April Newsletter | It’s our fourth anniversary!
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We send a monthly update on what our team is up to, share our latest blog posts, and offer curated must-reads about civic tech. If we’re hosting an Open House, a Summit or Showcase, you’ll be the first to know.
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Welcome to our April newsletter! 👋
In April 2017, our small but mighty team stood on a stage and launched Code for Canada. In the four years since, we’ve helped over 50 fellows contribute to projects across 17 government departments, helped new civic tech community groups make positive impacts in their communities and launched new programs like our civic usability testing service. With everything going on in the world, it’s hard to feel to celebratory, but taking a moment to reflect on what we’ve achieved helps keep our spirits (and energy) high for all the work that’s still to come.
Speaking of milestones, our Cohort 5 fellows recently hit the halfway mark of their journey. From raising their hand to assist each other with usability testing to putting on a lunch and learn for the Canadian Digital Service, being remote hasn’t hindered their ability to work collaboratively and in the open. They even reached out to their international counterparts recently, sending a congratulatory video to Code for Pakistan fellows who just wrapped their projects.
The past month has been chock full of conversations with people from all walks of the Canadian civic tech world. We’re chatting with folks interested in starting another civic tech group in New Brunswick, meeting with potential partners in government, and building partnerships with FWD50 and the Public Sector Network — so keep an eye out for some upcoming events!
Welcome back Civic Tech Vancouver 🎉
Civic Tech Vancouver is kicking off their first meetup of 2021 by featuring Zachary Woodward, Senior Director of Procurement and Product for the BC Public Service.
In the past two and a half years, the BC Government’s Digital Marketplace has awarded over $16M to more than 100 opportunities and counting. How did they do it? Learn about BC’s open-source marketplace at the event. And of course, you don’t have to be based in Vancouver to attend!
Voices from the team 📣
🌐 Jesse Coleman and Aakash Harpalani, our partners at Toronto Transportation Services, share learnings and advice for others embarking on digital modernization projects. Hear why they decided to build new tools in-house instead of relying on vendors.
✨ In three short years, Civic Tech Fredericton has made an incredible impact through their civic tech projects. From welcoming newcomers to mentorship opportunities, “we really are a family,” says co-founder Sandi MacKinnon.
👐 Meet Civic Tech Montreal, Canada’s newest civic tech community group. They’ve partnered with local organizations to find solutions to some common challenges newcomers and refugees face.
🚀 How can we use design to address emergent challenges and opportunities? Code for Canada fellows at Employment and Social Development Canada wrapped up their speculative design sprint by building a prototype and testing it with users.
🧭 Are you struggling to recruit participants for usability testing or research? Code for Canada fellow Gillian Wu has some tips that might help.
🧠 Christina Lanning, UX design fellow embedded with the Canadian Armed Forces Transition Group, found creating personas fell short in helping her group understand the needs of their users. So she turned to mindsets — a more inclusive tool. Christina shares the seven steps she took to create mindsets as well as her key learnings throughout the process.
The Code for Canada spotlight ☀️
Jo Button is on the Outreach team at the Canadian Digital Service
“Learning to be inclusive is not a one-time thing; it’s a life-long commitment of trying to be better.”
Jo Button works at the Canadian Digital Service (CDS) on the Outreach team, using plain language to write accessible content about digital government. Jo reflects on learning to be inclusive and shares her tips for writing more accessible Twitter content in this blog post.
Do you know a digital government champion or civic technologist who deserves the spotlight? Let us know, and we might feature them in our newsletter.
Required / inspired reading 📚
🔍 Dalia Hashim, policy lead for the Ontario Digital Service, makes the case for tech companies to hire digital policy experts. As tech plays a bigger role in our daily lives, policy experts can help companies understand the existing ecosystem, protect and inform users, and create more ethical products.
🌐 “Digital government transformation requires significant structural and cultural reforms within the public service.” Amanda Clark argues the pandemic has failed to bring the necessary reforms to meaningfully bring governments into the digital age.
🏛️ “The experience of actually working on the project becomes an investment in your own internal technical capacity, rather than building the capacity of the vendor. “ Mark Lerner makes the case for governments to bring more technical talent in-house.
📝 Forms are often residents’ first interaction with government — how can they be made digital and accessible? Bekah Otto, strategist with the San Francisco Digital Service, examines three form stacks for service delivery.
🚧 “It all starts with someone asking the question: why not hire differently?” Megan Beretta, chief of staff at Service Canada, shares how the federal government is building better, multidisciplinary teams by removing barriers and empowering officials to try new hiring practices.
Civic tech job alerts 💼
Are you inspired by the vision of Toronto as a city where everyone has a safe and affordable place to call home? The Shelter, Support and Housing Administration division at the City of Toronto is hiring a Project Manager to lead the division’s data modernization efforts.
Interested in building software that helps government work better? Proof, a Canadian civic tech startup, is hiring for multiple roles on their software, engineering, and client teams.
If you have a knack for all things data, check out this posting for a data specialist at the Mozilla Foundation. This is a chance to play a key role in contributing to Mozilla’s data strategy.
Let us know what you think 💡
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We’re Code for Canada, a national non-profit working to build digital capacity in government and civic capacity in Canada’s technology and design community. In other words, we help people use tech and design for good!
If you’d like to learn more about our organization, our people or our programs, visit our website, check out our blog, or reach out to hello@codefor.ca.
