Working in the Open: Weeks 66–69
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.
The past few weeks at Code for Canada has been all about setting up the stage for others to tell the great Canadian civic tech story. From toasting the success of a bike parking app created by the Civic Tech Toronto community, to watching the inaugural fellows take the stage and share their journey of modernizing public service delivery, we’ve seen some amazing collaborative work come together.
A successful showcase!
A lot of our work over the past month has been getting everything set for the first ever Code for Canada Showcase; it was amazing to see it all come together. But the real work for the event started 10 months ago, when our first cohort of fellows began working with their government partners to revamp online services. On August 9, they finally had the chance to show off the fruits of their labour, presenting a live demo of their work to a full house of over 150 government innovators, civic tech champions and tech industry leaders.
We’d like to thank everyone who attended the showcase, as well as all our partners who helped make the event possible, including our host Oliver Wyman, our lead partners at Shopify and Normative, and NATIONAL Public Relations for helping us share our civic tech story. We’d also like to thank our amazing lightning talk speakers: Dr. Jules Maitland of Civic Tech Fredericton, Peter Watkins from the BC Developers Exchange, Nasma Ahmed of the Digital Justice Lab, Colleen Hardwick from PlaceSpeak and Stephanie Yong with the City of Saskatoon’s Smart Cities Challenge team.
We’ll be posting a recap of the showcase on our blog soon, and videos of the fellows’ presentations and lightning talks will be up on our YouTube channel shortly, so stay tuned!
Celebrating BikeSpace
On June 27th, we threw a party to celebrate the launch of BikeSpace with the Civic Tech Toronto community. The community-created web app lets cyclists report bike parking issues with a few simple screen taps. The project was a collaboration between the City of Toronto, Code for Canada, the Toronto cycling community and the civic hackers at Civic Tech Toronto.
The event was a chance for everyone to relax after the final product sprint, and laud the amazing work of the developers and civic tech contributors that helped make BikeSpace a reality. Code for Canada’s Hebah worked behind the scenes with Gabe and BikeSpace product manager Jake Miller to make the party happen.
If you’re a cyclist in Toronto, check out the BikeSpace app, and you can read more about the project on the Code for Canada blog.
Making human-centred design work for everybody
We had a full house at Civic Hall Toronto for an event on human-centred design on July 26. The training workshop introduced government members to some of the latest methods in user research, and encouraged them to approach human-centred design as a framework, mindset and culture.
“There’s strong interest from our members about how to apply it in their work,” says Civic Hall Toronto’s program manager, Shea Sinnott. “It seems to me like [government members] are hungry for tools and case studies for how they can talk to people and meaningfully engage them in their work.”
Creating a civic tech playbook for municipal leaders
Aaron and Hebah, two of Code for Canada’s summer employees, have been hard at work creating a playbook for civil servants eager to engage with their local civic tech communities. They’ve been busy interviewing government innovators across Canada about the benefits of collaborating with civic tech groups, as well as what practical steps they took to get involved in their communities.
There’s already been some great suggestions: from simply showing up at a civic tech event, to hosting a hacknight challenge at City Hall. We’re hoping the playbook will inspire more public servants to participate in civic tech, and get excited about co-creation as a way to solve civic problems.
The final leg of fellowship recruitment
We’re near the end of our second fellowship recruitment, which means we’ll be announcing the next cohort of Code for Canada fellows soon! Lia and Samira have been doing the heavy lifting of assembling three new fellowship teams, ensuring the right mix of skills, approaches and attitudes are present on each team. If you’ve ever done team-building work, you know how difficult it can be, and Lia often likens it to “a game of Tetris.”
To get us where we are, the whole team has been pitching in to conduct personal and technical interviews with fellows, listening in as the senior developers, designers and product managers on our selection panel put prospective fellows through their paces.
“It was absolutely wonderful getting to meet so many interesting and qualified candidates who really want to use their expertise to make a difference in government! The calibre of applicants seems very high”, said Kelly.
That’s it for this edition of the Code for Canada weeknotes. If you’re looking for more news about Code for Canada, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, or subscribe to our newsletter!
