Digital Service. Does that mean… scanning?
“I just started a new job,” I said to a friend last week, “at the Canadian Digital Service.”
They raised their eyebrows, “Does that mean… scanning?”
I joined the policy team at the Canadian Digital Service (CDS) about a month ago, after four years immersed in all things internet at Mozilla. If you’d asked me what a government “digital service” team was before I’d had these weird internet jobs, I may very well have guessed it was folks in white gloves, scanning yellowed manuscripts in library basements.
It’s an honest and reasonable guess.
But that’s not what we do at CDS.
That’s why this conversation got me thinking about how folks in the digital government space talk about what we actually do — and whether the word “digital” will help or hinder our work in the long run.
“Digitize” versus “Digital”
My friend clearly wasn’t the first person to be confused about this. There’s lots written about the meaning of “digital” and related terms. There doesn’t seem to be a universally accepted definition, but here’s the gist as I understand it.
Digitization usually refers to transforming physical objects (like books, art, or historical artifacts) into digital formats. It’s what my friend (and potentially past-me) was thinking of when they said “scanning.”
Digitization is important work to make libraries and archives more accessible and long-lasting. One of my favourite digital archives is the patent medicine collection from the University of Toronto, which archives ads from the mid-1800s to the 1970s for over-the-counter medicines (which were often of questionable quality).
Sometimes when folks say “digital” they mean moving social or business interactions online. There’s another (very similar) word often used for this kind of change: digitalization.
Examples of digitalization include a bank making it possible for you to check your balance on the web, instead of at a branch or ABM. Or a passport office enabling you to file for renewal online, instead of having to mail a form in. Or even talking to friends on platforms like Facebook, instead of in-person.
The Canadian Digital Service, and similar organizations worldwide, are kind of working on digitalization in government. But that’s only a corner of the bigger picture.
What we’re really striving for is digital transformation. More on this below.
Side-note: because I’m a geek for frameworks and visuals, I started thinking of these 3 types of transformation as parts of an iceberg (which is a handy metaphor for oversimplifying so many things)
Digital technology isn’t the heart of digital transformation
One of the most widely-cited definitions of “digital” (which IMO, is meant in the “digital transformation” sense) comes from Tom Loosemore of Public Digital:
Digital: Applying the culture, practices, processes & technologies of the Internet-era to respond to people’s raised expectations.
When Public Digital goes on to define “Internet-era ways of working” they don’t prescribe particular tools. Instead, they lay out a set of principles for how to work better, together: principles that I think will remain relevant long after the internet is no longer the cutting edge of tech.
Similarly, when colleagues at CDS talk about “digital services,” what I hear are commitments to:
- building services that are human (user) centered, resilient, and designed for continuous improvement
- using practices currently more common in tech than government, like design research
- driving toward clear outcomes, but remaining flexible about the path we take to get there so we can integrate what we learn along the way — and being open about the journey it happens
It still feels a bit counter-intuitive to say that technology isn’t at the heart of digital transformation. But this is exactly why I think the digital transformation approach can work.
Digital transformation can help governments work better for people because it’s focused on organizational change and is technologically agnostic, which means it can adapt to whatever new tech emerges in the future.
If digital transformation prescribed specific technologies, it would fail either when those technologies became outdated or because new tech would be slapped over old ways of working, when it was the ways of working that needed to change.
If you’re interested in digging deeper into the history and definition of “digital” and “digital government”, I highly recommend Ryan Androsoff’s recent webinar, Defining Digital.
How do we keep “digital” from being a fad?
Like the many incredible people who have been working in this field far longer than I have, I’m here because I think digital transformation has massive potential to help governments serve people better — and I want to help make that happen.
This is a long game and it still feels like we’re in the early days, especially in Canada. To ensure the positive changes we have and will make last in the long run, we need to make sure the principles and practices we currently call “digital” endure, even as the specific technologies we’re using evolve.
My friend’s question that started this whole journey — “Does that mean… scanning?” — ultimately makes me wonder if the language we’re currently using might eventually become a barrier to lasting change.
Those of us working in (and/or nerding out about) digital government know that “digital” doesn’t mean simply scanning documents or building websites.
But if our friends, colleagues, and elected officials hear “digital” and think scanning, or websites, or mobile apps, or cloud computing — or any specific technology, instead of the principles behind “digital transformation” — I think there’s a risk that appetite for this kind of work could fade when that technology falls out of favour, or becomes obsolete.
Or maybe I’m worrying over nothing. I’m a social scientist who studied communications. I think about language a lot. Maybe people are more flexible than I give them credit for, or maybe it doesn’t matter because most of the up-and-coming technologies (like AR, VR, AI, etc) are still of the “digital” variety. Also, I don’t have a great suggestion for what shorthand we might use instead of “digital”. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So, I’m curious to hear what you think: Is this something on your mind? Are there conversations or resources you’d point me to, to further thinking and discussion? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
