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Ouch....
These aren’t the only factors involved, but they’re three that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately:
On average, I’d guess that it takes about 10 to 15 years between when someone joins the public service, and when they become an executive (with a lot of exceptions, for example people being recruited directly into executive roles, or joining the public service through programs like RPL that place them near the top of the non-executive classifications from the beginning). 10 to 15 years is a long time to be inadvertently insulated from how organizations work, and how technology is used, in fields outside of government.
Which is to say: of the 800 public servants that just joined the government’s executive ranks, how many would be well-equipped to lead, champion, or shepherd a technology initiative? My guess is, 20 or 30 of them, or less than 5%. How many will be expected to lead or influence technology initiatives in some way? In all likelihood: all of them.
(It’s also worth saying: those 20 or 30 tech-savvy public servants joining the executive ranks? That is absolutely worth celebrating, and they’re going to have a positive impact wherever they go in government. It’s just that there are so few of them, and that the senior executives still above them are likely to have skills and expectations that are yet more dated and insular.)
What that means, though, is: if you’re looking to work with government teams who are empowered and motivated to work in modern ways (and you should be), it’s now much more difficult to tell those teams apart from any other, more traditional, government IT team.
If someone says “we use an agile process”, what used to be a vote of confidence is now a bit of a red flag:
Essentially: government IT teams have widely adopted the words that fast-paced private sector tech teams use, without actually adopting their ways of working. You virtually can’t work in an iterative, user research-led, shipping-daily kind of way when you have to write 10 times more compliance documentation (as Paul describes) than actual content and software code.
The only solution is to do less of the performative IT paperwork long expected from established processes and gatekeepers, and that’s a change to organizational power dynamics that can’t happen from the bottom. It needs to come from the top.
(Update: Mandate letters for ministers were published the day after I wrote this, including one for the President of the Treasury Board that includes a number of valuable digital government commitments. All told I’m feeling a bit more optimistic than a week ago.)
In the United States, to contrast, investing in modern public sector tech is an active, urgent effort. US departments are investing in a number of new ways to bring digital talent into the public service. The Biden administration has made reducing administrative burdens a public service-wide priority, to make it easier for people to access government programs and services. Civic tech luminaries have been hired to lead key federal departments. It’s an exciting time.
What would it take for this to happen in Canada? It’s not super clear. The US had the failure of healthcare.gov as its catalyzing moment for public sector tech, the moment that made political leaders start caring about technology as a thing that could make or break their most important priorities. In Canada we had Phoenix and …nothing substantially changed.
(Or, more specifically – the Government of Canada has invested substantially more money into IT projects over the past few years, but without making any really fundamental changes to how those IT projects are undertaken. That’s a problem.)
Not to mention: an overdependence on contractors and consultants, a shortage of in-house digital expertise, and a lack of modern tools and equipment for public servants.
Until something substantial changes – or a Phoenix-level crisis hits a public-facing service – we’ll all keep spending our time on performative IT paperwork instead of building better services.
Digital government: how are we doing?
Here’s where I’m at. Public sector tech work (in Canada, at the federal level) is not in great shape. This is a problem for a bunch of reasons, but it’s a complicated one because it tends to be too niche for political leaders to care about, and too entrenched for grassroots public servants to be able to change (given the strong hierarchy of the federal public service).These aren’t the only factors involved, but they’re three that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately:
1. An ill-equipped executive class
The federal public service has about 80 deputy ministers and associated DMs, about 400 ADMs, and several thousand executives (in various director or director general/executive director -type roles). Several hundred public servants become executives for the first time each year:On average, I’d guess that it takes about 10 to 15 years between when someone joins the public service, and when they become an executive (with a lot of exceptions, for example people being recruited directly into executive roles, or joining the public service through programs like RPL that place them near the top of the non-executive classifications from the beginning). 10 to 15 years is a long time to be inadvertently insulated from how organizations work, and how technology is used, in fields outside of government.
Which is to say: of the 800 public servants that just joined the government’s executive ranks, how many would be well-equipped to lead, champion, or shepherd a technology initiative? My guess is, 20 or 30 of them, or less than 5%. How many will be expected to lead or influence technology initiatives in some way? In all likelihood: all of them.
(It’s also worth saying: those 20 or 30 tech-savvy public servants joining the executive ranks? That is absolutely worth celebrating, and they’re going to have a positive impact wherever they go in government. It’s just that there are so few of them, and that the senior executives still above them are likely to have skills and expectations that are yet more dated and insular.)
2. Agile words but not agile implementation
The second factor (and this comes up a lot lately in conversations with tech-minded public servants) is that, over the past few years, it’s become much harder to tell “who gets it” when it comes to digital government work. Digital-focused teaching and capacity-building efforts (which, I should say, I’m a big fan of) have popularized the terms and ideals of digital government widely across the public service.What that means, though, is: if you’re looking to work with government teams who are empowered and motivated to work in modern ways (and you should be), it’s now much more difficult to tell those teams apart from any other, more traditional, government IT team.
If someone says “we use an agile process”, what used to be a vote of confidence is now a bit of a red flag:
Essentially: government IT teams have widely adopted the words that fast-paced private sector tech teams use, without actually adopting their ways of working. You virtually can’t work in an iterative, user research-led, shipping-daily kind of way when you have to write 10 times more compliance documentation (as Paul describes) than actual content and software code.
The only solution is to do less of the performative IT paperwork long expected from established processes and gatekeepers, and that’s a change to organizational power dynamics that can’t happen from the bottom. It needs to come from the top.
3. A pervasive lack of urgency
Given all this – and given that robust technology implementation is a requirement for any modern public service initiative – what might be the most disappointing is that these issues don’t seem to be on the radar of senior public service officials or of political leaders and parliamentarians. Promising steps to emphasize digital government work at the ministerial level have been discontinued. Public service renewal, or reform, or transformation – which is what digital government work ultimately consists of – isn’t a high-priority topic of conversation anywhere.(Update: Mandate letters for ministers were published the day after I wrote this, including one for the President of the Treasury Board that includes a number of valuable digital government commitments. All told I’m feeling a bit more optimistic than a week ago.)
In the United States, to contrast, investing in modern public sector tech is an active, urgent effort. US departments are investing in a number of new ways to bring digital talent into the public service. The Biden administration has made reducing administrative burdens a public service-wide priority, to make it easier for people to access government programs and services. Civic tech luminaries have been hired to lead key federal departments. It’s an exciting time.
What would it take for this to happen in Canada? It’s not super clear. The US had the failure of healthcare.gov as its catalyzing moment for public sector tech, the moment that made political leaders start caring about technology as a thing that could make or break their most important priorities. In Canada we had Phoenix and …nothing substantially changed.
(Or, more specifically – the Government of Canada has invested substantially more money into IT projects over the past few years, but without making any really fundamental changes to how those IT projects are undertaken. That’s a problem.)
To sum up
In Canada, we have a public service executive class that isn’t equipped to lead technology initiatives. We’ve got widespread adoption of digital government words, which has largely just made it harder to tell effective and ineffective implementation apart. And we’ve got a political class that is (understandably, these days) too busy with other things to care about the public service’s tech capacity.Not to mention: an overdependence on contractors and consultants, a shortage of in-house digital expertise, and a lack of modern tools and equipment for public servants.
Until something substantial changes – or a Phoenix-level crisis hits a public-facing service – we’ll all keep spending our time on performative IT paperwork instead of building better services.
A bleak outlook for public sector tech
Paul Craig recently wrote a blog post on the massive amount of compliance documentation his team produced to launch a small public website in a Canadian government department. It’s a must-read lens into the current shape of public sector tech work in Canada. We have a public service executive...
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