Let's Think Digital – Details, episodes & analysis

Let's Think Digital is back for Season Three!  We've heard from experts and leaders in digital modernization about how new technologies have the potential to redefine the way government works in the modern era. From new technologies like artificial intelligence and virtual reality to policy issues like procurement and incentivizing innovation.

And we talked about how it seems like we're stuck in the mud when it comes to digital government in Canada.  There's a reason why we've fallen from third in the United Nations global e-government ranking to 47th. We heard  about projects stalling, innovation labs shuttered, and low morale and burnout all across the public sector.

So on this, our third season of Let's Think Digital, we're going to talk about how we get unstuck. How do we get past the seemingly intractable bureaucracy? And what does success really look like? Season Three of Let's Think Digital. Coming out later this Fall. Find us wherever you get your podcasts, on YouTube, or at: letsthinkdigital.ca

(Help shape the future of this podcast! Take our Season 2 listener survey at LetsThinkDigital.ca)

If there’s a running theme this season on the podcast, it’s about how we seem to be stuck in the mud when it comes to our efforts to modernize government for the digital age. Check out our previous episodes this season for some insightful and thought-provoking perspectives on why this might be the case.

So how do we get unstuck? One of the key factors that many of our guests have pointed to is the need for political leadership. And our guest this week for our Season 2 finale is the perfect person to talk to about this.

Terry Beech is the Canadian Minister of Citizens’ Services. He was appointed into this role by Prime Minister Trudeau in July of last year with a mandate to drive digital transformation in some high profile service areas, as well as accelerating and expanding the use of the Canadian Digital Service across government.

In our interview, we talk about his vision for how to modernize government, the challenges of bringing legacy systems like Old Age Security into the 21st century, why the Canadian Digital Service is needed now more than ever, and how getting voters to care about digital may not be as hard as you might think.

Watch on YouTube

https://youtube.com/watch?v=QsdpMTv9x1Q

Related Links

• Minister of Citizens' Services Mandate Letter
• Terry Beech Official Biography
• Canadian Digital Service Website
• Season 2 Listener Survey

Chapters

00:00 Intro and Welcome

02:56 Interview with Terry Beech

14:42 Priorities for the Ministry

25:18 Modernizing Old Age Security

38:44 The Future of the Canadian Digital Service

46:18 Getting Voters to Care

55:01 Conclusion

Can government do the things that it says it is going to do? One of the hardest things that public servants have to do is implement and it gets to the heart of a state's capacity to deliver. In the digital era, that means being able to deliver digitally. And when we think about state capacity in this context, it often seems that we find our institutions coming up short.

State capacity is something that this week's guest has thought a lot about. Jennifer Pahlka is a leading figure in the digital government movement in the United States, and recently authored a new book, "Recoding America: Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better."

(See below on how to enter a draw for a free copy!)

Jennifer served as Deputy Chief Technology Officer for the US Government under President Obama’s Administration where she helped to create the United States Digital Service. She is also the founder and former executive director of Code for America which she led for 10 years. More recently she co-founded and is Chair of the Board of Directors for the United States Digital Response, which was a new organization that was set up to help governments respond to the COVID-19 crisis through mobilizing volunteer tech talent. 

She spoke to Ryan at the FWD50 Conference in November about why governments seem to find themselves in a crisis of implementation and delivery regardless of partisan stripe. They also talk about ways to get unstuck, and stay motivated, including a really heartwarming end to the interview where Jennifer talks about what to do when we are feeling demoralized and that change is never going to come.  

Enter a draw to win a free copy of Recoding America!

If you'd like to get a copy of Recoding America, sign up to the Think Digital newsletter by December 22, 2023 at 11:59pm ET and you'll be entered into a draw to receive a free copy! Anyone who is signed up to the newsletter by the deadline is eligible.

Go to letsthinkdigital.ca to sign up!

Watch the Episode on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuTzJ7LtiiY

Chapters

00:04 Introduction and Welcome

03:15 Interview with Jennifer Pahlka

05:20 The Importance of State Capacity in Government

06:24 Policy vs. Implementation

09:38 Key Takeaways from Recoding America

15:36 The Role of Political Leadership

24:20 Are Our Systems of Democratic Governance Still Fit for Purpose?

28:23 Commonalities Across Jurisdictions

32:19 The Role of Civic Tech in Government

37:41 Don't Give Up

38:55 Closing Remarks and Book Giveaway Announcement

We're back for Season 2! This week, we have Sean Boots, an open government manager and a veteran of digital transformation efforts in the Canadian federal government. In this conversation we talk about how we seem to be stuck in the mud on our digital transformation journey, and Sean's recent presentation at the FWD50 conference and open letter to the Clerk of the Privy Council that lays out his radical (but implementable) ideas that would make the public service better equipped to handle the challenges of today and tomorrow.

Watch on YouTube

https://youtu.be/9qI1R9Z2ouM

Related Links

• To the Clerk, and friends (Sean Boots' open letter)
• Revolution, not evolution, for federal public service delivery (Sean Boots FWD50 talk)
• Chief information officer Catherine Luelo resigns from job revamping federal tech (Policy Options)
• What Canada can learn from Ukraine about digital services for citizens (Aaron Snow / Ottawa Citizen)
• Customer service a new concept for Canada’s Immigration Department (Toronto Star)
• Byte-Sized Progress: Assessing Digital Transformation in the Government of Canada (The Dais)
• Overview of the Government’s Digital Service Transformation (Parliamentary Budget Office)

00:05 Introduction and Season One Recap

01:31 Ryan's Thoughts on the Current State of Digital Government

06:23 Introducing this Week's Guest: Sean Boots

07:46 Interview with Sean Boots

24:00 Why Leaders Need to Have Digital Competency

31:18 Sean's Wildest Ideas

34:49 Reflections on the Canadian Digital Service

43:23 Staying Optimistic

45:09 Conclusion

On June 16, we had a special livestream to celebrate the conclusion of Season 1 of Let's Think Digital! Listen to the Think Digital team to talk about how social media has been changing our world, the future of work, and reflections on the previous episodes. We also took some audience Q&A.

Thanks to Mike Kujawski, Rebecca Hollett, Mel Han, Aislinn Bornais, Meghan Hellstern, Jen Schellinck, Mike Gifford, Nilufer Erdebil, and Wayne Chu for appearing. 

Watch on YouTube

https://youtube.com/live/lGNJ1zHXM78

Related Links

• Open source and accessibility: How we can make government digital services available to everyone
• Catch-up on Season One of Let’s Think Digital!

This week, Meghan Hellstern, Trainer and Facilitator with Think Digital, co-hosts with Ryan and reflects on her time at the 2023 Code for America Summit in Washington, D.C! In this episode, we hear about how digital transformation is as much about people, as it is technology.

Big thanks to Hillary Hartley, Dorothy Eng, Ariel Kennan, Amanda Renteria, Karina Rider, Natalie Talis, and Luke Simcoe for taking time out of their busy conference to sit and reflect with Meghan.

Related Links

• Code for America Summit

Watch the Episode on YouTube

https://youtu.be/pCdCmpYAamY

Over the past decade it seems like countless innovation labs have sprung up inside of government. But do they really work? Sometimes innovation and government can seem like a contradiction in terms. This week, Ryan co-hosts with Think Digital Associate, Nick Scott, to dig deep into not only the ways that governments themselves can become more innovative, but why government might actually be necessary for innovation to flourish.

Joining Ryan and Nick to explore this topic is Alex Ryan, Co-founder and CEO of Synthetikos. Alex has a tremendous breadth of experience having previously ran innovation labs in the United States, Alberta, and most recently, serving as Vice President of the Solutions Lab at MaRS in Toronto. He talks about what he has learned during his years of experience helping government and the social sector harness innovation, his belief that government can in fact be innovative, and how government is the ultimate opportunity to do innovation at scale.

If you ever have wanted to learn about what these things called innovation labs really are, what they are good for (and what they aren't), this is the episode for you!

Related Links

• What I learned from 5 years on MaRS - Blog post by Alex Ryan
• Observatory of Public Sector Innovation - OECD website
• Registration link for GovMaker Conference - June 14, 2023, Fredericton, NB
• Registration link for Alex Ryan and Nick Scott workshop: Mission Possible: Mission-Oriented Innovation for 21st Century Challenges - June 15, 2023, Fredericton, NB
• The GovMaker Podcast

Watch the Episode on YouTube

https://youtu.be/VTJ04otR-y0

This episode, we go deep and talk about everything you need to know about artificial intelligence, machine learning, large language models like ChatGPT, and big data in the government context.

Our first guests are Jen Schellinck, Associate at Think Digital and CEO of Sysabee, and John Stroud, who runs an initiative with Jen called AI Guides. Jen and John will introduce you to AI basics and buzzwords.

Next we look to the future with Cecilia Tham, CEO and Founder of Futurity Systems, to talk about where we could be heading as a society with AI in ways we can only start to imagine.

Third, Shingai Manjengwa, Founder of Fireside Analytics, will join us to chat AI risks, mitigations, and frameworks to use AI in responsible and ethical ways.

And finally, we have a preview of a research report that we are publishing next month that explores how governments around the world are approaching the governance of artificial intelligence. Jacob Danto-Clancy and Bryce Edwards from the Think Digital team join us to share some insights from their work on this project.

Related Links

• Building an interspecies economy via the Plantiverse (from Futurity Systems)
• Intense - a quarterly lifestyle magazine from 2030.  All the images were made by Midjourney and co-written with GPT. (from Futurity Systems)
• Futurity Science Tools, a data-driven platform for futures intelligence (from Futurity Systems)
• If ChatGPT was a colleague... - blog post by Shingai Manjengwa

Watch the Episode on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et9UJsa6BeA

On this episode we talk about the human factors that can prevent and enable digital government innovation. We start with Alistair Croll, Founder and Content Chair of FWD50, and the results of their 2023 Digital Government Content Survey. There's some really interesting results about what digital government practitioners are seeing as priorities, and the challenges they face in pushing through innovation within their organizations.

We then talk with Nilufer Erdebil, Founder and CEO of Spring2 Innovation and an Associate at Think Digital, who talks about her new book, "Future Proofing by Design". She talks about the importance of design thinking, not just as a methodology, but as a way of approaching problem solving in government that can make your life, the lives of citizens, and even your boss' life, easier.

Related Links

• FWD50 2023 Digital Government Content Survey Results
• Future Proofing by Design, by Nilufer Erdebil

Watch the Video Version of the Episode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXVsrNi_al8

This week on Let's Think Digital we tackle the idea that government organizations are slow and resistant to change, and explore the idea that digital innovation is a necessary skill set for public servants to learn. Joining Ryan is Robyn Scott, the CEO and Co-founder of Apolitical, a global learning platform dedicated to supporting public servants in building 21st century governments that work for people and the planet. Robyn shares her insights on the types of skill sets public servants need to learn, the challenges of transformation in government, and the importance of connecting with peers from around the world.

Visit Apolitical and learn about their training and learning community supports.

Watch the Video Version of the Episode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCJnylmJn_Y