Canadian Government Executive - Volume 23 - Issue 09

December 2017 // Canadian Government Executive / 7 The Interview value. The culture that enables it. The practices and the processes that we use to start that journey and to approach a problem from the lens of design thinking – or how might we change things? Q: I think it’s fair to say that there still is a lot of reticence amongst the ranks of senior public sector ex- ecutives to get deeply involved in social media; it sort of puts you out there in an exposed fashion with the public. I’m interested in your observations on that, and how public servants should be thinking about social media as a part of their executive role. I’ve seen lots of great examples of folks using it to amplify their voice. Amplify what they are passionate about, rally folks behind a moment, push an idea forward. I think the only way to break through the noise of social media right now, especially as a public servant, is to be authentic and be your true self. Sometimes, that’s hard. Folks may be reticent to do that, but I believe that’s the only way to be a voice that people are excited to listen to. Social media was the crux of how the government was able to wrap its head around the focus on users. Q: So let’s talk about your mandate here in Ontario and what you’re focusing on in the short, medium, longer term. We were able to publish our mandate online, in early May, around our ten areas of action. Our very simple mission statement for the Ontario Digital Service is: making government simpler, better and faster. The way I’ve best summarized it is by boiling it down to four things. The first thing is services. We will be focusing on redesigning services, helping ministries think about how to put new services online. And continuing to build on Ontario.ca and get ministries, their top content and tasks, transitioned over to a clear, usable, accessible platform. The second thing is thinking about platforms. Ontario.ca is our premier platform, and the province’s flagship website, which gets a million hits a week. I would also love for us to think about some- thing like cloud.gov, which 18F has created in the U.S., or login. gov. I think we will iterate towards some of those ideas by being involved in digital identity pilot projects. Right now, we’re at the table with pilot ministries to figure out a path forward on identity. We just published our Digital Service Standard. Essentially, it sets out 14 points for delivering a good online service. When we do digital assessments, we assess, based on those 14 points, every- thing frommaking sure you bring the right team together to focus- ing on the user, making it accessible, and testing with the minister. Third is around acquisition and procurement. We want to con- tinue to have modern digital tools to do this work and help others do it well, too. The other piece is access to talent. We are about 60 people. So, in terms of the capacity we have on the consulting side, it’s still fairly small. We’re thinking about how to widen the aperture of small- and medium-sized businesses that work like we do. Creating opportu- nities for partnerships will only help us be able to scale our efforts. Fourth and final, people and talent and capacity and training. Raising the digital literacy of government teams, so that people un- derstand how to take on digital projects. Helping other ministries build teams like ours. Figuring out how to get good digital talent inside government. We will be documenting all the things that we do here, so that we can help build capacity throughout the OPS. Q: I noticed that you’ve set up an office in Waterloo alongside Communitech. Can I assume that’s part of your vision around how to engage the broader digital community and build capacity overall? Absolutely. It’s three-fold. It’s absolutely engaging the broader com- munity, engaging students, co-ops and startups in the Kitchener- Waterloo area. We also hope to get folks out of government hall- ways here in Toronto and get them to Kitchener-Waterloo to partic- ipate in user research or kick off a design sprint around a problem. We’re calling our space the empathy lounge, and it’s a user re- search facility. We’ve got our space set up almost like a comfortable living room, with couches and nice lighting. You come in and sit down with a phone, tablet or laptop, and walk through something as if you were at home. You’re not in a sterile environment worried that you’ve got people looking over your shoulders. We can do user testing. We have the tools and training to lead user research ses- sions, so we hope that ministries will want to use that. Q: Okay, let me shift focus here a little bit and talk about a broader concept that all of this is nested in, and that’s open government. There is a strong global push toward open government, and here in Canada, a lot talk across the country on the concept and what it means for our approach to engaging citizens and how it will shape public service tenets for the future. I’m interested in your perspective in this, and what governments, like the Ontario government, should be thinking about moving forward. The philosophy I’m holding myself and our leadership team to is to focus on the user, be agile and iterate, use the data and work in the open. We hope to build a team that is beyond Toronto. And so work- ing openly, even just across our team, is very important. When we do that, when we make decisions and document them, when we blog about things that we’re working on, and struggling with, we show to ourselves, and the broader OPS, how we think and how we work. When we do that, people can picture themselves sitting next to us. Open and digital really go hand in hand. Ontario has been a It is critically important that we meet the challenge of being able to innovate. The Alberta Public Service is very dynamic and relative to other, larger jurisdictions, very nimble.