Week 35 — Digital Government Overload
Regulatory Innovation Showcase and FWD50
What a week to be a public servant interested in Digital Government. Tuesday was the Regulatory Innovation Showcase (an event I was a lead organizer for) and this week was also FWD50, perhaps one of the largest digital government conferences in Canada. As a digital government nerd pushing hard to see regulators adopt AI and as an evangelist for Rules as Code in Canada, gatherings like these two events are a perfect opportunity to share my experience and enthusiasm about the possibilities that digital government can bring.
Regulatory Innovation Showcase
The Regulatory Innovation Showcase was a 1 day event featuring speakers who had something to “show” about three key technologies changing the world of regulations: AI, blockchain and Rules as Code. Exciting keynotes for each technology “speaking block” were followed by speakers who had something to show (e.g. an actual application of said technology within the public sector). Sometimes this would take the form of a live tech demo and in other cases it was sharing insights into the product being developed. The key part of each presentation was connecting the speaker’s work with the impact or potential their work had to transform the work of regulators. Why does their work matter to regulators? What impact would their work have on regulators? Why should regulators care? From day one we recognized that many conferences share a similar problem: really cool ideas, interesting theories but nothing to ground the hype back into reality. Why does this matter to your audience? Why should they care? What can they take back with them to the office to make them better at their jobs?
The Showcase also had a number of booths featuring primarily government departments showing the incredible work they are doing in the three technologies. The key thing was that each booth was SHOWING their work. This was not a traditional sales booth or a place to have a looping PowerPoint presentation with “one pagers” to hand out. Each person invited was instructed to come with a live demo or video of an actual product for people to interact with or react to. Booths were not there to sell people on anything but rather to show them that it was possible to use new and emerging technologies in the public sector.
What I’m particularly proud of was the big spotlight we were able to give to Rules as Code. What is at best an obscure concept for federal regulators became clear thanks to great presentations from Pia Andrews, Jason Morris and Jamie Herring. It’s a crucial moment for Rules as Code in Canada. We were able to socialize the topic with over 150 regulators. We have provided clarity on the potential upside of this new and emerging concept. With any luck, we have also planted the seeds for future Rules as Code projects in Canada.

FWD50
Despite best intentions, I was only able to attend Wednesday. FWD50 is one of those events that I always look forward to. A line-up of great speakers paired with the opportunity to network with a crowd just as interested in digital government as me is great. FWD50 puts on one hell of a show. I won’t summarize all the speakers but instead point out a few highlights. Aaron Snow provided a great opening keynote challenging government to go digital by 2025 and dropping some important takeaways like investing in teams not projects and pointing out the risk of the status quo.
Other notable experiences at FWD50 included great presentations by Pia Andrews and CircleSquare which… well better for you to read what it is then me try to explain it.
Only attending one day of FWD50 left me with a small window into the totality of what was presented. With that being said, I felt that a conversation around “corporate enablers” was missing. I’ve been around the digital government/innovation space long enough to not be surprised by what I hear entrepreneurial public servants do or are capable of. I’m not lacking inspiration or need the “wow” factor of a really cool application of new and emerging technology in a public sector context. What I’m lacking is a clear picture of how “cool” projects stop being one-offs. I’m lacking a clear picture of how the non-converts to digital government join the movement. I’m lacking a clear picture of how corporate systems like procurement, HR, finance and others evolve to enable digital transformation. Talking about reforming these corporate enablers is not sexy, it’s not going to generate buzz but dare I say it’s the difference between enabling digital government and continued incremental progress in a world where that isn’t good enough.
AI Demonstrator Projects (Incorporation by Reference, Regulatory Evaluation Platform, Rules as Code)
Regulatory Evaluation Platform: Week 9 of our engagement with both contractors led to a promising and interesting meeting. In particular, both contractors have started to show their data models and early results. In particular, it’s been interesting to start to see “inside the black box” to better understand things like how the model is being trained, what data is being used, what methods are being applied and what the result looks like. I wish I could share more details but for sake of not wanting to inadvertently give up propriety information I will leave it at that. All of that to say, we are starting to see the initial results of analysis which look promising. The next month will be focused on refining the results and fleshing out the UI.
Incorporation by Reference: Our contractor has provided us a “mere/true” dataset to review. Subject matter experts will validate the results of the model (e.g. supervised learning) so the mere/true model can accurately predict whether a reference is actually an incorporation by reference or not.
Rules as Code: I can feel the excitement in the air. Part of the reason I brought up procurement is the result of the long winding journey to get the contract in place for the Rules as Code project. However, we are at the last step before we officially have a contract. In the meantime, we have been getting prep work done so we are ready to hit the ground running. Already we are seeing challenges coming around platforms, languages, ontology and capacity which will be interesting to resolve when the project starts and to document for the benefit of public servants across Canada.
Rebuilding the Public Service From The Ground Up: Week 21
The idea for week 21 will be adopting Rules as Code as a new standard for the drafting process. Not radical when you consider that I am a big advocate for this approach.
Idea 21: A New Way to Do Drafting — Rules as Code
Rules as Code is a promising new development for how we build better rules and make compliance easier. However, Canada alone has over 3000 regulations. If we try to convert each one into code then Rules as Code will not work at scale. The task before us is too large and there isn’t enough capacity.
So here’s the idea. We change drafting conventions so that at the time of drafting you have to do English, French and code. This is put into effect for all new or amended rules past a certain point of time. Anything pre-existing is grandfathered in.
Changing drafting conventions is not easy. Rules as Code isn’t proven in Canada. But if you want to see a once in a generation improvement to regulatory compliance, reduced compliance burden and net benefit for businesses and citizens, Rules as Code is what you are looking for.
Most (but not all) businesses want to follow the rules. The challenge is figuring out how to follow the rules and which rules apply under which situations. Making rules machine readable opens up a lot of possibilities like creating new applications and services, automating compliance and transforming how we make rules in the first place (e.g. advanced predictive modelling).
Week 35 is done. Have a great week!
