Furthermore, the Job Centres/Jobs & Benefit Offices have a limited role in determining outsourcing arrangements at the local level with Lead Contractors. For example, in Alberta, Canada, local offices are able to influence overall programme design and direction through strong interactions that take place with the department responsible for labour market policies (Froy et al., Local and regional employment staff are expected to implement broad departmental strategic priorities and objectives which have been developed on a provincial basis (without specific targets) according to local needs. The only place where hard targets are identified is in a “provincial business plan”, and these are not formally applied to the regional and local level plans.