Leading in the digital age, a new series
Editor’s Note: Thank you to the Digital Services Training Team at the Ontario Digital Service and our colleagues in the Outreach Team at the Canadian Digital Service for helping us launch this series.
At the Ontario Digital Service, we are constantly exploring what leadership in the digital age looks like for government.
Our mandate is to create the conditions where digital government can be a reality for everyone, but how do we get there?
To start, we drafted eight guiding principles and recruited top leadership in the digital government space, hiring the province’s first Chief Digital and Data Officer, Hillary Hartley, nearly two years ago — wow, time flies!
We have never stopped thinking about how we best support public service teams throughout our digital journey.
Servant leadership is the foundation of enabling and empowering teams to solve problems, and work like, leading internet-era organizations. Trust, diversity and culture play a key role in servant leadership, explains Hillary Hartley in this 10-minute video.
That’s why we’ve launched a new series called Leadership in the Digital Age.
The goal of the Leadership in the Digital Age series is to:
- Unpack how to apply our eight leadership principles
- Demystify ideas about digital government
- Provide anyone interested in learning how we work with the tools to tackle the realities and challenges of digital transformation.
“Discussions around digital transformation are not limited to Ontario,” explained Melvin Christopher, a team member from the Digital Training Team. “Our team saw a need to bring together government leaders across Ontario, Canada and globally, as we are all facing common challenges.”
Partnering across the public sector
We kicked off the series by partnering with the Canadian Digital Service (CDS) to feature a panel discussion between our very own Hillary Hartley and CDS CEO Aaron Snow. Our in-house community builder, Fahmida Kamali, moderated the discussion, which was met with high in-person and remote attendance across Canada, and as far as Nepal.
A theme discussed at great lengths was how to attract top talent into government.
“The way I see it, the public service will always be an appealing workplace for leaders who seek to solve wicked problems,” explained Hillary Hartley, Chief Digital and Data Officer.
“The services we’re building have direct impacts on nearly the entire province of Ontario. Where else can you do that?”
At CDS, a new project focused on embedding private-sector talent in government is being piloted.
“We’ve been thinking a lot lately about how best to cycle leaders in and out of government,” explained Aaron Snow. “We’re testing out civic leave, an initiative which piggybacks on the work my colleagues at 18F launched.”
The goal is to encourage talent at all levels outside of government to share their expertise by taking a tour of service within the public service.
“It’s clear public servants are itching for resources and first-hand stories from government leaders in action,” said Daphnée Nostrome, Digital Training Product Lead. “Our team wants to be the catalyst for sharing these resources with the broader public service.”
Upcoming talks
Our Leadership in the Digital Age series has a range of government leaders lined up, including the Digital Services Lead for the City of San Jose, Michelle Thong.
As we capture key insights here on the blog, we will also encourage leaders to guest contribute. Our profiled leaders will share first-hand how they build their teams, work out loud and adopt user-centred approaches to government delivery.
Our next set of talks will focus on our eight leadership principles which include:
- Obsess about the user
- Be agile and iterative
- Work out loud
- Use the data
- Be prepared to fail
- Challenge everything
- Embrace the chaos
- Be unreasonably aspirational
If you know of a government leader that could be profiled, reach out to us at digital.training@ontario.ca.
