Canada is home to over three million civil servants, many of whom have greatly contributed to the country’s societal cohesion and economic growth over the last 153 years. But in recent years, digital disruption stands to jeopardize the public sector’s ability to fulfill the core of its mandate: serving a population of nearly 40 million people. 

COVID-19 has vastly shifted the role of government, right down to the way it functions. In the years prior to the pandemic, there has been widespread concern surrounding the delivery of government programs, given budgetary resources have been consumed by simply ‘keeping the lights on’ rather than innovation or improving the public’s experience. The current COVID-19 global pandemic is driving an experiment in remote work at a scale never seen before. For public sector technology, the COVID-19 crisis can be seen as a large beta test. The global pandemic did more than just send thousands of Canadian civil servants to work remotely within a matter of days. It also revealed a growing digital divide that persists within many federal, provincial, and municipal departments and agencies. Numerous public sector employees faced immediate challenges when trying to work from home – from legacy IT infrastructures that lacked the necessary bandwidth to support entire departments online to insufficient access to necessary hardware – laptops, tablets, and software platforms to facilitate employee collaboration and business as usual productivity. 

Gartner estimates by 2023, over 80 per cent of government digital implementations that don’t build on a technology platform will fail to meet objectives. Enabling a robust, digitally-driven Canadian public sector from coast to coast is not only necessary but highly advantageous. A digital-first approach to government operations provides cost-effective feedback through a variety of mechanisms. From personalized and customizable services that provide a positive, retail experience among stakeholders and citizens to modern information technology infrastructure that can facilitate growth and lend a hand in retaining top talent, enabling a digital-first workforce will produce many tangible benefits.

As the focus shifts towards recovery throughout much of the country, it has become even more important and timely for the Canadian public sector to embrace an information-driven foundation for its transformation that is grounded in new skills development for government workers and a citizen-focused model. This digitally-driven transformation will empower the Canadian civil service to enhance its productivity and build resilience throughout its operations during these uncertain times that lie ahead.

Upskilling for the future

The need to modernize information technology is clear. Research in the UK reveals, 40 per cent of public sector organizations do not have the right skills in place to adapt to the digital transformation needed to meet their mission. The shift in remote work for many government employees has highlighted the importance of digital transformation in the public sector. In a recent report by the IDC on the Future of Work, workers require technologies that enable them to properly fulfill their mission when faced with uncertain work environments. Digital skills can no longer be viewed as a requirement for information technologists or engineers – it must become a standard required for all staff, especially those at the leadership level. PwC estimates that approximately 35 per cent of public sector jobs globally could be at risk of being replaced by automation within the next decade. Upskilling opportunities for Canadian public sector workers will help bridge the digital divide that will facilitate a workforce that is able to meet future challenges and remain accountable to the citizens and stakeholders it serves. 

From silo to citizen-facing 

Most government work is defined by organizational department functions and processes that are highly reactive and captured in nature. Agencies and departments need a coherent platform to optimize processes, share information and work with partners and stakeholders more effectively. A recent Accenture survey of 5,000 citizens from multiple countries worldwide revealed 67 per cent of respondents want governments to make it easier to interact with digital services. More than half of respondents (51 per cent) said they would increase their use of government digital services if offered a single portal to access multiple services.

Using a digital platform provides government staff with a single point of access to all relevant information and documentation. By utilizing an intelligently automated, content-rich platform, government workers can connect processes and deliver new digital experiences without sacrificing information technology workload. In particular, this type of platform offers numerous opportunities to expand worker productivity, including:

  • Case Management: Giving workers ready access to the systems, content, and people that help them move cases forward. 
  • Low-Code Development: Leveraging drag-and-drop modeling and pre-built building blocks to accelerate application development.
  • Process Intelligence: Providing visibility into operational status information and business insights for digital process automation through dashboards and data exploration capabilities.
  • Enterprise Integrations: Integrating with other leading business applications and diverse systems to make information from all systems of record accessible to digital process applications.
  • Run anywhere on the cloud: Utilizing a cloud-native containerized platform that vastly simplifies updates and accelerates the introduction of new features to end-users.

By implementing a digital platform infrastructure, departments and agencies at all three levels of government can work closely with partners to reduce the cost of innovation while accelerating the speed of delivery. This type of platform also provides the highest levels of security, data privacy, and compliance needed to facilitate this type of information sharing across an ecosystem of government agencies, partners, and citizens. Increasing self-service capabilities will be an important element of improving service quality while reducing the costs of delivery to the Canadian public over the long-term. This shift moves the government service delivery model into a citizen-facing one that is focused, predictive, competitive, and offers a retail experience grounded in data-driven insights. 

Crisis necessitates change

COVID-19 has supplanted the importance of adopting a digital-first mindset. The public sector faces many challenges – responding to high citizen expectations, maintaining legacy systems, cloud migration issues, and the need for data integration analysis. Despite a commitment from all levels of the Canadian government to digital transformation, the country remains at the infancy stages of adoption. For years, the Canadian public sector has been an attractive place to work – opportunities to serve local communities, the ability to move within various departments, generous benefits, and job security. However, without a broader transformation and actions taken to keep pace with the efforts of the private sector, the Canadian public sector could not only potentially face a dwindling talent pool as competition within the labour market intensifies, but also its ability to fulfil its primary mandate. Incorporating a digital strategy remains essential to its productivity.

An intelligence-driven digital platform can alter the ways government bodies approach its operations, improving the speed and quality of services, minimizing costs, and optimizing processes. In particular, platforms built on low-code can be leveraged to accelerate delivery times for government-issued applications such as employee onboarding, facilitating grants, or managing and processing building permit applications. The future of government work through digital transformation is an enterprise-wide imperative that will vastly change the concept of work for civil servants and how it is completed. A return to business as usual with the further implementation of an intelligence-driven digital platform will empower civil servants to better collaborate with colleagues and share mission-critical information across various departments and agencies, as government leaders continue to plan for the challenges that lie ahead.