Canadian Government Executive - Volume 25 - Issue 03

Our mission is to contribute to excellence in public service management EDITORIAL EXECUTIVE EDITOR | J. RICHARD JONES john@promotivemedia.ca DEPUTY EDITOR | LORI TURNBULL lori@promotivemedia.ca MANAGING Editor | Marcello Sukhdeo marcello@promotivemedia.ca COPY EDITOR | James Brandon COLUMNISTS | JEFFREY ROY HARVEY SCHACHTER JOHN WILKINS EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD DENISE AMYOT, PENNY BALLANTYNE, Jim Connell, Michael Fenn, Lana Lougheed, John Milloy, Vic Pakalnis, Robert Shepherd, Andrew Treusch, David Zussman Sales & Events Vice President, Sales | Terri Pavelic 905-727-3875 x2 terri@promotivemedia.ca Director, Content & Business Development | David Blondeau 905-727-3875 david@promotivemedia.ca ART & PRODUCTION ART DIRECTOR | Elena Pankova elena@promotivemedia.ca Subscriptions and Address Changes Circulation Services | 905-841-7389 circulation@promotivemedia.ca General Inquiries 21374, 2nd Concession Rd, East Gwillimbury, ON, L9N 0H7 Phone 905-727-3875 Fax 905-727-4428 www.canadiangovernmentexecutive.ca corporate Group Publisher | J. RICHARD JONES john@promotivemedia.ca Publisher’s Mail Agreement: 40052410 ISSN 1203-7893 Canadian Government Executive magazine is published 6 times per year by Navatar Press. All opinions expressed herein are those of the contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher or any person or organization associated with the magazine. Letters, submissions, comments and suggested topics are welcome, and should be sent to george@promotivemedia.ca Reprint Information Reproduction or photocopying is prohibited without the publisher’s prior written consent. High quality reprints of articles and additional copies of the magazine are available through circulation@promotivemedia.ca . Privacy Policy: We do not sell our mailing list or share any confidential information on our subscribers. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund (CPF) for our publishing activities. www.canadiangovernmentexecutive.ca 6 / Canadian Government Executive // August/September 2019 web Digital is a big component of government services today. The drive for digital transforma- tion began many years ago – moving from a legacy paper-based approach to a digital mod- el. Presently, governments around the world are at various stages in adopting the digital mindset and processes in serving their citizens. But as we know, digital transformation and digital services as a whole is a huge endeavor that is ever-changing with the rapid growth in technology. There are other challenges as well within the digital environment. According to the re- cent Digital IQ report by PwC Canada, “Canadian businesses see themselves as digitally aware, but they need to close the say-do gap on digital transformation or risk missing out altogether.” This “say-do” gap is the gap between what Canadian executives think is needed and what they are doing to bridge the gap. Heather Simpson, Partner, Consulting, PwC Can- ada, writes about this in her piece, Raising the digital IQ of all levels of Canadian govern- ment, by pointing out that these gaps are also evident in the public sector as well, and are just a few of the challenges facing senior managers in government in a time of digital dis- ruption. With governments operating in the digital sphere, finding and retaining talent and skills is a major challenge in the digital transformation process. Governments now have to compete for talent and skills from the same pool that high tech companies are going after. Data is being produced and collected at an incredible rate today. The DOMO Data Never Sleeps 6.0 report states that “over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every single day. By 2020, it’s estimated that 1.7MB of data will be created every second for every person on earth.” That’s an incredible amount of data. So where is our data and what it’s being used for? Howard Dawson tackles this issue of our data in his article by answering what’s for sale, who’s buying it and what you can do about it. To expand data coverage in rural Canada, the federal government kicked off an auction for wireless spectrum by putting regional and national operators against each other. At stake was the right to low-band 600 MHz spectrum, a valuable section of the airwaves that could confer a long-term competitive advantage to the winners. Be sure to read the article on the 600MHz auction and its deployment, which will provide a unique opportunity to connect Canada’s hardest-to-reach communities. The article takes a look at the advantages of 600 MHz for covering rural areas in the United States, the potential for Canada and how the government may be squandering an opportunity for a major change. The other articles in this edition focus on unlocking the potential to transform how we fund social services, using innovation to advance results and the impact of 5G mobile net- works now in operation in select cities across the US and South Korea, and how it can benefit Canadian cities. Thanks for taking the time to read this issue. If you would like to contribute a piece for an upcoming issue or our website, please send me an email at marcello@promotivemedia.ca. Marcello Sukhdeo Managing Editor Canadian Government Executive editor’s note