Canadian Government Executive - Volume 24 - Issue 01

28 / Canadian Government Executive // January/February 2018 THE INTERVIEW and predicted the flares with 85 per cent accuracy. Why would you ever do science behind closed doors ever again? So there are certain fundamental things for a digital mindset in govern- ment. You’ve got to get into doing things in public. You do policy in public, maybe not trade negotiations, maybe not mili- tary missions. There are always going to be things you can’t make public. But the rest of it – the vast majority of it – should be open by default so that other people can leverage it. Who would have thought that ancestry.com was a thing? Who would have thought that Flight Tracker was a thing? The digital policy has to fo- cus on ‘open’ because we’re no longer the sole source of the truth; we can’t deliver things in a linear way anymore when the rest of the world is moving to open and partnered innovation. The growth curve is trending upwards, and then we’re try- ing to stay linear. It doesn’t work. Government must also be based on ser- vice. That’s the second principle. Every- thing goes digital first, and we can do that. I understand that there is still a need for face-to-face service delivery. But the curve of growth of digital demand, like if you look at the 60-plus demographic, they’re one of the fastest growing digital usage demographics in the world, be- cause they’re catching up, and because devices are becoming more ubiquitous. How do you design by digital standards first, and then worry about the rest? We’ve done the rest pretty well. I mean, not perfectly, but pretty well. People are happy with how they get their passports. If you’re unlucky, and you get a bad line, you can tweak your process a little bit, and the line is not quite as long or strenu- ous. But we don’t do ‘digital by design’ very well. And I think if we admit it, then we can fix it. And so we have to remove the concept that technology is a “back of- fice” thing. All this IT policy, the informa- tion management policy, and the focus on digital – these are transforming how we deliver a service. And that is based on ‘open’, and it’s based on service. Q: Many of the answers to this move to the new digital and open model of government won’t necessarily come from within the public service. Civil society organizations, citizens, and to a large degree, the private sector will push government forward. What is your vision on how to engage the private sector more effectively? I mean, we frequently hear about the challenges with the current procurement models and how they stifle involvement from the private sector, especially small innovative companies. I don’t necessarily agree; our procure- ment policies aren’t broken. My first thing on the job here was to ask the Comptrol- ler General if I could do a different kind of procurement exercise. Within the same day, he had given me clearance - our poli- cies did not prevent me from trying this exercise. we went to Public Services and Procurement Canada on the procure- ment side, and said, “We would like to try this new, innovative, agile procurement method.” They designed it for us within a week. Within two months, from begin- ning to end, we had awarded a contract. We actually debriefed the four finalists and tried to find out how we could im- prove the process. So you could do tech procurement in months. But we have just been conditioned to do it in years. Q: That leads me to the chal- lenges governments have had with big system projects. We constantly hear about failures, overruns and missed expectations. I’m wonder- ing if perhaps some of the chal- lenges lie in the scope of these exercises in the first place – where the expectations are not necessar- ily realistic, given how rapidly the landscape changes? You can’t ask someone to define the state of the universe in five years. The iPad is barely seven years old, and look at the transition towards the Apple watches al- ready. So now you’re asking to define the end state in five years, as if you’re on time and on budget – which a lot of these proj- ects aren’t, so let’s say five to 10 years. The trade regulations are about to change. Board regulations change every year. You can’t keep up with the pace if you’re going by the old model. You just can’t. It’s impos- sible. So how do you break it down so that you’re always able to go left or right, or move over a little bit and keep going? You may be zigzagging, but you’re still mov- ing, and you’re still fluid. The excuse is al- ways in procurement, and I’ve just proven to you that that’s not necessarily always applicable. Q: Do you think these new procurement models can accom- modate the comptrollership and accountability requirements that we work under in our model, and demonstrate value for money? I was responsible for looking at procure- ment efforts around the world, and I could tell you who those procurement ex- ercises were written for. By reading them, The digital policy has to focus on ‘open’ because we’re no longer the sole source of the truth; we can’t deliver things in a linear way anymore when the rest of the world is moving to open and partnered innovation.