Cutting red tape for students and institutions

In the past few months Alberta’s government has been focused on saving lives and livelihoods with Alberta’s Recovery Plan. While there’s a long and important road to travel on this front, it’s important to remember that other government work continues unabated.

Albertans elected us based on a platform of commitments, and I’m proud to say that we continue to deliver on our promises. A key platform commitment was cutting red tape. Cutting red tape means getting rid of duplication and unnecessary steps, modernizing processes and making it easier for Albertans to access government services and programs.

On November 16, Associate Minister Grant Hunter released his first annual report, outlining the progress Alberta’s government has made on cutting red tape during its first year. While red tape reduction targets were set at 5% in the first year, Advanced Education exceeded this with a reduction of 6.9%.

Some of our completed red tape reduction items include:

• updating forms to use an E-consent process for student loans,
• streamlining the path for individuals wishing to focus on barbering,
• streamline data collection and reporting, and
• improvements in apprenticeship service delivery.

I’m proud of the progress we’ve made to reduce red tape for Albertans, not just in Advanced Education, but across government. However, this work is not done. We’ve set an ambitious goal of reducing red tape across government by one-third in 4 years. To do this, we’ll need to look closely at operations and explore options to become more efficient, easier to navigate and more transparent.

At Advanced Education, much of the long-term work we’re undertaking to re-think and re-structure post-secondary education in Alberta has strong red tape reduction components. For example, an objective of Alberta 2030 is to create a more efficient post-secondary system by bringing costs down and removing duplication. By integrating red tape reduction into our decision making processes, we’re not only setting ourselves up to achieve our red tape reduction targets, but to create services and programs that are easier to use, more equitable to Albertans, and produce better results.

As this important work continues, I’d encourage all Albertans to continue to follow our progress on the Cutting Red Tape website.