A plan to make the extraordinary, normal
I’ve been in government for a while now — over eight years. In those eight years, I’ve seen many ‘transformation’ efforts, and have even written briefing notes and decks on digital government that use the word ‘transformation’ a whole lot. The message in many of these decks is that digital government is a new approach for government.
The truth is, digital government doesn’t have to be transformational: it should be a normal part of the way government operates.
Jennifer Pahlka at Code for America wrote a blog post last month on extraordinariness and digital government. In it, she says that the digital part isn’t really extraordinary; there are thousands of tech people out there building user friendly apps and websites, every day. What’s special is actually putting those skills to work for the public good.
I couldn’t agree more. That’s why I’m excited to be working on the Digital Action Plan for Ontario — a commitment made in last year’s Budget that will be our roadmap for beginning this change, across our organization.
One of my goals for this plan is to find extraordinary people working in the depths of government, and help create the structures and processes needed to make that extraordinary behaviour, that ethos of empathetic public service, live and breathe across the organization.
This deeper transformation work isn’t always easy; but it is needed to slowly shift the culture of government. For every new digital service we build or revise, we will need to modernize back-end processes. For every dashboard we build, we will need to empower staff to collect the data for those dashboards in more open and creative ways.
As we build the Digital Action Plan, I will be constantly asking how every piece of the plan will help the residents of Ontario; I will constantly ask how each action will move us toward a government where being digital is not extraordinary, but normal.
We are in the research and brainstorming phase right now: we’re learning from our friends in other governments who have created their own digital plans, and learning from the good work that has already happened here in Ontario. Over the next few months, I’ll be back to share the research, the outline, and other parts of the plan as they are developed.
In the meantime, please share your thoughts with us — what do you think should be in Ontario’s Digital Action Plan? How can we get there? Your ideas and feedback are instrumental to making this plan a success.
