and very competent, very committed, for sure they were committed, so all that was beautiful.”

Officials were hard pressed to think of examples of poor interpersonal relationships. As noted above, where certain individuals had incompatible personalities, they tended to move on from IGR work. As one official noted, “…most people who are in IGR are in it because they enjoy it. And they enjoy the dynamic of the negotiation and discussion with other, with their counterparts.” As such, it can be said that the impact of informal relations on the personal level was to improve the work for those officials doing it.

However, most interviewees were careful to note something along the lines of the following: “It works because we have to make it work. As officials, we have to make it work.” In some cases, participants were quite forceful in their insistence of that point. This brings us to the point that good informal relations were treated as being important, but not for their own sake. The effects were evident at the personal level, but not limited to it or at their most influential there.