Sean’s blog – August 2022
Hello everyone and hope you've had an excellent weekend!
It's almost the end of August (time flies!) which has made for a busy past few weeks as I get ready for my research exchange with Carleton University to wrap up. On Sept. 1st I return to my regular job at CDS; I can't wait to catch up with the crew there but it'll definitely be a race to the finish line on the research work that I'm doing.
On that note – here's a preview of the procurement contract analysis that I've been working on with Prof. Clarke and two of her research students. The analysis is an at-scale look at federal government contracts (which are proactively disclosed on the Open Government website); it's fascinating to see where contract spending has gone up and down over the past couple years of the pandemic.
If you have any feedback, we'd love to hear it! (Please don't share the link publicly yet, mostly since it's automatically-generated Netlify link and we'll change it before we publicly launch).
You can also take a look at the (somewhat gnarly) R code that processes this data. Some of you might remember the circa-2017 Ottawa Civic Tech project that this research work is an evolution of; it's been really neat to be able to dive back into it from a more academic standpoint.
Public service heroes
Outside of research work, it's been really wonderful to be able to do more interviews with inspiring and leading-edge public servants! Since the start of July, this includes:
- Beth Fox, from the Nova Scotia Digital Service (who recently joined CDS!)
- Madelaine Saginur & Melissa Toutloff, from Health Canada's Privacy Management Division
- Chris Allison, the Chief Data Officer at the Public Health Agency of Canada
I've got more interview posts coming up in the months ahead; I'm so grateful to everyone that's been part of the series (and to all of you for reading and for the kind feedback!) If you've enjoyed these, you might also like a series from Brian Whittaker in the United States called "Humans of Public Service" that's really fantastic.
Recent blog posts
Beyond the interview series, here's what else has been happening lately!
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Enterprise architecture is dead
If you're an enterprise architect, uh, sorry about that. The wall-sized posters were cool, though. If you like this post, you should definitely check out Paul Craig's "Enterprise: the wrong bigger picture" and related recent posts. -
Worth reading: Government from home & A Shared Future of Work
This post jammed on two really excellent pieces written by Michael Karlin and Steph Percival. I try to put return-to-office plans in the context of public service delivery failures, and think about what the downstream consequences are likely to be. With a sidebar on the two kinds of "hybrid work" that share the same label but have opposite power dynamics. -
Shrink projects to fit leadership turnover rates
This was a fun one to write, combining my two favourite topics (urban planning & government tech!) Turns out the same issues – long-running projects, and short-term leadership tenures – lead to failures in both contexts, in slightly different ways. Featuring Waldo Jaquith’s must-watch presentation on software procurement, and a 2022 update (I am so excited about this) to the Large Government of Canada IT projects dataset!
Today’s newsletter recommendation
Heather and I just got our second booster shots recently, and on that topic I'd recommend Alanna Shaikh's "Last Mask Standing". Alanna is a global public health experts that I've looked up to for years, and her newsletter is bleak, heartfelt, and very useful.
On that note – back to more data analysis (and writing a methodology section!) 😄 Please check out the research site and send in any thoughts, feedback, issues or reactions!
Have a great week ahead!