Sean’s blog – June 2022
Hello everyone and happy Monday!
As part of this year’s “send more than one newsletter email per year” effort, here’s an update with the latest on the blog!
The highlight over these past couple months has been starting a small series titled “Public service heroes”. Two of these interviews have now been published, the most recent one today:
- Rumon Carter, from BC Parks and the BC Exchange Lab
- Honey Dacanay, from the Ontario Digital Service, CSPS Digital Academy, and Service Canada
It’s been a total jam having these conversations, with brilliant public servants that I’ve looked up to for years. I’m really grateful to Rumon, Honey, and everyone else that I’ve had a chance to interview. Stay tuned for more of these in the months ahead!
Recent blog posts
Outside of the interview series, here’s what else has been on the blog lately:
-
Everything is broken and no one seems to mind
Riffing off an excellent piece from Kathryn May, here’s what’s now a tradition of semi-annual “things are broken, let’s try to fix them?” posts. This one looks at the formative experiences of senior public service executives, and how these might often reinforce the status quo. -
Small hopes for the future of digital ID in Canada
If you’ve ever logged into a government website, you know that it’s an experience that could be much improved. Here’s a set of hopes and dreams for what a more user-friendly, more secure future could look like. And no, I don’t want to log in through my bank and I really don’t want to use blockchain. -
Three suggestions for the next President of SSC
Speaking of traditions! Nothing like the brief interim period between senior government IT leadership roles being filled to write a bunch of unsolicited suggestions! I was slightly late on this one but I’m excited for the new folks at the helm at Shared Services Canada. The kicker in this post is making SSC services optional instead of mandatory (incrementally, over time) which would dramatically change SSC’s organizational incentives in a lot of useful ways. -
Things I’d like to see in upcoming EC collective agreement negotiations
Collective bargaining season is here, and now that I get CAPE emails (several years into my public service career) I figured I should start paying attention to union things. By accident this post now shows up in the top 10 Google search results for “ec collective bargaining” which is totally not retribution for CAPE’s painfully lukewarm stance on vaccine mandates. Anyway, happy bargaining everyone?
And, although you might have seen these earlier – a podcast episode with the Federal Youth Network, being a panelist for CSPS’s Digital Accelerator Demo Day, tips on better home wi-fi routers (you’d be floored at the difference it makes), and reflections on how much Ottawa means to me in light of the February convoy protests.
My Public Servant-in-Residence work continues over this summer with Prof. Amanda Clarke and her research team; stay tuned for more updates on it in the months ahead!
Thanks for reading and as always, really grateful for your thoughts and feedback!
Today’s newsletter recommendation
By far the best technology and policy newsletter in Canada – Vass Bednar’s Regs to Riches is absolutely brilliant. Vass is playing a massive role in pushing for improvements to Canada’s Competition Act and regulatory landscape (on top of running McMaster’s Public Policy in Digital Society program); I’m constantly in awe of the work she does.
Till next time!