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Governing Digitally
Jeffrey Roy
I
n 2001, the OECD published
The Hidden Threat to E-Govern-
ment.
The first line summarized the essence of that threat:
“Most governments experience problems when implement-
ing large IT projects.” Alas, fifteen years later, the Phoenix
payroll debacle in the Government of Canada brings to mind the
old adage: plus ca change...
The impacts of Phoenix have been widely-documented in re-
cent months, with initial reports of several hundred impacted
public servants to estimates reaching as high as eighty thousand.
For a Liberal Government seemingly intent on rebuilding capac-
ity and morale, a messed up payroll system is hardly ideal.
Naturally, since this is what Parliamentary governance does
best, there is finger-pointing abound: the Liberals blame the
Conservatives for launching Phoenix (who, in turn, blame the
Liberals for their decision to continue implementation), and the
unions bemoan their warnings long-ignored. In one rather stun-
ning interview on CBC, the Minister even sought to deflect criti-
cism of a privacy breach by pointedly claiming that officials had
simply not briefed her.
For the White House, such missteps would resonate with un-
wanted memories of a faulty portal nearly crashing Obama-care
before it began. As “Saturday Night Live” (and it’s not every day
that a government IT project makes the opening skit of such a
flagship program) quipped, it seemed that the new website may
have been built to accommodate a maximum of six users at a
time...!
Two lessons from the Obama-care rollout are noteworthy. First,
the Health Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, would ultimately resign.
The second lesson stems from President Obama himself, who—
clearly incensed at the botched beginning of his signature initia-
tive—ordered the formation of a stealth team of digital leaders
from inside and outside of government to makes things right. Fix-
ing the health care portal would prove to be a starting point for
an enlarged effort dubbed, “Obama and His Geeks” (the title of a
Fast Company
story).
By contrast, Prime Minister Trudeau tasked his most senior offi-
cial, the Clerk of the Privacy Council, not exactly someone known
for his digital prowess, to oversee the Phoenix mission. Within
Public Works, moreover, it would largely seem to be the same
folks that created the problems have been tasked with sorting
them out. Except now they are operating within a fishbowl of
aggrieved employees, media scrutiny, union outrage, and an in-
vestigating Privacy Commissioner.
A wider take-away is the stark absence of digital leadership
politically, a condition likely to perpetuate mismanagement and
stalled transformation. Consider the mosaic of federal players:
the CIO Branch and its Open Government unit within Treasury
Board, Public Works and Shared Services Canada, Service Cana-
da, CRA, ISEDC (formerly Industry Canada and home of the now
still-born Digital Canada 150), to say nothing of the myriad of se-
curity agencies involved in cyber-preparedness.
The Ontario Government—no stranger to IT misadventure, re-
cently appointed what might be the country’s first explicitly la-
beled, Digital Minister—a person to be supported by a likeminded
Chief Digital Officer. While laudable, I have often argued (most
recently with respect to Shared Services Canada) that a group of
Ministers should, at the very least, complement such a position in
order to shine light on collaborative and holistic action.
The need for deepening political literacy also extends to the leg-
islative branch. In his most recent report for the Mowat Centre,
Mark Jarvis underscores this point, calling for the creation of a
Parliamentary Committee on Public Administration, as exists in
the UK. The British Committee’s salient 2011 report,
A Recipe for
Rip-offs: Time for a New Approach
, set the stage for the formation
of the Government Digital Service unit as well as the country’s
recognized leadership in open data. More recently, a Digital De-
mocracy Commission formed by the House of Common’s Speaker
provided a roadmap for digitizing Parliament and renewing pub-
lic trust.
Does such engagement matter? The UK now sits atop the latest
Global E-Government Survey by the United Nations, closely fol-
lowed by Australia where politicians have also made digitization
a priority. This country, meanwhile, has slipped out of the top ten
while Canada was not even included in a 2014 global survey of ten
countries conducted by Accenture (a one-time fan of the federal
government’s inaugural e-government efforts).
In short, the Phoenix payroll system is a serious impediment to
public service renewal in the short term; but it is also emblem-
atic of the political malaise that has greatly constrained the emer-
gence of digital government in Canada.
J
effrey
R
oy
is professor in the School of Public
Administration at Dalhousie University
(roy@dal.ca).
The Phoenix Debacle &
The Politics of Digital Decline
A wider take-away is the stark absence of
digital leadership politically, a condition
likely to perpetuate mismanagement and
stalled transformation.
October 2016 //
Canadian Government Executive /
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