Matthew Cain in the UK published a great blog post recently titled “Leadership in a digital age”. It outlines a series of leadership attributes for digital leaders and organizations, and makes the great point that having a deeper understanding of technology solutions may not actually lead to a more effective digital-era organization. Technology expertise is not the same as “running a user needs-focused organization that works well” expertise, which is ultimately what public sector org...| sboots.ca
Last week, Kathryn May published an article in Policy Options titled “Speaking truth to power discouraged in public service”, based on a recent report from the Institute on Governance. It lines up with a consistent observation: public servants are frequently unable to provide fearless advice to the more senior public servants above them, let alone to political leaders and ministers several steps further removed. That has important consequences for the effectiveness of our public service w...| sboots.ca
It’s April, so like most Canadians, I spent a lot of time logging in to the Canada Revenue Agency and other government websites. The CRA’s login system is better than most of the 60 or so separate login systems used by federal government departments, but it’s still not very user-friendly. Fortunately, there’s a commitment to improve this – “a common and secure approach for a trusted digital identity platform” – in the most recent mandate letter for the President of the Treasu...| sboots.ca
This year’s FWD50 conference was a couple weeks ago. It’s home to a lot of interesting conversations on technology, governments, and society. One new event this year was a game show-inspired “pitch competition”, where public servants pitched ideas for policy changes that could better enable digital work in government. My pitch was about procurement. And also about urban planning, as a way of combining two of my favourite topics. Here’s a recap of the presentation.| sboots.ca
Lee Berthiaume from the Canadian Press wrote a fascinating article last week, based on an internal Department of National Defence report on IT support. The report describes DND’s IT processes and systems as “out-of-date and poorly supported”, and blamed “onerous levels of oversight”. This is a persistent problem across federal government departments.| sboots.ca