Working in the Open: Aug. 26–30, 2019
One of Code for Canada’s principles is to operate in public. These regular blog posts put that value into practice, giving readers a window into what we’re doing — and how we do it.
Welcome to our #weeknotes! Here’s Code for Canada’s Rose, Bud and Thorn for August 26–30, 2019.
🌹 Rose: We finished our latest round of fellowship recruitment this week, and are pretty pleased to announce that it’s been our most successful recruitment ever! Over 340 people applied to join our next fellowship cohort, and we received applications from across Canada — and abroad. Recruitment is a big, collaborative lift for our team, and we’d like to thank everyone who helped us spread the word, whether it was on Twitter, at a local meetup or just one on one with friends and colleagues. We also want to thank everyone who applied for showing — once again — that Canada’s tech and design community is excited about opportunities to work in the public sector and deliver public good.
Next step: reviewing all those applications!
🌱 Bud: We’re in the process of implementing a new CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. This week, each of our program teams took some time to think about how they’re using our current suite of tools, what some of their pain points are, and what functionality they’d like to see in our new CRM. While this may not sound terribly exciting at first, we’re a rapidly growing organization with thousands of contacts and touchpoints. Improving the ‘back end’ of how manage relationships and communicate with audiences has the potential to open up new opportunities and make our workflows better and more efficient.
📌 Thorn: As Merlin continues his research on civic tech monitoring and evaluation frameworks, he’s come across articles where the term “civic tech” is applied to things that are a bit ‘tech’ but often not very ‘civic.’ To be fair, the definition of civic tech remains quite broad and contested. However, as the civic tech movement grows, there’s a risk that the term could become diluted. We’re curious if others working in civic tech are seeing the same thing; have you seen examples of the term civic tech applied to something in a way that feels incorrect or disingenuous? If so, share them with us.
As always, thank you for reading our weeknotes! If you’d like to know more about Code for Canada, check out our website, follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to our newsletter.
