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Many relationships between politicians and bureaucrats are based on an energy‐equilibrium model where the politicians provide energy and the bureaucrats, equilibrium. According to this model, conflicts occur when one partner does not adequately fulfill his or her expected role. This model may be fruitfully used to study the relationship between the politician, the career bureaucrat, and the political appointee. The division of roles among this “ménage à trois” is particularly difficult and often generates tension. The situation is most prone to conflict when the government is in a period of change. At such times, the newly elected politicians have a tendency to mistrust the established bureaucracy and to depend almost exclusively on their political appointees. The dysfunctions induced by this phenomenon, in regard to the capacity of the bureaucracy to adequately fulfill its equilibrium role, are very clearly illustrated by the Canadian political transition of 1984, when the federal government was handed over to the Progressive Conservative Party. A series of interviews with ministers, senior civil servants, and senior policy advisors, all of whom had ringside seats to this transition, shows how the extensive power granted to ministerial offices aggravated the difficulties usually associated with a period of transition. This particular transition illustrates how important it is for the newly elected to ensure that their partisan policy advisors play their roles without getting in the way of the indispensable cooperation which must be established between ministers and senior civil servants.

The authors examine the time allocation and management of deputy ministers (DMs) in Canada.

The authors analyze the results from a 2020 survey of DMs.

The authors observe that, like private sector leaders, DMs work very long hours and tend to allocate their time fairly consistently across functions. Nevertheless, important differences exist particularly depending on the size of their department.

While a substantial percentage of answers were returned, these skew toward provincial rather than federal public servants and not all jurisdictions are equally represented.

The distribution of areas of focus for DMs and their time allocation differences speak to potentially important discussions to be had in time management practice.

This is the first and only analysis of time management for senior public service executives based on a survey instrument.