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

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

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

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

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

Watch on YouTube

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

Related Links

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

Chapters

00:00 Intro and Welcome

02:56 Interview with Terry Beech

14:42 Priorities for the Ministry

25:18 Modernizing Old Age Security

38:44 The Future of the Canadian Digital Service

46:18 Getting Voters to Care

55:01 Conclusion

A few weeks ago, I got a late night message on our team’s Slack that made me do a double-take and was - to be frank - a real shock. It was a link to a Reddit thread that was titled “Ontario Digital Service is Officially Dead.”

ODS had a simple but ambitious mission: transform Ontario’s government services and practices for the digital age. It was led by Hillary Hartley, a veteran of digital transformation efforts like 18F in the United States Federal Government, who took on the role of not just leading ODS but serving as the first Chief Digital and Data Officer for the Ontario Government.

ODS did groundbreaking work for government: New digital service standards and legislation, building user research labs, and creating really great apps and digital tools. But ODS was about more than just digital products. It was just as much about people. Passionate public servants driven by the belief that interacting with government should be easy and, in Hillary’s words, delightful.

So it came as a shock when I found out that the Ontario Digital Service was being shut down. Not with a bang, but quietly and without fanfare via an internal memo informing staff that ODS was being disbanded. There has been little public discussion on what ODS’ contribution to the Ontario government has been, nor what this decision might mean for other government digital teams or the digital government movement more broadly.

On this episode of the podcast, we tell the story of the ODS over the past 7 years, and what it means now that it has ended, from those who were there at the beginning. We hear from Hillary Hartley about leading the ODS as Ontario's first Chief Digital Officer. We also hear from Karim Bardeesy who was Director of Policy and Deputy Principal Secretary for Premiere Kathleen Wynne when ODS was first being conceptualized. Tanya Coyle, was a long time public servant in Ontario who became one of the co-founders of this new digital startup team in the heart of the Ontario government. And Honey Dacanay was part of the founding team of ODS when it was still what we sometimes call in the tech world a “two-pizza team”.

Related Links

• Ontario Digital Service is officially dead (Reddit)
• Ontario government disbands remnants of Ontario Digital Service by David Reevely, The Logic
• First blogpost by the team that set-up ODS
• Byte-Sized Progress: Assessing Digital Transformation in the Government of Canada, The Dais
• Ontario Digital Service

Watch on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-nZ3G14zyU

Chapters

00:04 Introduction

03:11 Hillary Hartley joins the ODS

04:33 The role of political leadership

11:50 Accomplishments of the ODS

21:11 What does the disbanding mean?

28:14 Hillary reflects on the end of ODS

34:22 Conclusion

It's only been a year since our last episode on artificial intelligence, but already a lot has changed. It seems like Generative AI is everywhere and everyone, including governments, are struggling to keep up. So on this episode Ryan is joined by a special co-host Jen Schellinck, Think Digital Associate and our resident expert on AI and cognitive science to talk about what you need to know when it comes to AI. We're also joined by Paul Craig, the creator of the TaxGPT AI bot, and Shan Gu, Founder and CEO of Foci Solutions. Both Paul and Shan share their experience working with AI projects in and around the public sector and discuss their insights on what they have learned.

In our conversation we talk about the current state of AI technology, the questions that governments should be asking when thinking about using AI, and most importantly the question on everyone's mind, who is more intelligent: ChatGPT or Ryan's cat?

(Note: At 3:26, Jen refers to a steady state model. She meant to say state space model)

Related Links

• Episode 8: Government in the Era of ChatGPT
• TaxGPT
• Towards a Considered Use of AI Technologies in Government by The Institute on Governance and Think Digital

Watch on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B685AEvbbcI

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Welcome

01:27 The Current State of the Art for Generative AI

06:15 AI's Expansion: Beyond Text to Visuals and More

10:27 Generative AI in Government: Policies and Adaptation

18:04 Paul Craig and TaxGPT

24:44 Learnings from Running TaxGPT

38:04 Shan Gu and Adopting AI tech in government

45:42 The Future of AI in Government: Opportunities and Challenges

52:21 Is ChatGPT more intelligent than Ryan's cat?

01:08:02 Conclusion