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Democratic Governancein a Networked Age

Final ReportAugust 2016

2016 Digital Governance Forum

This report was prepared for Innovation, Science andEconomic Development Canada.

Institute on Governance 60 George St Ottawa,

ON K1N 1J4

ABOUT THE INSTITUTE ON GOVERNANCE

Founded in 1990, the Institute on Governance (IOG) is an independent, Canada-based, not-for-profit public interest institution headquartered in Ottawa with an office in Toronto. Over the past 25 years, the IOG has advanced better understanding and practice of good governance in Canada, with federal, provincial, municipal and indigenous governments, not-for-profit organizations, and in 35 other countries including most recently projects in Iraq, China and Botswana. Our work is marked by independent thought, innovation, collaboration, excellence, and a responsive and principled approach. We are uniquely positioned, as a truly independent, public purpose organization, to fill the need for knowledge, research and advice on good governance. We are a registered charitable organization. Our Mission The IOG’s mission is to advance better governance in the public interest, which the Institute accomplishes by exploring, developing and promoting the principles, standards and practices underlying good governance in the public sphere. Our Vision The IOG’s vision is to be the pre-eminent, independent Canadian source of knowledge, research and advice on governance and its continuous improvement. Our Expertise Our leading expertise is rooted in our innovative leadership practices, ongoing and applied research and practice-based insights. Our Work The IOG works with a wide range of clients and partners in Canada and abroad. These include governments, communities, universities, and private and public organizations. Our work puts us in contact with senior officials from all levels of government, as well as the voluntary and private sectors. This constant interaction affords us complementary perspectives – inside and outside views – of the challenges facing today’s leaders. Our experience in and across sectors and settings makes our expertise flexible, sensitive, broadly based, and extremely useful to clients no matter their location, culture or traditions. The IOG is governed by a Board of Directors.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………….....1 1.1. Digital Governance and Innovation, Science and Economic Development

Canada……………………………………..…………………………………………………....1 1.2. The Digital Governance Forum: Discussion Summaries…………….………………...2 1.3. ISED and Key Emerging Digital Governance Priority Areas…………………………..6

2. Conference Proceedings and Synthesis…………………………………………….….…10

2.1. May 12th – 2016 Opening Remarks………….…………………………………....……...10

2.2. Keynote Address: Hon. Bardish Chagger, Minister for Small Business

and Tourism……………………………………………………………………………..…..…..11

2.3. Keynote Address: Frank Graves, President, EKOS Research Inc………….…....…12

2.4. Panel 1: Legitimacy and Voice in the Digital Age………………….…………………..13

2.5. Panel 2: The Evolving Role of the Professional, Non-Partisan Public Servic….....15

2.6. Panel 3: Restoring Faith and the Role of Evidence-Based Decision-Makin….…...18

2.7. Keynote Address: Rt. Hon. Francis Maude, Lord Maude of Horsham, Former

Minister for the Cabinet Office, UK, and Mike Bracken, Chief Digital Officer,

Co-operative Group; Former Chief Data Officer, UK…………………………………….20

2.8. May 13th – 2016 Opening Remarks……………………………….………………….…....22

2.9. Panel 4: New Approaches to Governance: Government as a Platform…...…….....24

2.10. Keynote Address: Don Tapscott, CEO, Tapscott Group……………………………..27

2.11. Panel 5: Regulating in the Public Interest: Privacy and Security…………………..28

2.12. Panel 6: Where Citizens Are Taking Us: Governance and Innovation………….…30

2.13. Panel 7: Advancing Digital Governance: The Role of Research and

Engagement………………………………………………………………………………….32

3. Concluding Remarks…………………………………………...……………………………..34

Democratic Governance in a Networked Age: 2016 Digital Governance Forum Report

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1. Introduction

1.1. Digital Governance and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

On May 12-13, 2016, the Canada-based Institute on Governance and the UK-based Centre for Public Impact held the second annual Digital Governance Forum, bringing together citizens, elected officials, public servants, academics and industry leaders for a lively discussion on ‘Democratic Governance in a Networked Age.’ The Forum was part of the activities of the Digital Governance Partnership, a multi-year collaborative project involving nine academic and public interest institutions with support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) as well as public and private supporting institutions. The partners include: Carleton University, Dalhousie University, the Institute on Governance, OCAD University, Ryerson University, the University of Ottawa, the University of Regina, the University of Toronto, and the University of Victoria. The partnership seeks to explore the historic challenges and opportunities facing governing institutions in the digital era by establishing and maintaining an applied digital governance research network. The forum enjoyed exceptional support and sponsorship from Intuit, La Bottega, Adobe Canada, Accenture, and iPolitics, as well as the support of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) and SSHRC. Together with its partners, the Institute on Governance and the Centre for Public Impact are grateful to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada for its interest in our project and commissioning this report. This report summarizes the proceedings of the Forum, and provides insight into those issues discussed that most immediately implicate Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada’s priorities. Key areas of interest include:

• Panel three on restoring faith in evidence-based decision-making, • Panel four on government as a platform, and • Panel five on regulating in the public interest.

However, as the report itself makes clear, the issues discussed by the panels intersect and complement each other in a number of ways, each informing the others. The discussions about government as a platform in panel four are of relevance to government open data policy, and the third panel on evidence-based decision-making provides insights about how the federal government’s plans to shift towards a ‘results and delivery’ approach are working in practice. Recommendations for how the public service can most effectively make use of digital tools and infrastructure are contained throughout the report. Francis Maude and Mike Bracken’s presentation on the UK’s experience implementing the Government Digital Service poses


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particularly searching questions about the future structure and character of government in a digital age. The proceedings also contain particularly granular content for those already immersed in discussions of digital era governance, providing an accurate snapshot of some of the most advanced thinking on these subjects. Some of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada’s current initiatives related to digital governance are also discussed in light of the Forum’s findings. The second annual Digital Governance Forum marks a significant milestone in the unfolding digital governance research project, and provides an accurate account of the state of practice with regard to some of the most pressing public policy and administration questions of our time.

1.2. The Digital Governance Forum: Discussion Summaries

As the digital era dawns, the pace of technological innovation has begun to outstrip the capacity of governing institutions to respond; established industries are being rapidly disrupted, and the relationship between citizens and traditional governing institutions is being disintermediated in key areas. Citizens expectations are changing. Regulations may no longer accurately reflect the economy they serve. Parliament is increasingly a joiner of debates that begin without its intervention, and continue after it has moved on. Government departments and agencies are increasingly challenged to keep pace with their own mandates, as the rate of change becomes ever more rapid. In many respects, we are still searching for new paradigms that will permit governments and public servants to remain relevant, keep pace with new developments, and advance the public good. But there is cause for optimism: a new focus on results and delivery, rather than outputs, can help redefine the nature of policy and program success. Government data that is increasingly open, transparent, and available to the public may be one important innovation in this context, as is a focus on horizontal governance rather than the vertical hierarchy of traditional organizations, both political and administrative. Governments are beginning to recognize that the world in which they operate has radically changed, and that this requires them to follow suit. The Digital Governance Forum seeks to illuminate the way forward towards truly digital governance. This report summarizes the forum’s panels, keynote addresses, and general proceedings. The two-day forum consisted of seven panels and three keynote addresses, each addressing a distinct governance priority. The panels were:

1. Legitimacy and Voice in a Digital Age; 2. The Evolving Role of the Professional and Non-Partisan Civil Service; 3. Restoring Faith and the Role of Evidence-Based Decision-Making; 4. New Approaches to Governance: Government as a Platform; 5. Regulating in the Public Interest: Privacy and Security; 6. Where Citizens are Taking Us: Governance and Innovation; and 7. Advancing Digital Governance: The Role of Research and Engagement.

Keynote addresses included:

1. The Hon. Bardish Chagger, Minister of Small Business and Tourism;


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2. Frank Graves, President of EKOS Research; 3. Lord Francis Maude and Mike Bracken, former leaders of the UK Government Digital

Service; 4. Don Tapscott, author and Internet thought leader, President of the Tapscott Group.

Each discussion shed light on the challenges and opportunities inherent to digital era governance from distinct but complementary angles. Below is a brief summary of the keynotes and panel discussions. 1.2.1. The Hon. Bardish Chagger: First Keynote Address. Minister Chagger emphasized her mandate to reduce the administrative burden on companies, and made the case for increased information sharing between government departments and agencies to facilitate its reduction. She posited that Canadians could likely countenance the loosening of information sharing restrictions currently imposed by privacy legislation, if the issue were presented to them in a way that accurately presented the benefits and risks. A paradigm shift in government digital strategy is needed so that businesses can access government services and their records with one unified identifier, she added. 1.2.2. Frank Graves: Second Keynote Address. Mr. Frank Graves offered a presentation structured around public opinion data examining how economic, cultural and technological shifts in society are altering citizen expectations for the role of the state. He considered the confluence of four trends in society:

• The morphing of the economy, • The rise of digital technology, • The shifting role of government, and • How that shift may have improved circumstances.

A climate of rampant inequality, pessimism about the economic future, and a lack of broad-based prosperity being generated by innovation are all converging to create an atmosphere of social uncertainty, and while the new government has somewhat restored trust in government, the challenges identified remain real. 1.2.3. Panel 1: Legitimacy and Voice in the Digital Age. The first panel noted that government still functions broadly as it did in the industrial age, and stated that digital governance has not yet been meaningfully achieved. The rise of social media was discussed, yielding the conclusion that government may be receiving mixed messages from platforms because some age cohorts are overrepresented, and all age groups use these platforms differently. The difficulty of distinguishing signal from noise on these sites was likened to trying to take a sip from a fire hose. It was noted that citizens value authenticity and directness on social media, and the old rules of media exposure for elected officials may be out of date. On the subject of citizen engagement, deemed increasingly important for governments to master, the imperative for government to ensure that all voices are meaningfully included in the policy process was voiced. The potential offered by prediction markets to harness citizen engagement meaningfully was also cited as an example of how governments can best use citizen opinions constructively. Meaningful citizen engagement not only strengthens the polity through enhanced legitimacy, but also leads to better decisions in the end. It was also made clear that,


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rather than the current culture of risk aversion, governments need to be willing to fail, in order to learn from mistakes and improve both their understanding and practice as regards digital issues. 1.2.4. Panel 2: The Evolving Role of the Professional and Non-Partisan Public Service. The second panel provided a lively discussion on whether, in a fast-changing environment and at an inflection point in human history, public service values could be relied upon to be constant and unchanging. While some panelists felt that so long as fundamental values were relied upon, operational competencies and procedures could shift around that bedrock, dissenting voices argued that it would be naïve to imagine that the largest information revolution in human history won’t revolutionize government, which is effectively a large information processing system. Government, the panelists agreed, will need to acquire a new generation of talent possessed of legal and even philosophical knowledge, deep understanding of digital technologies, and an ability to think and design in code. Universities and governments will have to engage in a difficult conversation about the fact that courses that have trained successful leaders for hundreds of years may no longer be fit for purpose if they do not provide training in an adequate range of relevant skills for the 21st century; and the public service recruitment process will have to become more porous to allow perspectives from other sectors to permeate public institutions effectively. 1.2.5. Panel 3: Restoring Faith and the Role of Evidence-Based Decision-Making. The third panel discussed the efforts being championed by the Prime Minister to generate a culture in government that is focused on results and outcomes, rather than processes and outputs. The role of data and scientific evidence was also discussed in some detail. Data, it was held, should be used to design effective policy, not just to describe it. The road to a results-based culture will be full of bumps, but governments need to be prepared to learn from their failures as other successful organizations do, and the public has shown a willingness to tolerate such trial and error. Open data was also discussed in detail. Government should be open by default, and the supply and demand approach to releasing government data must continue to be challenged. Open government data should also be viewed as complementary to other datasets from smaller institutions. Governments should think about the enabling conditions of effective collaboration between themselves and NGOs, small institutions, and other levels of government. 1.2.6. Lord Maude and Mike Bracken: Third Keynote Address. The third keynote address, by Lord Francis Maude and Mike Bracken, laid out the story of the United Kingdom’s successful Government Digital Service, created in a climate of fiscal austerity to reduce waste and inefficiency, the service ultimately helped transform many of the interactions between citizens and government for the better. Open platforms and standards were created, domain power was centralized in a single site, and services were fundamentally redesigned to favor the convenience of the user, rather than the convenience of the government. The case was made that government must radically rethink some of its most fundamental structures and processes quite quickly, with everything from departmental structure to service delivery. It was even suggested that the trust and consent layer embedded in democratic institutions may be in serious need of reform.


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1.2.7. Panel 4: New Approaches to Governance: Government as a Platform. The fourth panel noted that governments around the world are already deploying platform governance models. Open, standards based, competitive marketplaces are proving improvements over closed procurement projects and other older ways of doing business. It was stressed that while governments may always be the platform for solving some wicked problems, NGOs and civil society may sometimes be better placed to provide direct solutions than government itself. Public servants should not be afraid to leverage outside expertise and technological capabilities. At the level of design, outsourcing cheaper and better-designed external services, rather than reinventing the wheel and building expensive, closed, proprietary products, could save much time and money. That said, governments must also think hard before allowing third parties to interfere with their relationship with citizens. Participants were also cautioned that platforms can represent a huge concentration of power in the hands of a few actors – something that requires serious discussion. 1.2.8. Don Tapscott: Fourth Keynote Address. The fourth and final keynote address was delivered by Don Tapscott, who discussed the technology that forms the subject of his new book, The Blockchain Revolution. Mr. Tapscott provided an overview of blockchain technology, and discussed its potential significance for the economy and for society more generally. He posited that blockchain technology, which allows for the instantaneous digital transfer of value with an incorruptible record of ownership, will fundamentally disrupt and disintermediate the financial services industry, which has so far been largely immune to the digital creative destruction on display in businesses founded on intellectual property. He touted the blockchain as being a potential solution to many of the economic and social problems being brought about by the rise of digital technology, and encouraged the assembled public servants, in particular, to think hard about its implications. 1.2.9. Panel 5: Regulating in the Public Interest: Privacy and Security. The fifth panel made clear that many different fields of regulation are now primarily about the governance and direction of data, and not conventional physical products. Governments will have a role to play in ensuring the cyber-resilience, rather than cyber-security, of networks, and this will only become more challenging as an increasing number of devices go online. It was noted that regulatory processes are no longer keeping pace with the speed of technological change. Regulators, in such an environment, need to work hard to strike the right balance between supporting economic growth and ensuring that privacy and data integrity concerns are respected. For example, with respect to data integrity, one important set of questions requiring further attention concerns the possible introduction (whether intentional or not) of bias or discrimination in the very processes by which data are collected and/or analyzed. An emerging challenge for regulators is even knowing whether such bias is present. More generally, on these and related questions, the public will need to be educated and informed about the regulatory environment in order to be able to make informed, democratic decisions about regulations, and as such there will be a greater expectation of citizen engagement, much of which will have to happen online. 1.2.10. Panel 6: Where Citizens Are Taking Us: Governance and Innovation. The sixth panel stressed the importance of citizen consultation and engagement in government’s future, and made clear that citizens will expect to be consulted meaningfully about issues that matter to them. Digital tools enable more effective and meaningful citizen input in the policy process


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than has ever been possible. Social media allow governments to be aware of citizen concerns and preoccupations in real time, for the first time in history. That said, governments should be aware that not everyone is online, and that all available media of public engagement must be deployed to ensure that all important voices are heard. 1.2.11. Panel 7: Advancing Digital Governance: The Role of Research and Engagement. The seventh panel noted some of the challenges confronting academic research in this space. It may be that the academic world will have to change its methodological approach to digital questions in order to be able to access new data and use them in the most innovative way possible. Research success in this field must also be redefined to focus on public impact, not just on publication in peer-reviewed journals with a more scholarly readership. This may even require a fundamental redesign of the grant and tenure systems. These discussions are all presented in greater detail the following pages, where many of the practical, actionable insights of the panelists are available for consideration.

1.3. ISED and Key Emerging Digital Governance Priority Areas

This report was prepared for Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada to help inform progress on departmental priorities which intersect with themes discussed at the second annual Digital Governance Forum. As stated in the department’s backgrounder on Positioning Canada to Lead: An Inclusive Innovation Agenda, “Only by mobilizing every sector of society to do its part will all Canadians have the opportunity to participate fully in an innovation economy.” The diverse range of cutting-edge challenges discussed at the Digital Governance Forum shed light on a number of Innovation, Science and Development Canada’s recent priorities. It is hoped that what follows can play a constructive role in supporting and informing the department’s efforts to advance the cause of effective digital governance and the digital economy, as well as the efforts of related agencies. 1.3.1. ISED Innovation Agenda. The six action areas for Canada’s innovation agenda (promoting an entrepreneurial and creative society; supporting global science excellence; building world-leading clusters and partnerships; growing companies and accelerating clean growth; competing in a digital world; and improving ease of doing business) represent important axes along which Canada can take significant steps can improve its global competitiveness in the 21st century. Many of these themes were addressed in the course of the Digital Governance Forum. Panels two and seven addressed the role of universities and research in enabling a digital future, helping to answer some of the questions raised in action areas one and two of the Innovation agenda. On the issue of how we work together to better equip young people with the skills they will need for the economy of the future, Tom Steinberg’s comments are particularly instructive. It was argued that difficult, uncomfortable conversations may be needed with universities in order to offer courses providing training in an adequate range of skills to equip the leaders of the future. The mix of digital, technological, legal and philosophical skills that will be required to succeed in the twenty-first century are, on the whole, not being imparted


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by the current university system. Relatively radical reform of the education system may be needed quite quickly if Canada is to maintain and improve its position in the 21st century. Panel seven’s discussion of the need for the academic system to change its measurements and definitions around public impact point to a similar need for change. Publication in peer-reviewed journals, which remains a benchmark for academic success and consideration for tenure, doesn’t do much to advance public knowledge on digital issues. Journals are hidden behind paywalls, and their articles are rarely read by non-academics who may have difficulty understanding their relevance. The very methodology of academic work in public administration was also discussed – in particular the fact that this academic work rarely engages effectively with digital technologies by harnessing the data they generate or using them to expand effectively the scope of research. Evert Lindquist and Amanda Clarke both provided instructive answers to the question of how colleges can play a larger role in the innovation ecosystem. Panelists in panels four and six also addressed the innovation agenda’s fifth and sixth action areas, on Canada’s ability to compete in a digital world. Francis Maude and Mike Bracken’s keynote address on the UK’s experiences in this area was also particularly instructive in this respect. Maude and Bracken discussed the transformation generated by their gov.uk project, through which the UK government implemented a single domain/portal for access to government services and digitized the delivery of 25 of the most important transactions in government in the space of two years – a good example to learn from. As an illustration of what gov.uk can do, Maude and Bracken also discussed gov.uk/verify, which permits users to prove their identities online through one unified system, so as to facilitate safe, simple and quick digital access to government services. The talk broadly discussed the fact that the institutional structures of government, largely conceived in an industrial, pre-digital era, are no longer fit for purpose in a digital environment and required evolution. Everything from the structure of departments, to the mechanisms of service delivery, to the nature of democratic institutions will require restructuring to suit the changed and changing environment. Platform governance was cited, especially in panel four, as being a potential future structure for government digital services. If government assumes a role more akin to that of a convener and facilitator of talent, rather than a procurer or contractor, massively expanded services are possible with considerably less financial cost and administrative complexity. Partnership and collaboration with non-governmental actors will facilitate better outcomes across the public sector, while growing the economy. 1.3.2. Open Data. The government of Canada’s Open Data initiative represents a significant positive step towards more transparent government; government as a ‘glass box,’ as Frank Graves put it in his keynote address. Making government data accessible, available and portable allows opportunities for NGOs, private actors, and citizens to build innovative applications and perform cutting edge research on wicked social, political and economic problems. But as Jean-Noé Landry notes in panel three, we are only at the “end of the beginning” when it comes to open data. Now that much government data is portable and open, the scope of how governments think about open data needs to be broadened in order for full advantage to be taken of the opportunities it offers. New thinking will be needed about the utility of government data sets, and partnerships will be needed with external organizations, whose data can also be utilized in conjunction with government data to gain valuable insights into trends, and build useful applications. Local problem solving should be internationalized,


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and governments must recognize that they are not alone in trying to fix major issues, as Anthony Williams notes in Panel four. Open data enables the collaborative solving of international problems by many different actors, often increasing the likelihood of successful solutions through crowdsourcing. Landry emphasized that the supply-and-demand approach to open data, whereby governments release datasets when citizens ask for them, and not before, needs to be challenged. Government must be open by default, and other actors should be encouraged and assisted in using government data. The Open Government Partnership represents an effective model for enabling this kind of cross-sectorial collaboration. Prediction markets, where governments harness the prediction and decision-making power of a wide range of contributors through crowdsourcing, may also prove valuable for allowing governments to take advantage of digital technologies to enhance their own decision-making capabilities. The question of ‘making’ organizations share data was also discussed: in this context, a broader perspective on what open data actually is should be encouraged. Organizations and individuals must be able to voice their concerns and preoccupations and begin to collaborate by understanding the barriers that are standing in their way. The social sector recognizes that it is not using data as effectively as private sector entities do, though it appears to be considerably more willing to share what data it has to collaborate. This may even provide advantages over the private sector approach, which tends to favour guarding data from outside actors. Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada is encouraged to think about what barriers remain to effective enabling conditions of public data use, and to consider the problems of capacity, infrastructure, and mindset that stand in the way of establishing those conditions. 1.3.3. Big Data Analytics. Extremely large data sets are held by a number of government and public sector entities – data sets that defy easy analysis by humans, but which can be analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends and associations relating to citizen behavior and interactions, for example. This is a nascent private sector industry making use of advanced analytic algorithms and tools to make predictions and statements about consumer behaviour. Leveraging technological advances in the field, users in areas such as health care, finance, security, marketing, entertainment and education, can now extract value from a growing volume of data that is difficult or impossible to manage using conventional tools. New analytic devices need to be developed to help users draw relevant information from the datasets. A number of initiatives are beginning to explore the potential of big data for civic use through programs like the Open Data Initiative, helping deploy technology to better inform policymaking, and helping citizens visualize and understand the data government collects on their behalf. Potential uses are only beginning to be understood, and government must be prepared to invest in the development and refinement of the technologies – but just as importantly, if not more so, in the development of competencies and organizational structures required to leverage those technologies and understand their quirks and limitations, so that public interest policies can be pursued that account for and correct those limitations. At present, for example, not everyone is online, so not everyone is captured in the data – and this is one reason why analytics must be combined with other types of research, in order to ensure that we have access to a full picture that accurately matches reality. Moreover, sector-specific


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expertise remains essential in order to contextualize data properly, and ensure continued vigilance against risks (such as possible bias) relating to data collection, analysis and use. Public servants must be alive to these risks if policies are to advance the public interest. In this respect, the governance of big data analytics remains a pressing priority – and data governance goes far beyond ensuring that the right technologies are in place. Assumptions, strengths and weaknesses of data collection and analysis must be transparent and well understood, and the governance capacity to cope with the inherent risks of big data analytics and their wider implications must be nurtured. As discussed in Panel 2 on the evolving role of the public service, it is important “to recognize and interrogate assumptions inherent in the government’s tool kit”. The more complicated and hidden the assumptions are behind a ‘wall of big data’, the more challenging this task becomes. At the same time, the task is also more pressing than ever, if confidence in the advice public servants provide is to be retained and encouraged in this rapidly evolving context. 1.3.4. Results and Delivery. The current government has placed an emphasis throughout the public service on results and delivery, inspired by the experiences of the British government under Tony Blair, when Michael Barber first began implementing a results-oriented approach to government policy. This emphasis is visible in recent ISED initiatives as well, including the creation of a results and delivery unit within the department that reports directly to the Deputy Minister. One of the key objectives of the results and delivery approach is a shift to a culture of measuring outcomes and results effectively, rather than focusing on outputs and processes, long thought of as the traditional government metric for gauging the success of programs and policies. Matthew Mendelsohn, Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet (Results and Delivery) at the Privy Council Office, acknowledged the challenges inherent to this project, noting that outcomes are often very long term and difficult to measure, especially on the most pressing and complex policy challenges. He stressed the importance of identifying indicators that demonstrate progress towards goals, even when ultimate outcomes remain to some degree elusive. On climate change, for example, even if greenhouse gas emissions have not yet been reduced, the percentage of electric cars on the road can be taken as an indicator of future progress. The federal government wants to, and needs to, think about what it has to do this year, in three years, in ten years. Mr. Mendelsohn summarized what his unit is doing into three simple things that government departments try to do every day: be very clear about what the policy goal is, be rigorous in designing programs, and recalibrate and readjust if progress is not as strong as one would like. The Prime Minister’s Office has been focused on shifting public service culture towards a focus on results, impact and outcomes, not activities. Reporting structures in government, it was noted, are themselves centered on activities, rather than outcomes; and governments often lose sight of their original objectives, losing track of what their performance measurements are. It is crucial that public servants don’t just get the policy right, but that they master the implementation and the measurement as well. Mr. Mendelsohn’s unit is focused on collecting evidence and data, and structuring it for use as a tool for decision-making, not just reporting.


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1.3.5. Regulatory Implications. As was made clear in the forum’s panel discussion on digital era regulation, in an era of rapid disruption of just about every industry, regulators are being challenged like never before to come up with the right regulations at the right speed. The rush of new technologies is moving faster than the speed of the regulatory cycle, making the balance between enabling economic growth and adequately addressing safety and security issues that much harder to strike. Regulations need to be structured around performance-based outcomes, be practical, flexible, and technology neutral, and be risk-based. Above all, they need to serve the needs of citizens. Corinne Charette, Senior Assistant Deputy Minister (ISED) and Chief Digital Officer, highlighted what ISED is doing in the realm of spectrum regulation that has a bearing on cyber-resilience and cyber-security. As telecommunications infrastructure is considered critical by Public Safety Canada, spectrum allocation regulation is a constant task. It is a delicate balance to work to ensure that technology is being adapted quickly enough, and that systems and infrastructure are as cyber-resilient as possible. The burgeoning proliferation of connected devices over the next five to ten years, as wearable technologies, driverless cars, and connected appliances come into wider use will only make things more difficult. The place of regulation in this environment to ensure transparency, and protect Canadians from hackers and intrusion into their private data will only become more important in the years ahead. 1.3.6. Cultural Transformation. The need for wholesale cultural transformation in the public service was a recurring theme of the Forum, with many respondents emphasizing the need for the public service to work more horizontally, recruit more porously, and operate more flexibly. A culture of risk aversion and a lack of willingness to fail were cited as a key reason why the public service has had difficulties innovating digitally as successfully as the private sector. Maryantonett Flumian emphasized that no matter how ambitious the strategy, prevailing cultures will generally win out over efforts at reform. This was cited as an existential risk to the public sector, which must learn to deliver comparable services to the private sector if it is to maintain its essential legitimacy. Mike Bracken and Francis Maude emphasized the need for government to be willing to fail small, fail fast, and fail often, in the manner of Silicon Valley companies. Matthew Mendelsohn indicated a willingness on the part of the government of the day to support such an approach, citing the relatively benign public response to delays in the processing of Syrian refugees as an example of how understanding the public can be if it believes genuine efforts are being made to achieve an outcome.

2. Conference Proceedings and Synthesis

2.1. May 12th – 2016 Opening Remarks

Terry Ansari welcomed guests as host on behalf of Adobe and the IOG, and commented on how much had changed since last year’s forum. From being a peripheral concern for the far future, the digital experience of government services has become the definition of success. Governments have a long way to go before they achieve true digital governance, and not a lot of time in which to achieve the transition.


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In offering his opening remarks, presenting sponsor Rodney Macdonald noted Intuit’s aim of continually disrupting itself, as well as the importance of encouraging innovation in his company’s sector among others; hence his and Intuit’s passion for digital governance. On behalf of the IOG, Maryantonett Flumian thanked partners, sponsors and co-organizers for their support. In offering her words of welcome, Ms. Flumian posited that the central challenge facing those working for governing institutions in the 21st century is how to respond to the disruption being wrought in society by the digital era in a way that preserves the relevance of governing institutions. The health of Canadian democracy depends upon how governments respond to these challenges, and there has been tremendous agility on the part of public servants working on behalf of Canadians. Danny Buerkli introduced the Centre for Public Impact, a non-profit foundation based in London working for governments globally to help them maximize their impact. Mr. Buerkli thanked the IOG for the opportunity to cohost the forum. In introducing the Forum’s UK-based speakers invited by the Centre for Public Impact, he commented that, in some respects, the future of digital government is already here; it’s just unevenly distributed.

2.2. Keynote Address: Hon. Bardish Chagger, Minister for Small Business and Tourism

Minister Chagger expressed her pleasure at kicking off the conference, and commented that there was an energy pervading government that had not been seen for a long time. The Minister reiterated that the theme of the conference was Democratic Governance in a Networked Age, and that the Government of Canada, under the leadership of the Prime Minister, was talking to Canadians to generate solutions. Minister Chagger reminded participants that the 2016 census, the largest information gathering exercise in the country’s history, had gone out from coast to coast, and that the response had been overwhelming. While in some rural and remote areas the census still had people going door-to-door, the government had innovated in its methods, and most Canadians could now complete their census forms online. Minister Chagger emphasized her mandate to reduce the administrative burden on companies, and made the case for increased information sharing between government departments and agencies to encourage this. She posited that Canadians could likely countenance the loosening of information sharing restrictions, currently imposed by privacy legislation, is the benefits and risks were clearly presented to them. A paradigm shift in government digital strategy is needed, she suggested, so that businesses can access government services and their records with one unified identifier. Governments cannot move as fast as private business – but they can try hard to catch up. The Minister encouraged the assembled public servants to celebrate not just successes, but failures as well, to see what has been learned, and to value the experience gained, knowing there would be a next time. Failure, the Minister argued, is just success waiting to happen, and often leads to the discovery of disruptive technologies that are crucial to our economy. Governments, innovators and entrepreneurs need to work more closely than ever before. They need to look not just at what we are going to do, but where they are headed. They should be


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embracing the future before it gets here. And who better, the Minister asked, to predict the innovation of tomorrow than the participants at this conference?

2.3. Keynote Address: Frank Graves, President, EKOS Research Inc.

Mr. Graves’ presentation discussed how economic, cultural and technological shifts in society are altering citizen expectations for the role of the state. He considered the confluence of four trends in society: the morphing of the economy, the rise of digital technology, the shifting role of government, and how that shift may have improved the situation. On the basis of his public opinion research, Mr. Graves asserted that there has been an improvement, since the election of the Trudeau government, in trust in the basic legitimacy of government, with recent scores at the highest level they’ve been in twenty years, but that pessimism remains the order of the day on the public’s economic outlook. People are more pessimistic about the future than they’ve ever been. Inequality and downward mobility are on the rise, and the middle class bargain is broken. Digital technologies, while innovative, are not creating the same broad rises in prosperity that industrial age technologies did. The core problem, as Mr. Graves sees it, is how to restart middle class progress, a genuine crisis that should be the number one priority for government action. Mr. Graves posed the question of why middle class progress has stalled? Some of the reasons, in his judgment, are forces beyond anyone’s control, but some are within the realm of policy fixes. His core hypotheses are a broken system of economic incentives and rising, self-perpetuating inequality. The public sphere and systems of taxation are in decline, and have been for almost forty years. Neoliberal theories, lowering taxes and shrinking government, have not worked. There have also been corrosive economic impacts as a result of the post-911 security ethos. Stricter security measures such as tighter border controls and heightened state surveillance have had a chilling effect on the economy. According to Mr. Graves’ respondents, the shrinking of government and diminution of redistributive taxation as the economy stagnates and inequality accelerates are causing a crisis of legitimacy in government. There is a wide decline in support for trickle-down economics and neo-liberal economic models fashionable since the 1980s. At the moment, the public is broadly onside with an activist government that seeks to renew the public sphere and claims to be able to restart progress. With 80% of the public convinced that the economy is in a recession, the public is persuaded that a larger, more activist government is part of the solution, not the problem. The public is split, however, on what the government’s investment priorities should be, and while there is wide support for increased investment, there is less warmth on the subject of higher taxes. Preferred areas of investment include home and community care, investment in new technologies and businesses, and the construction of new infrastructure. Graves also spoke of how Canada’s culture and values have shifted, documenting a shift in his data away from traditional, conservative values towards more progressive social outlooks, and posed the question of how we can reassemble the forces at work in society in a way that improves the essential problem of lost economic opportunity.


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On the subject of digital technology and government, Mr. Graves posited that there are two critical bookends for restoring trust in government; transparency and open government, and deeper public engagement being routinized into governance structures. On transparency, he said that government needs to move from being an opaque, inaccessible black box to being a glass box, which citizens can inspect at will. Mr. Graves concluded by reiterating his main premises. He exhorted governments to move forward with stronger public engagement, be prepared for government by open source, and work with the private and academic sectors to harness digital technologies more attuned to public interests and shared prosperity than has been seen so far. The floor was then opened to questions. One participant asked about the mention of industrial policy, and whether there were countries doing a better job than Canada is. Graves mentioned Norway, which is not feeling the negative effects of the collapse in oil prices as strongly as many other places, in part because it instituted a trillion dollar offset fund to invest in post-carbon technologies. Norway also adds considerably more value to its natural resource products than Canada, where resources are, on the whole, simply extracted without being refined or further developed. Concerning the health of democracy, one participant asked whether Mr Graves thought online voting was a good idea, and Mr. Graves responded that it should have been implemented already. He also advocated mandatory voting, pointing out that Australia and New Zealand do it already, and that it works. He said that democratic reform along these lines was a priority, and that government can get around to issues like pipelines later.

2.4. Panel 1: Legitimacy and Voice in the Digital Age

2.4.1. Speakers

• Althia Raj, Editor, Huffington Post Canada (Moderator) • Tim Powers, Vice-Chairman, Summa Strategies & Chairman, Abacus Data • Dan Gardner, Author, Superforecasting – The Art and Science of Prediction • Kathleen Monk, Consultant and Former Advisor to Jack Layton


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2.4.2. Questions

• Can traditional Westminster governance structures like parliament remain sheltered from the way public dialogue takes place outside of it? Should they be?

• How do governments continue to build national consensus in an era of micro-targeting, and personalized service delivery?

• Is it beneficial or even possible to preserve slower, more deliberative decision-making bodies in the midst of a much faster communications cycle?

• Where can greater openness and transparency increase legitimacy and/or facilitate greater citizen participation in democracy?

2.4.3. Panel Report

Legitimacy refers not only to the recognized legal and moral authority to govern, but also to the acceptance of decisions and actions even by those who may not agree with them. The concept of voice is critical to such acceptance: citizens understand that someone has to make decisions, but now, more than ever, they expect their own views to receive a fair and meaningful hearing. In the digital age, openness and transparency will be necessary to allow large and complex public institutions to respond quickly to this fundamental principle. Significant empowerment – cultural, structural and technological – is needed to realize the appropriate pace and scale of innovation in Canadian governance. Digital technologies may be the key to unlocking new opportunities for legitimacy and voice but charting the way forward will require both careful deliberation and leadership

The panel was asked whether or not digital governance had been meaningfully achieved. Dan Gardner and Kathleen Monk responded that it had not, and that the lack of change in government was remarkable considering the scale of the change-taking place in the rest of society. They noted there are reasons for optimism, as more data than ever before are being collected, and can be combined in an optimistic way to help shape policies and render government more transparent. Tim Powers dissented from the other panelists to reflect that digital progress was being achieved. Governments are trying to figure out digital democracy through trial and error; what makes it legitimate, what should drive it. Elected officials are going to digital technologies to express their opinions and expecting engagement. Political parties have become effective at digital marketing techniques. People expect engagement on these platforms, but whether that is constructive or not has yet to be determined. He noted that social media are being deployed by savvy politicians with great success. Dan Gardner conceded that the social media world is a terrific marketing vehicle, but questioned its value in terms of decision making inputs. While a diligent elected official may want to hear from the public on an issue, from social media he or she is likely to get a barrage of noise, with the signal difficult to distill at best. Better aggregation is needed to discern the signal from the noise, and so far there has been little experimentation in those techniques. He


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advocated prediction markets as an effective mechanism for crowdsourcing and aggregating public opinion in a meaningful way. Monk emphasized that the signal is discerned from the noise by how engagement is structured. She questioned whether or not governments really want constructive feedback from the public, or if they just want the appearance of citizen consultation. Dan Gardner thought that a sincere desire to hear from the people is there, but likened sampling input accurately to taking a sip from a fire hose. He cited institutional aversion to experimentation and failure in government as a reason more progress has not been made. 2.4.4. Key Takeaways

• Government still functions largely for an industrial age, and digital governance has not yet been meaningfully achieved.

• Government may be receiving mixed messages from social media because certain age cohorts are overrepresented, and all age groups use media differently.

• Citizens value authenticity and directness on social media. The old rules of media exposure for politicians are in some ways moot.

• Citizen engagement only matters when voices are meaningfully included in the policy process.

• Governments need to explore the potential offered by prediction markets to harness citizen engagement in a truly constructive way.

• Meaningful citizen engagement not only strengthens the polity through enhanced legitimacy, but also leads to better decisions in the end.

• Governments need to be willing to fail, in order to learn from mistakes and do better next time.

2.5. Panel 2: The Evolving Role of the Professional, Non-Partisan Public Service

2.5.1. Speakers

• Amanda Clarke, Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University (Moderator)

• Tom Steinberg, Founder, mySociety • Margaret Biggs, Skelton Clark Fellow, School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University;

former President, Canadian International Development Agency • Jocelyne Bourgon, President, Public Governance International; former Clerk of the

Privy Council

2.5.2. Questions

• How can public servant skills and capacities be most effectively deployed in a digital public service? Can we engineer a generative, innovative public service?


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• What becomes of “speaking truth to power” in the multi-stakeholder, digital age? Can initiative come from below, as well as from above?

• Is there a new balance needed between deep subject matter and broad managerial expertise?

• Can public service anonymity be retained? Has ‘the bargain’ been broken? What does the new bargain look like?

2.5.3. Panel Report

Digital technologies challenge both the anonymity of public servants and their traditional place in the policy field. At the same time, they allow the “multiple truths” that demand recognition in the context of complex issues to surface. Failure to incorporate the views of newly empowered stakeholders in and out of government comes with increasing costs and can often reinforce a defensive reliance on rules-based culture, self-censorship and blind implementation on the part of public servants. Today, as innovation cycles grow shorter, governments are attempting to re-integrate previously outsourced capacities like data and policy analysis and innovation. The ability to recognize and interrogate the assumptions inherent in the government’s tool kit will need to be more comprehensive and pervasive. Accordingly, a broader scope for recognizing expertise, and deliberate, planned talent exchange between the public and private sectors is necessary. Ms. Bourgon produced a graph illustrating the bent curve of human history, with progress exploding exponentially in the last hundred years after centuries of slow, incremental growth. The industrial revolution, she pointed out, brought together technological innovation that changed the social, political and technological landscape; mass production, industrialization, wealth creation, population growth. The changes accelerated, but humanity was still able to absorb the change without too much difficulty. But then we reached an inflection point. People in government today are being asked to steer society through a point of inflection. This is, in her view, what the conference is about. Some countries went through the industrial transition safely and successfully. Others did not. Her advice is for public servants to reconnect to the fundamental elements of their mission. It is difficult to use the forces of the state for good if you do not believe in the role of the state. The levers of state power are connected to public purposes. She encouraged public servants to ask themselves how current and profound their thinking is about the role of the state in society, and to rethink what has served well in the past but may not be relevant today. The public service is risk averse and scared of criticism, she noted. While risk can be managed, criticism cannot be avoided, and to be overly sensitive to it is paralyzing. Public servants need to be prepared to experience a certain amount of criticism in their work, while being aware of appropriate risks. Margaret Biggs agreed with Ms. Bourgon that the challenge is for public institutions to stay grounded in their core values as they guide society through an inflection point. This does not mean they remain static, but that responsible government and parliamentary democracy need to be preserved in order to be able to make big policy decisions. Cabinet and ministers are still going to be the decision makers. And public servants’ core role will still be to provide advice,


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and that will be more important in the digital era, not less. The public service still has a strong value proposition in being positioned to think about the longer term. One of the public service’s roles is to be able to look back, take the longer perspective, and ask the what-ifs. That means, in her view, that the public service will have the same core role in the future that it has always had. The most important thing, from Professor Biggs’ perspective, is the need for a public service that is much more open and flat, with a more porous recruitment process, more in and out so that the public service has more people engaging with other sectors, and understanding where they’re coming from culturally. Tom Steinberg stated his passionate belief that governments need to acquire a new generation of digital technologists and designers that can help governments meet citizen expectations about public services in this century. He noted that public servants of the future will need an unprecedented mix of skills; a thorough understanding of modern digital technologies, legal knowledge, and philosophical knowledge. Finding people to fill relevant roles regulating companies like Facebook will be tremendously difficult, as the people with these skills will be very rare. Universities do not train people to have this mix of skills. If Canada did not have degrees that produced engineers, there would not be roads and bridges. But of course it does. No university offers this kind of education. Not only are these people rare and expensive, but government is also going to need an awful lot of them. Responsible governments are at some point going to have to address this impending crisis, and they’ll have to do this by leaning on universities. They will need to invent completely new courses. These are going to be very difficult and uncomfortable conversations with universities, because the underlying problem will be explaining that courses that were adequate for hundreds of years may no longer be fit for purpose. He also questioned whether core public service values really are eternal, or if they might change in the light of present events? Attachment to constitutional values, he admitted, means that change in some areas should be glacial. But in the twentieth century, the core values of public service did change, especially around the rise of economics instead of classics as a necessary foundational training. It is hard to deny, he argued, that we are going to see some of the very fundamentally concepts of what it means to be a public servant changing in the years ahead. Naturally, this does not mean that these values should be entirely discarded, he noted, but that there is a need to be careful, as government is an information processing system, and it is naïve and risky to bet that it will not be fundamentally transformed by the largest information revolution since the printing press.

2.5.4. Key Takeaways

• Government is being tasked with guiding the public through an inflection point in human history.

• The public service needs to ground itself in fundamental values as competencies and procedures shift around it.

• Government needs to acquire a new generation of digital technologists and designers to help it meet citizen expectations for public services.

• Universities and governments need to have a difficult discussion about the fact that training and education need to be rethought, and courses have to be radically updated to provide the skills necessary to leadership in the digital age.


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• The Public Service needs a much more porous recruitment process to allow perspectives from other sectors to permeate the institution.

• Fundamental public service values may be transformed by the digital shift. The values that served in the 19th and 20th centuries may not be eternal.

2.6. Panel 3: Restoring Faith and the Role of Evidence-Based Decision-Making

2.6.1. Speakers

• Danny Buerkli, Programme Director, Centre for Public Impact (Moderator) • Matthew Mendelsohn, Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet (Results and Delivery), Privy

Council Office • Jean-Noé Landry, Executive Director, Open North • Maryantonett Flumian, President, Institute on Governance

2.6.2. Questions

• How can we facilitate a broader, deliberative, democratic debate in Canada? Are there new forms of citizen engagement we should be contemplating?

• How can governments encourage greater citizen engagement with their Open Government platforms?

• How can we better align new technologies with current public servant workflows and include them in performance metrics without adding extra work?

• Can public servants help to privilege evidence-based decision making over popular opinion and political expediency? Would this be anti-democratic? Is it the role of the public service?

2.6.3. Panel Report

Digital era tools and technologies can both reveal and obscure the information needed by governing institutions and viable approaches for policy development. While open government initiatives, new citizen co-production and crowd-sourcing methodologies seem to promise a new era of active citizen participation, government silos continue to undermine the capacity of governing institutions to work together to empower the complex networks that are essential to digital-age solutions. In addition, the multiplicity of available information sources can outstrip institutional capacity to bring the right information to bear in meaningful ways. The values and intent informing the use of new tools are more important than ever. Fairness and ethical behaviour have both a timeless dimension and a rapidly evolving one. Improving fairness and restoring faith in government are critical to maintaining trusted societal relationships. Danny Buerkli opened the panel by noting that government trust has rebounded in Canada since the election of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but that this will not last unless government actually delivers on making citizen’s lives better.


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As head of the newly created results and delivery unit at PCO set up to help the government achieve results across key priority areas, Matthew Mendelsohn explained that his unit is trying to do into three ‘simple’ things that government departments try to do every day: be very clear about policy goals, be rigorous in designing programs, and recalibrate and readjust if progress is not as strong as one would like. The Prime Minister is focused on shifting public service culture towards a focus on results, impact and outcomes, rather than activities and outputs. Reporting structures in government, Mr. Mendelsohn noted, tend to be centered on activities, rather than outcomes; and governments often lose sight of their original objectives and find it difficult to track performance according to meaningful measures. It is crucial that public servants don’t just get the policy right, but that they master the implementation and the measurement as well. Mr. Mendelsohn note that his unit is focused on collecting evidence and data, and structuring it for use as a tool for decision-making, not just reporting. Public servants know that the future needs to be horizontal, digital, open and transparent, which is easy to say, but challenging to implement. Mr. Mendelsohn also noted that outcomes are very long term and difficult to measure, but that we can nonetheless identify indicators that demonstrate progress towards goals. On climate change, for example, GHG emissions may not yet be down, but what percentage of cars on the road are electric? There are hundreds of indicators like this. Government has to be thinking about what it needs to do this year, in three years, in ten years. As regards the collective vision behind this results and delivery approach, Mr. Mendelsohn argued that it will iterate and evolve over time, but constant innovation, evolution, adaptation and failure will be the model of a successful, impactful organization over the next fifty years. Jean-Noé Landry followed Mr. Mendelsohn by picking up on two different ideas: the role of open data and civic technology. On the subject of open data, he noted that we are “at the end of the beginning”. Now that lots of data are portable and open, local problem solving needs to be internationalized, as governments are not alone in trying to fix problems. Open data enable that. One of the things being learned is to challenge the supply and demand approach, whereby governments release datasets when citizens ask for them, and not before. Government, in Landry’s view, should be open by default. And other actors should be encouraged and assisted in using government data. On the question of ‘making’ organizations share data, Mr. Landry encouraged a broadened perspective on what ‘open data’ actually means. Instead of just jumping from closed to open, there is the grey zone of shared data, with a whole set of issues related to licensing and accessibility. So ‘open data’ is about creating a space where organizations and individuals are able to voice their concerns and preoccupations and begin to collaborate by understanding the barriers that are standing in the way. The social sector recognizes that it has a data problem compared to the private sector, and is willing to collaborate to find solutions. This may even provide advantages over the private sector approach, which tends to focus on guarding data. In terms of barriers to enabling conditions, Landry encouraged public servants to look at capacity, infrastructure and mindsets. Maryantonett Flumian harkened back to Frank Graves’ keynote address about going from a black box government to a glass box government. Citizens do not want to look at government all the time, but they come periodically and gaze in. Public servants had better think about what


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it looks like for people looking in at them and the programs and policies they design. The importance of culture is, in her eyes, paramount. Culture eats strategy for breakfast every time, she quoted, and if public servants are going to be successful in their modernization efforts, they need always to keep in mind that they must learn to work differently. The digital era allows them to work very differently, very rapidly.


• The federal government is seeking to reinforce a culture in government that focuses on results and outcomes, not process and outputs.

• Data should be used to design effective policy, not just describe it • The public has shown openness to failure on the part of government, if these failures are

part of genuine attempts to achieve improved outcomes. Large successful organizations learn from their failures. Government should be no different.

• Government should be open by default. The supply-and-demand approach to releasing government data should be challenged.

• Open government data should be viewed as complementary to other datasets from smaller institutions. Governments should think about the enabling conditions of effective collaboration

• The citizen needs to be put at the centre of what government does. Public servants should design their programs around the citizen whenever possible.

2.7. Keynote Address: Rt. Hon. Francis Maude, Lord Maude of Horsham, Former Minister for the Cabinet Office, UK, and Mike Bracken, Chief Digital Officer, Co-operative Group; Former Chief Data Officer, UK

The closing address of the first day of the Digital Governance Forum was provided by Lord Maude of Horsham and Mike Bracken, who together developed the United Kingdom’s pioneering Government Digital Service (GDS) in a climate of fiscal austerity, a looming sovereign debt crisis, and entrenched resistance from senior public servants. Together they explained the background for the reforms they initiated, and the events that led up to them, and then explained the foundations of the GDS. The main programmes were: Gov.uk, which established a single domain for all UK government departments, and Verify, the identity service that allowed citizens to use their online identification for government transactions, eliminating the need for databases, significant upgrades to technology, measurement and analytics, and personnel capabilities.

2.7.1. Gov.uk. That the government could have the same domain for nearly everyone it serves was a revolutionary concept. The old approach to government was say that if you want to deal with 28 departments and 338 agencies of government, you must first learn what they all do and how they work and interact. But why? Gov.uk established design patterns to make all services look the same. Research at the time demonstrated that there is only one user need. At the point of need, the user of a government service wants to deal with the government. Full stop.

2.7.2. Identity. At the point of recognition, the user needs to be able to identify him or herself. The Verify service recognizes that we all have got too many passwords and multiple identities online. Verify allows citizens to use things like their mobile phone or their banking identity to


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prove their identity to government, which eliminates the need for vast government databases of personal identities, which are inherently unsafe. Just having them is unsafe.

2.7.3. Technology. As a public servant, Mr. Bracken walked into government and gave everyone a top of the range MacBook and iPhone, and cut out 67% of the cost of technology. There were 22 different pieces of information necessary to use a government computer. Mr. Bracken stripped all those computers out and saved a large amount of time and information.

2.7.4. Measurement and Analytics. Everything GDS measured and analyzed would be measured and analyzed in exactly the same way, and data would be available in real time. This removed a cottage industry of data manipulation, Excel management, statistics jockeying, etc. GDS just published information without waiting for departmental approvals.

2.7.5. Capability. Getting digital talent back into government proved remarkably easy once a clear mission had been established. This talent had been excluded for such a long time, that as soon as government was willing to deal with it, it was willing to come.

2.7.6. Transformation. 25 of the most important transactions in government were transformed over 2 years, as was the organization that delivered that service. 21 came through successfully, which outstripped Mr. Bracken’s expectations. GDS made it easier for people to book a driving test, pay tax, apply for a patent, etc. Now the services are simple, digital and quick. Inevitably, this changed some of the institutions of government, and much of the keynote presentation focused on this reality. British government was full of institutions built on paper, and antiquated ways of doing things. Building a new website was not enough in many cases, the organizations had to be fundamentally transformed. This includes, they noted, the trust and consent layer of government embedded in Parliament and democratic processes. Laws and democratic institutions are not just ripe for digitization. They need radical attention quite quickly. Bracken and Maude questioned the need for departments, and laid out a new vision of government as a platform. How do we create government as a platform? Bracken thinks five elements are pertinent.

1. Forget the old structures: policy led hierarchies make delivery impossible. Political elites have been forced to engage with digital, policy elites have not. Making governments work digitally needs to happen now, but the future will not come from a policy paper. It will come from new civic infrastructure.

2. Forget the old binaries: the issue is not about private versus public services; it is only about whether or not you are focused on your users. That cannot be done if governments are only using proprietary technology.

3. How public servants work is important. 4. Sharing makes things stronger. Governments cannot fight with each other about sharing

information. 5. Government must have local components. Governments are now in the business of

delivering software as a public service.

Bracken stated his optimism about the future. Now, for the first time, governments are in a position to build digital foundations, focused around common platforms. The first nation to


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succeed at this, to master the Internet, will win, and when you win on the Internet, you win big. Building networked public services is, in his view, the key to government’s future.

2.8. May 13th – 2016 Opening Remarks

2.8.1. Davide Cargnello, Chief Research Officer, Institute on Governance

In welcoming participants to the second day of the Digital Governance Forum and thanking sponsors, partners and collaborators, Davide Cargnello remarked that the issues being explored throughout the conference and the changes they point to do not take place in a vacuum. Periods of historical change like ours are not entirely without precedent. The renaissance, the political turmoil of the late 18th century, the industrial revolution, all, in their different ways, shook civilization to its very core. Technological discoveries like gunpowder, electricity, and nuclear fission have all revolutionized human affairs. Human society has experienced wholesale transformation before. But it is important to recognize that when we discuss the digital revolution, this is exactly the kind of seismic shift we’re talking about. For governments, it is a shift that has to go beyond reorganizing departments and moving services online. We are talking about a shift in how we exist as human beings: interact with each other, work with each other, entertain ourselves, even wage war. Like the French revolution or the end of the dark ages, this is a time of social, political, technological and economic change. As a result, it also represents a shift in how we govern ourselves and choose a common path forward. As in all periods of upheaval, however, where there is transformation, there are also constants. Dr. Cargnello noted that through the conference discussions about digital governance as well as all many other discussions taking place alongside these, certain key questions and perennial themes were emerging – questions that would have been familiar to an Athenian 2,000 years ago, or to a Frenchman 200 years ago – questions about how we ensure that our social, cultural, economic and political institutions reflect who we are and where we’re going as a society. Indeed, he noted, the fundamental questions of digital governance are ultimately questions about the relationship between the citizen and the state, and about how digital culture is changing this relationship, recasting it. In the end, Dr. Cargnello noted, asking these questions is precisely what governance is about.

2.8.2. Danny Buerkli, Programme Director, Centre for Public Impact

On behalf of CPI, Danny Buerkli also thanked conference organizers and collaborators, noting that this would not be the last IOG-CPI collaboration. Mr. Buerkli remarked that making government services easier and more pleasant to use is deeply meaningful, as Lord Maude and Mike Bracken had emphasized. He noted some fundamental differences between the private and the public sector, and that government cannot be disrupted quite in the same way as the taxi or hotel industries can be. Even if New Zealand were to offer a vastly superior tax collection service, for example, no Canadian citizen could avail himself or herself of it. So in that sense, governments are safe. But citizen


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expectations are being shaped by their interactions with online services, and they see no reason why government services cannot be as easy to use as private digital technologies. The good news is, according to Mr. Buerkli, that globally, governments are improving on this front: a survey from two years ago asking citizens about their experiences with government digital services showed that citizens had very high expectations that were not being met. But two years later, the same survey showed a widespread belief that government digital services had improved, which is something to celebrate. But this is only part of the story. If governments can improve websites and government services based on real-time data, why can’t they improve policies in the same way? This will not work for everything, but in many cases it can. When governments speak of evidence-based policymaking, they generally mean that they will take the best available evidence from around the world about what has worked, to see how they should configure their own policies. Mr. Buerkli also challenged the audience to think broadly and consider the role of algorithms and machine learning in government, whether in the development of policy or the delivery of services. Provocatively, he suggested the need to examine seriously the possibility of automating processes that can be automated, given the potential benefits. In many areas, it is becoming increasingly clear that algorithms and artificial intelligence can – or, at any rate, will soon – perform better than human counterparts. Take driverless cars, for example. Ultimately, despite our many understandable discomforts with automated vehicles, research suggests that automation and algorithmic decision-making may well produce better outcomes than human decision-making in this context, particularly when adequate datasets are available. Automated vehicles will likely be safer and faster. These new methods and tools are extremely powerful, Mr. Buerkli argued, even if we have yet to decide collectively how to deal with their many complex implications; and there are many such complex implications, as the Forum’s discussions on big data analytics, the importance of data governance, and the risks inherent to algorithmic decision-making and artificial intelligence reveal (e.g. the introduction of bias and unrecognized assumptions). In this regard, governments must seek to find social consensus about what citizens are comfortable with – which will involve significant consultation and engagement, as well as the development of governance structures, assurance of checks and balances, and continuous learning on the part of public institutions, to ensure that these complex implications are adequately understood and that risks are appropriately mitigated. Nonetheless, if governments are serious about improving public policy and public services, Mr. Buerkli concluded, there is likely no way around using data in conjunction with techniques like machine learning and artificial intelligence.

2.8.3. Ursula Gobel, Associate Vice President, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Ursula Gobel thanking the Institute on Governance and Centre for Public Impact and welcomed the opportunity to connect with colleagues in the public service and thought leaders across all sectors in pursuit of a common goal. She mentioned that it was rewarding to be among so many SSHRC alumni and to exchange insights that bridge careers from across the public sector.


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Ms Gobel discussed SSHRC’s new strategic plan highlighting, in particular, its core areas of relevance to the project of the Digital Governance Partnership. She described SSHRC’s knowledge synthesis grants, and mentioned key SSHRC-led activities bringing together decision makers from government, academia and the community sector to look at five challenges Canadians have identified as priorities for research in Canada in the coming years. She closed by offering her congratulations to the Institute on Governance and Centre for Public Impact, and encouraged public servants to think in terms of what they can do together to drive digital governance priorities forward.

2.9. Panel 4: New Approaches to Governance: Government as a Platform

2.9.1. Speakers

• Rodney Macdonald, Senior Manager for Global Public Policy, Intuit (Moderator) • Mike Bracken, Chief Digital Officer, The Co-operative Group; former head of the

Government Digital Service, UK • Anthony Williams, Co-Founder and President, Centre for Digital Entrepreneurship and

Economic Performance • David Eaves, Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard

University

2.9.2. Questions

• What effective steps need to be taken to make government the platform for a wider service design and delivery ecosystem?

• How can governments prepare for an online service ecosystem that transcends legal and regulatory jurisdictions?

• Is it possible for governments to maintain the ideal of single-window, Integrated Service Delivery in the context of a continuously evolving service ecosystem that includes private and non-governmental providers?

2.9.3. Panel Report

Government as a Platform is a new vision for digital government; a common core infrastructure of shared digital systems, technology and processes on which it is easy to build advanced, user-centric government services. Information produced by and on behalf of citizens is the lifeblood of the economy and the nation and government has a responsibility to treat that information as a national asset. Citizens are connected like never before and have the skill sets and passion to solve problems affecting them locally as well as nationally. Government information and services can be provided to citizens where and when they need them. Citizens are empowered to spark the innovation that will result in an improved approach to governance. In this model, government is a convener and an enabler rather than the first mover of civic action.


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Moderated by Rodney MacDonald, the panel discussed questions about what platform governance means in practice, what ongoing projects exist, and where there might be untapped efficiencies and capabilities within government. David Eaves outlined his thinking in terms of what the core assets are that government needs to build in order to deliver most services. Most government services, apps and websites are built on a budget cycle, which means that simple digital application functions like email verification are built again and again by different departments for different apps. He posited that systems like that should be built once, and then be reusable and portable across government, saving time and money and standardizing government service. Governments need to think about the core infrastructure they need to deliver service effectively, rather than hundreds of individual products that users see and use. He noted that platforms are not a panacea that solves all our problems. Once they have been installed, a whole new set of challenges often emerges, and it is important to obtain a critical view of these. For a start, people who own platforms have incredible amounts of power; they can deny access to users, they can block certain providers, they can control entire networks of contributors and providers. Ironically for those who hoped the Internet would decentralize things, it has actually had the opposite effect, hyper-concentrating power in the hands of a few people who control disruptive platforms. It can’t be denied that giving government the ability to hold that much power will be bound to make certain stakeholders feel uncomfortable. He also noted that the standardization and release of government data under open data protocols is itself a kind of platform, albeit a platform created through policy rather than pure software. He reminded the assembled participants that platforms aren’t necessarily always about software. For Anthony Williams, ‘government as a platform’ is fundamentally about how government gets access to talent and capability to solve tough challenges like climate change or restart economic growth. Government doesn’t have the answer to all challenges, and collaboration with other actors is required. Opening up markets like Apple and Facebook did, allows massive scaling through platform governance. This applies to government in the sense that while government will always be the platform for solving certain challenges, there may be instances where a social enterprise or a private sector entity developing a robust platform may be making more progress on some of the big challenges facing society. Platform thinking, for Williams, is about orchestrating capability and bringing the maximum amount of talent to bear on problems. He cited a number of NGOs and private enterprises that are tackling global problems with platforms, and made the point that while government may sometimes be the only platform for tackling a problem, it may also be helpful to leverage platforms created by other sectors. The Open Government Partnership was cited as the kind of project that is driving towards the possibility of true sharing of capabilities and infrastructure. Mike Bracken outlined the small but growing number of platforms in the UK government, like Gov.uk, that belong to everyone who uses them. These platforms set standards that third parties can work with and provide into. They’re both tools for internal use and exercises in market making. He highlighted the difference between a platform and a deal with a vendor; a vendor will tend towards rent-seeking behavior. A platform, on the other hand, is a set of standards and technologies that calls out to a marketplace and brings them to work on problems independently. Within the platform competition is encouraged. The better the service


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that private entities offer on the platform, the more likely it is that they will be selected for service above their peers. Platforms drive economic behavior, provide more revenue to platform providers than vendor deals, and offer more choice and better service to users. They function as small models of perfect economics, and are a vastly more important model for government to follow than the current arrangement. He encouraged the participants to think of the characteristics of a platform as opposed to a project. A platform is open, standards based, additive (to make added value for future users), and openly competitive, as opposed to a closed project that restricts value added and is proprietary to one provider. Platforms require a fundamentally different way of thinking than is required for a project. The crucial thing about them is that they have built-in feedback loops. Participants in a platform provide all kinds of direct and indirect feedback that the operators of the platform can then use to learn, adapt, and ultimately refine their system. The floor was then opened to questions from the audience. Mike Bracken was asked who was in charge of evaluating the performance of his Government-as-a-Platform initiatives? If the governance structure is collaborative, is the evaluation structure collaborative also? He responded that standard setting was a collaborative exercise, and that while government power was behind the regulated authority, it didn’t set the standards on its own or decide who could join. Another participant asked for clarification on what the key takeaway messages from the Forum should be, beyond the usual post-conference excitement. David Eaves responded that many of the ideas being discussed were likely too big for daily implementation, but gave three pieces of advice: be able to identify existing platforms within your department for people to relate to, recognize a place where your department is a consumer of a platform good, and think of the small thing that you can work on in a day-to-day manner to contribute to a platform that makes citizens’ lives easier. Mike Bracken added that public servants should ask those who already have built platforms how they did it, and check out Github for more information. Anthony Williams recommended scaling up smaller projects into larger enterprises once they’ve been shown to work.


• Governments around the world are already deploying platform governance. Open, standards based, competitive marketplaces trump closed procurement projects.

• People outside government don’t care about adversarial, interdepartmental squabbling; therefore, it shouldn’t matter.

• Government may not always be the best platform for solving a wicked problem. NGOs and civil society are sometimes better placed to provide direct solutions.

• Public servants shouldn’t be afraid of leveraging outside expertise and technological capabilities. There is no point in reinventing the wheel and building expensive, proprietary products when private companies already offer better, cheaper alternatives.

• Platforms represent a huge concentration of power in the hands of a few actors, so a serious conversation is needed to make stakeholders feel comfortable with governments having that much power.


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2.10. Keynote Address: Don Tapscott, CEO, Tapscott Group

Mr. Tapscott’s discussed Blockchain technology, and how the technology behind Bitcoin is changing money, business, government and the world. The talk was drawn from the research for his recent book, co-authored with his son Alex Tapscott, on the Blockchain Revolution. Tapscott posited that there has never been a more interesting and important time to be working in government. A fundamental change is underway as government comes up against a wave of changing generational expectations. The upsurge in wealth has become fundamentally disconnected from a corresponding rise in general prosperity. The reality is that the digital age has been captured by powerful forces, and is not distributing the economic rewards it has created equitably. Social inequality, Tapscott claimed, is the single biggest public policy issue in the developed world. The most important technology for the transformation of our institutions and our society, according to Tapscott, is the blockchain; a technology that will be at the heart of changing social conditions over the next few decades. It represents the transition from the Internet of information to the Internet of value. Prior to the blockchain, the Internet was really just a new way of distributing information, which was devastating for industries that dealt in intellectual property, like music or news media, but which didn’t really impact industries that dealt in real value, like banks or governments. Value could not previously be distributed over the Internet, and identities could only be proven by powerful intermediating institutions like governments or banks. Blockchain represents the end of that paradigm. Now value can be distributed digitally, without the need for intermediating institutions. Blockchain represents a new platform for us to store, protect, communicate about, and work with assets. The Internet of information will become the Internet of value. The only solution, in his view, that anyone has come up with so far to the disconnect between wealth creation and prosperity is to redistribute wealth. Justin Trudeau was elected on this platform, and yes, some of it will have to be done. But could we pre-distribute wealth, he asked? Could we change the way that wealth gets created in the first place? Could we democratize the creation and ownership of wealth? Tapscott then proceeded to detail five transformations that need to occur for a truly prosperous world, all of which could be enabled by the blockchain: including the billions of people in the world who aren’t connected to banks or the Internet in the global economy, protecting property rights through immutable records, creating a true sharing economy, reinventing financial services and ending remittance fees, and enabling citizens to own and monetize their own data. Tapscott believes the blockchain will unleash a golden age of entrepreneurship. He posed a series of questions about what it means to be an entrepreneur. He noted four types of transaction costs that will be radically disrupted by the blockchain: the search for the truth about assets, the costs of legally contracting, the costs of coordination, and the cost of establishing trust. Doing business on a blockchain will radically reduce and alter these four transaction costs through trust protocols, smart contracts, and radically improved search capabilities. He noted a number of different business models that will be enabled by the blockchain. Tapscott closed by acknowledging the serious need to update democracy for the digital age. A crisis of legitimacy is occurring all over the OECD. Young people aren’t voting, and


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disillusionment is mounting with a system that seems fundamentally broken. This is a problem because some worrying alternatives to democracy are emerging. The internet of information was supposed to herald a new era for democracy and citizen engagement, but big data and voter targeting has actually increased cynicism about politics, not reduced it. Tapscott cited a number of examples illustrating the potential of the blockchain to facilitate an entirely new wave of digital democracy, including e-voting, government as a platform, new forms of accountability, stronger representation and more active citizenship. He closed by reiterating that blockchain represents a paradigm shift, and popular reactions to paradigm shifts can often generate coolness, mockery, and fear. The audience, he noted, have self-selected as the agents of the federal government who are attuned to this new thinking, and he encouraged them to go out and begin experimenting with this technology; to download some virtual currency on their phone, to start thinking strategically about what the blockchain and the internet of value might mean for things like health or foreign policy. The future is not something to be predicted, the future is something to be achieved. Tapscott’s book is an exercise in advocacy, not prediction. There is much of value that can be done using this technology to make a better, more prosperous world.

2.11. Panel 5: Regulating in the Public Interest: Privacy and Security

2.11.1. Speakers

• Amanda Connolly, National Security Reporter, iPolitics (Moderator) • Anil Arora, Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Canada • Corinne Charette, Senior Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Digital Officer,

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada • Barbara Sabourin, Director General, Health Canada

2.11.2. Questions

• How do we effectively characterize and respond to disruptive technologies?

• How can regulators avoid traditional dangers (e.g. capture, regulatory obsolescence, etc.) in an age of innovation and multi-sectorial proliferation?

• How should government regulators integrate themselves into a wider regulatory ecosystem that grants an increasing regulatory power to stakeholders outside government?

• What role should citizen preferences play in the practice of regulation?

2.11.3. Panel Report

Transactions across different industrial sectors are increasingly permeated by software algorithms which themselves govern and regulate the possibilities of those transactions. This creates a need for cross-sectorial regulatory expertise in areas like software, but also security, privacy, Intellectual Property protections, etc. across the whole of government so that they may interrogate these encoded algorithms and ensure the public good. Failure to achieve a whole-


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of-government regulatory expertise allows disruptive new companies to challenge the mandate of existing regulators and increases the risk that regulators will either fail to act in time to protect the public interest or act too soon and snuff out innovation in a sector, through a lack of needed understanding. The cost of regulatory failure increases as new stakeholders enter the conversation rendering dialogues more public and potentially embarrassing for governments. Anil Arora focused on Health Canada’s regulation of therapeutic products. He noted that the regulation of therapeutic products for safety and efficacy was almost entirely about the governance of proprietary data. The work was based on principles of maintaining high standards of quality, and ensuring the protection of patients, but data generated and collected about new medical products was fundamental to all Health Canada decision making. Health Canada’s work, he stated, was focused on developing common standards for businesses to follow. In the course of its work, he noted, Health Canada was often called upon to hold large amounts of proprietary data from industry, and this was becoming more and more the case as new advances in technology mounted. This necessitates addressing issues of data integrity and security. Incomplete, inconsistent or inaccurate data can lead to tragic results, and is a patient safety issue that can lead to loss of life. The changing environment also increasingly necessitates forward thinking data security measures in order to ensure that private, commercially sensitive data submitted to regulators like Health Canada is protected from exposure while it remains in government custody. Corinne Charette focused her remarks on privacy and cyber-resilience. In an era of rapid disruption of just about every industry, the challenge of regulators is to come up with the right regulations at the right speed, she noted. The rush of new technologies is moving faster than the speed of the regulatory cycle, making the balance between enabling economic growth and addressing safety and security issues that much harder to achieve. Four relationships are at play in regulation: Canadians to industry, Canadians to Canadians, Canadians to government, and government to industry. ISED uses four principles to develop regulations: structure around performance-based outcomes, practicality, flexibility, and technological neutrality. Regulations need to be risk-based, harmonized with those of other jurisdictions, and to serve the needs of citizens above all else. Ms. Charette noted that we have a burgeoning telecommunications environment, and foresee a massive rise in connected devices over the next five to ten years, due to driverless cars, sensors infiltrating homes, wearables, etc. This means a great deal of communication enabled by spectrum. But with an increase in communications comes an increase in the difficulty of ensuring cyber-resilience. In the world of the Internet of Things, much unintentional communication revealing important information about customers will be broadcast over unsecured frequencies. What is your home router or your driverless car sending out to the world about you? Is it even possible to monitor? What is the place of regulation in this environment to ensure that consumers are aware of the intended and unintended communications data-flow to who-knows-who coming from their homes? What is the role of regulation in ensuring transparency about this, and ensuring that Canadians are not hacked, and have control over their data environment? Barbara Sabourin noted that government will have to get involved with regulating the data flow from new connected devices like medical technologies and wearable fitness devices, all of


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which will be broadcasting quite sensitive medical information about citizens in a way that leave it vulnerable to capture by unscrupulous actors. Governments will have to determine how to ensure resiliency going forward. She noted that there would be many changes to how governments consult with their citizens about pertinent regulations. Much more consultation will be necessary by governments, and there will be a citizen expectation that much of this consultation will take place online. Ms. Charette agreed and reiterated that the challenge will be to speed up the regulatory process in order to reach as many stakeholders as possible, as quickly as possible, and also to broaden the definition of an interested stakeholder to ensure that as wide a range of voices as possible are heard in consultative processes. 2.11.4. Key Takeaways

• Many fields of regulation are now about the regulation of data, and not conventional physical products.

• Governments have a role to play in ensuring the cyber-resilience of networks, and this will only become more challenging as more and more connected devices come online.

• The speed of the regulatory process is no longer keeping pace with the speed of technological change.

• Regulations need to strike the right balance between supporting economic growth and innovation and ensuring that privacy and data integrity concerns are respected.

• The public needs to be educated and informed about the regulatory environment in order to be able to make informed, democratic decisions about regulations.

• There will be a greater expectation of consultation on the part of citizens as governments design regulations, and much of this will have to happen online.

2.12. Panel 6: Where Citizens Are Taking Us: Governance and Innovation

2.12.1. Speakers

• James Baxter, Editor and Publisher, iPolitics (Moderator) • Don Lenihan, Senior Associate, Policy Engagement, Canada 2020 • Simon Giles, Managing Director and Global Cities Lead, Accenture, UK • Bernie Etzinger, Executive Director of Digital Strategy, Privy Council Office Central

Innovation Hub • Kevin Chan, Head of Public Policy, Canada, Facebook

2.12.2. Questions

• How do we best ensure an accurate representation of Canadian opinions, as we utilize new information gathering technologies and techniques?

• Should we allow policy to be dictated by public opinion in every case? What is the role of leadership in such a quantifiable, measurable, digital universe?

• As we seek to quantify environmental and social outcomes, how do we avoid unhelpful or distortionary marketization of these outcomes?


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• In embracing evidence-based decision making, how do we dis-incentivize it’s opposite: decision-based evidence making?


In the recent federal elections, Canadians signalled that they are ready for change. In order to deliver the change Canadians desire effectively, governments need new ways to measure and evaluate what they do and what citizens want. We need social and environmental measures that are as robust and informative as existing economic measures. Whether it is polling Canadian opinions, instituting new environmental policies like cap-and-trade or legislating hybrid organizational forms that allow businesses to fulfill social, environmental and governance missions, we need to be able to measure, demonstrate and evaluate multi-dimensional progress. This requires the use of direct consultations and indirect data analysis techniques in order to ensure that our conclusions and the decisions we take are both democratically and statistically informed. Bernie Etzinger stated that engagement of citizens should be the norm and a daily part of how government conducts its business. While questions of risk around this occupy everyone’s mind, they are not impossible questions, and can be addressed through careful deliberation and implementation. Part of what will have to happen is that government will have to think about what impact the next generation of digital technologies, like the blockchain or API release, will have on the idea of public engagement. Government needs to move towards open architecture systems so that in the future it has the technology to respond to the levels of engagement that can be expected from citizens in the future. The question, as he sees it, is how do we move from public opinion gathering to the collection of meaningful insight? There needs to be a move away from episodic public polling to a more insightful way of reaching people. If engagement is going to be done right, government needs to understand that the open policy has implications for how we relate to municipalities and provinces, and how we build federal policy to meet the needs of users, and not government. What role does the federal government play in making sure this happens? Simon Giles noted that citizens will expect at least three things over the next few years: highly tailored services, with a benchmark of comparable service being received from the private sector, simple and effective services that work the first time and that don’t expect citizens to differentiate between different levels of government, and a respect for diversity and inclusion. The next five to ten years will see a complete doctrinal shift in government. Different skill sets will have to be developed, and these will have to be consistent across government. How that is rolled out is an open question. Often the preferred approach is to develop a certain amount of core capability and then deploy this around different organizations in the government. This will effect change very fast, but also create friction. A soft approach will not meet the pressing timelines of innovation that are needed. Instead, a ‘special forces’ approach, where teams of elite digital public servants are deployed across the public sector to meet needs, may be necessary. Kevin Chan asked how Facebook could help the government connect with Canadians, and cited examples of initiatives the company was undertaking to help with this. He specifically noted the safety check feature, which Facebook has introduced in the event of large public


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disasters, allowing users the opportunity to mark themselves safe so that all family and friends get a notification to that effect. This was deployed during the Fort McMurray fire. Don Lenihan asked how far the digital tools that have emerged in the past 15-20 years are taking us? He noted that the process of consultation is very simple, and has three stages. Government needs input from the public, needs to review that input, and then consolidate it into solutions that can be used as an output. Public opinion research, as should be evident, has been an effective tool for consultation in the past, but the public now wants to be involved in policy deliberation. Government can’t just be in the business of explaining how decisions were made behind closed doors. Government has proven relatively efficient at consultation on a small scale. Now it needs to be prepared to scale up to large public consultations. Crowd sourcing and the aggregation of views that result is helpful, and gets useful information. But if government wants to move to a truly open policymaking process, it needs to determine a way to involve citizens to the extent that the kind of legitimacy that is required is generated. 2.12.4. Key Takeaways

• Citizens will expect to be consulted meaningfully in the future about issues that matter to them.

• Digital tools provide the means for effective and meaningful citizen input in the policy process.

• Social media allows governments to be aware of citizen concerns and preoccupations in real time, for the first time in history.

• Governments need to be aware that not everyone is online, and deploy all available mediums of public engagement to ensure all voices are heard.

2.13. Panel 7: Advancing Digital Governance: The Role of Research and Engagement

2.13.1. Speakers

• Peter Jones, Associate Professor, OCAD University (Moderator) • Evert Lindquist, Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, University of

Victoria • Amanda Clarke, Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration,

Carleton University • Sandra Toze, Assistant Professor, Director, School of Information Management,

Dalhousie University • Maryantonett Flumian, President, Institute on Governance


The final panel of the forum addressed the role of research and academia in advancing digital governance across the country and around the world. Collaborators from the digital governance partnership summarized the conference as a whole and discussed how new methods in research and new perspectives from the academic environment can enhance the take-up of digital change in the public service.


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Amanda Clarke posited that academia has largely failed the digital governance movement so far; but it could and should play a key role moving forward. A survey of highly ranked journals for 2013 revealed only 89 articles dealing with digital issues; 2.5% of the total articles written. The discipline of public administration and public policy is ignoring crucial developments like the rise of social media and other digital technologies. Discussions about innovation, accountability, service delivery and broad questions about the role of the state are taking place in public administration, but ignoring the changing technological context these questions are evolving in. Methodologically, what research is being done on digital technologies and public administration is not particularly innovative. New and more innovative sources of data are needed, and new methods need to be prototyped and developed. The real ground-breaking digital governance work is coming from computer science or communications programs. A lot of that research is ground breaking and relevant, but without being grounded in the realities of public service, it ends up being thick on big ideas, and thin on implementation. She also questioned how publishing peer-reviewed articles behind paywalls in journals led to real public impact from research. She noted that the relative ease of interdisciplinary collaboration in academia, however, was an opportunity for better research in the future, as was the irreverence and critical thinking that job security and the lack of profit motive provide. Evert Lindquist noted that some very interesting collaboration is already going on, and grant systems, particularly in the UK, are starting to emphasize social impact in things like tenure applications. He noted that the design of forums for disseminating the public research generated by the partnership will need to allow for increasing collaboration and enhanced discussion. Cross-fertilization across disciplines and domains needs to be encouraged. All levels of government will have to be involved. Researchers will want to look at live cases, that are currently moving forward in innovation, follow these innovations, and see how well they do, recognizing as they do so that they’re working in an experimental phase. Lessons from other countries will also be valuable. Researchers involved in this research will want to be sure to engage graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and government partners to ensure that more voices than just those of professors are heard. Sandra Toze, a professor of information management, noted that her discipline was a voice that still needed to be heard from in this area. It had been interesting, she noted, to talk to people working within government departments and see how they do not have access to information across different departments without going through multiple, complicated channels. She encouraged participants to think about how they can actually open up data within governments, and not just outside them. Maryantonett Flumian concluded proceedings by reminding participants that governance is an ecosystem. It is necessary to have a good mapping of what governance is and how it operates in a Westminster system. She noted that there is a need to build capacity along the themes that the Forum had addressed. The first theme is that this is all about having an ever-healthier democracy, and making sure that we’re always touching back on the health of our democracy. The second theme is the theme of engagement, which isn’t just going to be online. Even face-to-face engagement will be very different in this networked age of information. The third theme is the theme of service; the concept that everything government brings is brought in totality to


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the notion of the whole citizen, and that that notion is always top of mind when thinking about the cycle of programs and delivery. Two areas were also mentioned that, in Ms. Flumian’s opinion, need particular attention on the capacity side; the need for culture change, and for enablers to help change the culture at the rapid pace that is needed, and for the capacity to develop resilient individuals and resilient institutions that can manage this change. The next step, she concluded, is to look to the assembled participants and other public servants to help pose the big questions with precision, to provide the case studies to populate and inform theories, to hear about the good, the bad and the ugly of implementation, and to work together in terms of how we design and launch this work.


• Academia needs to change its methodology on digital questions to access new data and to use it more innovatively.

• Research needs to be retooled to focus on public impact, not just on publication in peer-reviewed journals that never get read. The grant and tenure systems need to be redesigned to this end.

3. Concluding Remarks

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada’s involvement in many of the leading areas of digital governance innovation is helping to make the Government of Canada more responsive, collaborative, horizontal and open. In light of these priorities, the Digital Governance Forum has provided a collaborative space to share knowledge, expertise and new thinking on some of the most pressing challenges of our time among practitioners in the field and federal public servants. The conversations that are highlighted in this report are ongoing, and represent fluid and changing paradigms rather than received opinions. The need for cultural change in the civil service, for transformation of academia and research, for open government, and new thinking around platforms and new technologies like the blockchain, will continue to impact governments around the world. As Frank Graves discussed in his keynote address, governments have been facing a crisis of confidence in the economy and the future, and digital innovations are failing to generate the broad economic gains of previous innovations like industrialization and mass production. Governments, as Jocelyne Bourgon notes in her panel contribution, are being charged with steering society through an inflection point in human history. How they guide their citizens through the rapid, revolutionary changes being wrought by digital technology will determine the future health and resilience of their societies. Initiatives like Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada’s innovation agenda help to set the tone for this transformative effort, and ask the right questions about how Canada’s future can best be secured. The digital governance partnership looks forward to further collaboration with Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, as well as with other federal agencies that have a shared interest in examining and responding to the challenges and opportunities of governance in the digital era.


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The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Councilʼs Imagining Canada's Future initiative, for example, is of considerable interest to the digital governance partnership, given key areas of overlap with the partnershipʼs applied research priorities. Several of its ʻchallenge areasʼ target issues directly related to those discussed in this report. In addition, as identified throughout the forumʼs discussions, several of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canadaʼs priority digital governance initiatives will help shape the research and engagement directions of the digital governance partnership, including developing Big Data analytics capacity, regulatory innovation, open data and open government initiatives, the need to equip Canadians, including public servants, for success in the digital era, and the leveraging of new technologies like the blockchain and prediction markets to help generate prosperity and security for Canadians. It is hoped that the insights documented in this report can help inform the department’s future work in these areas, providing tangible guidance on how to help the Government of Canada as it moves toward a digital future.

As a valued contributor to the digital governance partnership, we thank Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada for its interest in this report and look forward to further dialogue.

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