Canadian Government Executive - Volume 23 - Issue 09

8 / Canadian Government Executive // December 2017 The Interview leader with open government in Canada. Putting together the open data catalog, and the work of the open government team here in Ontario. We want to help push that along. A great example is: in the U.S., 18F, USDS, and the Department of Education all work together to deliver something called a col- lege score card. This was something that the President asked for. He wanted there to be one place for prospective students and their families to go and find out the return on investment for col- leges and universities, so lots and lots of data was available. We worked together to build a website for the Department of Education that launched at edu.gov. At the same time, a half dozen to a dozen different businesses had already built tools and services on top of the old data. These tools were getting used, serving communities and constituents that government wouldn’t necessarily reach. So we reached out to them and said, we’re about to open up a whole new sort of data. We’re about to build a new API; we’d love for you to test and build this along with us. When we release the official government college score card, we’d love for you to release your tool that day as well. That was a really eye opening moment for so many of our stakeholders – government working in the open, like that. Q: Okay, I want to switch focus a little bit here and talk about your leadership style. You’re an apostle for some interesting and challenging concepts within the Ontario Public Service. And as much as we respect our public-sector institutions and values, we all rec- ognize that the structures are hierarchical to support departmental accountabilities, built for an analog world. So what personal leadership values and tools do you use to overcome the organizational inertia and how do you be successful? Why I’m here is not any different from why we have 60,000+ peo- ple who have chosen to work in the Ontario Public Service. We are, to use a phrase we had at 18F, impact junkies. We want to make a difference. We want to build things, whether that’s a product or policy, to produce a good outcome. We want to do things that have an impact on our friends, our families, our neighbors, our kids. That’s culture, that’s why we are here. It’s about embracing that culture and those values. We’re going to talk about APIs, service design and agility; but at the end of the day, we’re here to service a mission that, for me, has always been about people. Show, don’t tell. Walk side by side with folks. Be willing to try. We will never be the team that swoops and poops, if you will. I mean we are not the team that swoops in, fixes something and leaves. We absolutely want to build partnerships. We want to walk hand in hand. We want to think about what’s possible, not just what’s in front of us. For me, it’s a lot about that “just start” mindset. I really believe in the minimum viable x, whatever x is (en- dash) whether it’s a document, a prototype, a product, or a team. Starting with the smallest thing you can do, having a hypothesis about where you’re going and then testing and learning from it. Q: So that leads me to another question about the consequences of delivery risk in this area. Politicians are frequently the ones that bear the brunt of project failures, big and small, but they also get the benefits of the upside of all of this as well. I’m interested in your observations on why all of this should be impor- tant for political leaders? To put it in a very small nutshell, I don’t believe that you can govern in the 21 st century without thinking about digital, without thinking about what it means to be able to deliver information and services to a broad spectrum of users in a broad spectrum of places. A government has to understand technology. It has to under- stand where we need to meet people. We have to meet people where they are. Right now, that’s on their laptops and phones. We have to meet their raised expectations for service on these plat- forms. That is the definition of digital thinking: how can we make gov- ernment responsive in the internet era? Q: You can’t pick up any paper these days without reading about AI. The implications of AI on all facets of our lives is fascinating and frankly a bit scary. For government this is a great opportunity, but the job implications and pace of change can be worrying for staff. Do you have any thoughts on this? With AI, like with digital, just start and start small. We want to find some of those things that really allow AI or block chain to have a real effect on making something in your life easier, an interaction with the government easier. So, we’re looking for opportunities to get beyond the hype and really understand how we can apply some of this technology to products and services being built. For instance, if you applied AI to lab results, you could start to understand and predict patterns that could help patients? I’m wearing an Apple watch. It’s been called “the number one watch and the number one health monitor.” We’re in a world where by wearing this watch, I can be instantly notified that my heart rate is spiking and I should get checked out – just by sitting here. We’re starting to think about big data and the potential that it has for governments. It’s all pretty interesting. Listening is key – listening on both sides – understanding both worlds and sharpening your skills on how to communicate in language that all understand is important.