Happy Holidays and Lessons Learned
A very happy holiday season from the Digital Innovation Office. Look for new posts from us in the New Year!
Here’s some highlights from 2019!
Our team
We are excited with our growth, and we are looking forward to growing even more as we deliver on our mandate to make better services for Albertans.
Congratulations to Nova Scotia on its brand new Digital Service
The Nova Scotia Digital Service launched in November, and we are so excited to see the growth and maturity of government service innovation in Canada. Congratualations to Chief Digital Officer Natasha Clarke and the rest of the team!
Lessons Learned
We’ll close the year with some lessons learned over the past year from different members of the DIO team.
You can save money, and improve services
Too often the idea of saving money and improving services are seen as opposites. At the DIO, we think they are the same thing…good service innovation helps understand what Albertans really need, and that helps us be the most effective and efficient. (And effective and efficient are the heart of cutting red tape and cutting costs).
The speed of trust
To steal from Chris Govias* I’ve learned that we really do move at the speed of trust. It’s taken a while to get to the point we’re at now, where many of our partners — vendor and ministries alike — have developed a trust-infused team. We all know where we’re headed and (mostly) how to get there. We couldn’t work in the way we do now at the outset of project, and I think it has an awful lot to do with trusting each other’s inputs.
* Chief of Design at the Canadian Digital Service
Talking to users makes solving tough problems less scary
We have big, complex challenges to tackle in all our DIO projects. From the start, some of these have looked pretty intimidating. Getting the team out into the field and talking with real users hasn’t made the challenges any smaller — but it has made them more human-scale, with clear insights about where we can do the most good. Those leverage points help us focus our efforts so we don’t try to solve everything all at once. Instead, targeted investments can meet user needs quicker, and deliver savings and efficiency faster.
You can’t really own it if you don’t understand it
One of the biggest challenges in working with legacy systems is uncovering how they actually work. Unfortunately, many of our sector colleagues in Service Alberta have inherited some black box legacy systems where important details have been lost in the mists of time. For our partners, we are building digital literacy and capability on their own teams. Understanding digital practice and technical details brings a better kind of ownership.
Finding golden public servants
Don’t assume that government means status quo. Many traditional bureaucrats are fully game for radical redesign. Some of our strongest partners come from surprising fields, like Justice. Though the justice system has centuries of tradition, the team is making great strides to reduce costs and make the system easier and more accessible for Albertans.
Getting this support and enthusiasm is like striking innovation gold, and we are constantly impressed by the calibre of each of our ministry partners.
Small teams can solve big challenges
We have had the privilege of working with many contract teams over the course of the year and seeing how a small, dedicated team can accomplish great things — in fact, that small teams can often deliver more value faster than a large team. Because of the overhead of larger teams, a smaller team is generally more productive and responsive.
Procurement can innovate too
In partnership with the procurement team at Service Alberta, the DIO created an agile RFP format that takes about one-third the amount of time to respond as a conventional RFP with a long list of requirements. By focusing on outcomes and the capabilities needed to deliver those outcomes we make it easier for digital firms to work with government.
This procurement innovation would not be possible without the support and partnership with our Service Alberta colleagues. Thank you!
Stickers are the thin edge of a revolution
We are sharing new messages and mindset all the time within government and in the digital community. We have some special mantras that capture key DIO thinking on stickers — if you’d like one, come to see us in person!
Thank you for your support
Whether you are one of our partners, part of our growing Digital Community of Practice, or you work in broader government, civic tech and innovation, or in the digital community, we appreciate your work to make government work better. We are privileged and energized by the chance to work alongside you. Get some rest during the holidays, because there’s exciting work to do in the New Year!
