Sean’s blog – April 2022
Hello everyone! Happy Monday, happy mid-April, and as usual, happy "how is it 2022 already"?
You're getting this since you signed up for newsletter updates on sboots.ca. Which I have sent all of once before, so no, you haven't missed anything in the meantime. Appreciate you signing up!
Another winter is wrapping up; the days are getting longer; COVID is still around. In March, I started a 6-month interchange as a Public Servant-in-Residence at Carleton University. The "at" and the "in Residence" are both, er, virtual as it were; I'm working remotely from here in Whitehorse where the windchill bicycling around this morning was a cheerful -18°C.
I'm working with Prof. Amanda Clarke (a legend in the digital government field here in Canada) as part of her research project on Trustworthy Digital Government. Part of what we're looking at is the role, influence, and scale of large IT vendors and management consultants on the public sector. If that's something you have thoughts on, I'd love to hear from you! You can give me a shout by email or schedule a coffee chat here.
What's new on the blog?
Since it's been a while, here's the most popular posts on the blog from 2021, with haphazard colour commentary:
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A bleak outlook for public sector tech
Nothing like ending the year on a pessimistic note! This was a riff on Paul Craig's excellent "Paperweight" blog post (he's since followed up with a series of must-read articles). The main takeaway from my end is that public sector executives and senior leaders aren't equipped to tackle the changes the public service needs, and grassroots efforts won't succeed without them. If you're a public sector leader, it's, uh, not you, don't worry. -
Rule number one: Avoid vendor lock-in
As the saying goes, for rule number two, see rule number one. There's some irony here since my day job involves a lot of fighting outdated rules, but this is one I stand behind. Have a clear "exit strategy" before you start using any particular product or service, otherwise it's just a matter of time until you get stuck. -
Suggestions for the next Minister of Digital Government
Writing advice for future ministers (of any political party) two days before an election is not, in hindsight, something I'd recommend as a public servant. The things you learn! This is part of a series that includes suggestions for the next GC CIO (from 2019) and suggestions for the next President of SSC (from last week). -
Paying for low-cost cloud services on a departmental credit card
In 2021, the Office of the Comptroller General (my heroes) published the updated Directive on Management of Procurement, which deprecates the (take a deep breath) Policy on Decision Making in Limiting Contractor Liability in Crown Procurement Contracts from 2003. The new Directive has specific language (in an appendix) that allows public servants to accept the standard commercial terms of use for a variety of low-cost, low-risk purchases (including software-as-a-service subscriptions). My colleague Paul Joseph wrote a great piece on the CDS blog about the same topic a few weeks ago. In related news, here's what I hope OCG fixes next. -
If you want enterprise services to be good, make them optional
There's a theme in federal government IT where we tend to make things mandatory before we make them good. (Phoenix, PeopleSoft, the Shared Travel System, Canada.ca, IT project gating, and a variety of other systems and processes could all fall into this category). This post takes a look at how Amazon (of course) takes their in-house tools and offers them externally to see if they're competitively viable. If they're not, they switch to other tools. If you're building or operating enterprise services, they should be good enough that people use them because they want to, not because they have to.
Last but not least, the 2020 "Is this blocked in my department" recap made the top 5; the 2021 recap is probably more relevant at this point. This past weekend I added several frequently-requested services to Is this blocked in my department, along with a few new organizations. If Mural, Mentimeter, Wonder, Power BI, SSH, or the Windows Subsystem for Linux (!) are available or blocked in your department, please send in an anonymous update to the dataset!
Today's newsletter recommendation
As usual I'll wrap up with a recommendation for another newsletter that you might enjoy (there's a joke here related to "competitively viable" above, somehow). Dan Hon’s "Things That Caught My Attention" is an absolute must-read for anyone in government tech (or really anyone in the technology-surrounded society that we live in today).
Have a great week & take care!