WINTER 2025 // Canadian Government Executive / 33 GOVERNING DIGITALLY Within such a daunting context, the national security apparatus in all countries is adapting and seeking to respond in-kind, by significantly refurbishing digital capacities. In doing so, deploying artificial intelligence (AI) tools for bettering cyber-defences, expanding biometrics and facial recognition to modernize border crossings, and devising automated analytics to digitize intelligence operations and safeguard electoral systems are just some of the new parameters of what is unfolding. Whether this adaptation of national security governance is happening in a transparent manner is a complicated and consequential matter. As members of the Transparency Advisory Group (TAG), our newly released fourth report (‘The Digitization of National Security’) seeks to unpack some of the main tensions between openness and secrecy - and to better align the digitizing contours of national security with the principles of Public Safety Canada’s own Transparency Commitment. Our overarching purpose is to examine how openness and transparency are essential enablers of innovation, accountability, and public trust. Following an introductory framing of how transparency and trust are evermore interrelated, the report examines five separate – yet in many ways, inter-related themes of national security that are being reshaped by digitization: i) cyber-security and privacy; ii) online safety and ideologically motivated hate and violent extremism; iii) artificial intelligence; iv) surveillance and encryption; and v) diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Although this latter theme of DEI is not typically recognized as central to national security, it has increasingly become so, with digitization amplifying this important evolution. Indeed, our prior, third TAG report examined the interactions between the public sector national security community and racialized minorities, and the importance of bettering awareness and engagement with such communities in order to foster trust and cohesion. In doing, we flagged the potential for inherent biases of automated AI tools as a significant risk, setting the stage for a wider examination of AI systems in our current report. Paralleling AI’s ascension, leaders of Canada’s national security agency’s have not been shy in recent years in raising alarm bells about workforce development challenges – and a dearth of digital talent in particular. As Wendy Cukier of Toronto Metropolitan University has shown so effectively in her own efforts, the public sector needs a diversely talented workforce to forge and balance innovation and inclusion within today’s digital landscape. Bringing more transparency to such efforts – to better understand and assess government’s progress, is an essential aspect of modernizing governance, and one that is closely aligned with the principles of Public Safet Canada’s Transparency Commitment. It also bears underscoring that enhanced awareness around the importance of DEI was a recommendation of the Government’s own 2022 midterm review of its 2019 National Cyber-Security Strategy (with a new such strategy expected soon). As AI usage expands, moreover, transparency and inclusion are also essential pillars of the Government of Canda’s Our report points to greater disclosure and engagement from the RCMP about its Technology Onboarding Program as one much needed step. We also recommend that all national security entities publish detailed plans outlining their current and intended uses of AI systems and software applications, as well as safeguard and review mechanisms to mitigate risks such as ethnic and gender biases, algorithmic opacity, and other unintended consequences. commitment to responsible usage. With mounting concerns about a global AI arm’s race and well-documented risks from AI systems across a range of policy fields, transparency matters. Our report points to greater disclosure and engagement from the RCMP about its Technology Onboarding Program as one much needed step. We also recommend that all national security entities publish detailed plans outlining their current and intended uses of AI systems and software applications, as well as safeguard and review mechanisms to mitigate risks such as ethnic and gender biases, algorithmic opacity, and other unintended consequences. In deepening and interlinking inclusion and engagement, our report also recommends that Public Safety Canada commit to the formulation of a published, bi-annual plan for the Transparency Commitment, modeled on Open Government Action Plans. In sum, our hope is to facilitate wider and ongoing sets of conservations about national security challenges and digitallyenabled responses. The full report is available online. Jeffrey Roy is professor in the School of Public Administration at Dalhousie University and member of NS-TAG (roy@dal.ca).
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