This article was written by David Eaves, lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, Tom Loosemore, Partner at Public Digital, with Tommaso Cariati and Blanka Soulava, students at the Harvard Kennedy School. It first appeared in Apolitical. Government digital services have proven critical to the pandemic response. As a result, the
Continue readingTag: public service sector renewal
eaves.ca: Government, Digital Services & IT Procurement Reform
Next semester I’ll be teaching a course on why healthcare.gov initially turned into a disaster. Why? Because sadly, the failure of healthcare.gov was not special. Conservative estimates suggest over half of all IT projects are not completed on time or on budget. Others suggest the numbers are higher still. What
Continue readingeaves.ca: The Future of USDS: Trump, civic tech and the lesson of GDS
Across Washington, the country, and the world, the assumptions people have about various programs, policies and roles have been radically altered in the last 12 hours with the victory of President-Elect Trump. Many of my students and colleagues have asked me — what does this mean for the future of United States
Continue readingeaves.ca: The Empire Strikes Back: How the death of GDS puts all government innovators at risk
The UK Government Digital Service(GDS) is dead. I’m sure it will continue to exist in some form, but from what I’ve read it appears to have been gutted of its culture, power and mandate. As a innovator and force for pulling the UK government into t…
Continue readingeaves.ca: Canada’s Draft Open Government Plan — The Promise and Problems Reviewed
Backdrop On Friday the Canadian Government released its draft national action plan. Although not mentioned overtly in the document, these plans are mandated by the Open Government Partnership (OGP), in which member countries must draft National Action …
Continue readingeaves.ca: On Journalism, Government and the cost of Digital Illiteracy
Earlier today the CBC published a piece by Alison Crawford about Canadian public servants editing wikipedia. It draws from a clever twitter bot — @gccaedits— that tracks edits to wikipedia from government IP address. I love the twitter account
Continue readingeaves.ca: Moving to Harvard
Hi friends. Just a brief note to say that I’ve been invited to come to the Kennedy School of Government to be a Research Fellow in the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program (STPP) at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard
Continue readingeaves.ca: The Value of Open Data – Don’t Measure Growth, Measure Destruction
Alexander Howard – who, in my mind, is the best guy covering the Gov 2.0 space – pinged me the other night to ask “What’s the best evidence of open data leading to economic outcomes that you’ve seen?” I’d like to hack the question because – I suspect – for
Continue readingeaves.ca: Canada Post and the War on Open Data, Innovation & Common Sense (continued, sadly)
Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a blog post on Canada Post’s War on the 21st Century, Innovation & Productivity. In it I highlighted how Canada Post launched a lawsuit against a company – Geocoder.ca – that recreates the postal code database via crowdsourcing. Canada Posts case was never
Continue readingeaves.ca: CivicOpen: New Name, Old Idea
The other day Zac Townsend published a piece, “Introducing the idea of an open-source suite for municipal governments,” laying out the case for why cities should collaboratively create open source software that can be shared among them. I think it is a great idea. And I’m thrilled to hear that
Continue readingeaves.ca: The South -> North Innovation Path in Government: An Example?
I’ve always felt that a lot of innovation happens where resources are scarcest. Scarcity forces us to think differently, to be efficient and to question traditional (more expensive) models. This is why I’m always interested to see how local governments in developing economies are handling various problems. There is always
Continue readingeaves.ca: Proactive Disclosure – An Example of Doing it Wrong from Service Canada
Just got flagged about this precious example of doing proactive disclosure wrong. So here is a Shared Service Canada website dedicated the Roundtable on Information Technology Infrastructure. Obviously this is a topic of real interest to me – I write a fair bit about delivering (or failing to deliver) government service online effectively. I think it […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: The UK’s Digital Government Strategy – Worth a Peek
I’ve got a piece up on TechPresident about the UK Government’s Digital Strategy which was released today. The strategy (and my piece!) are worth checking out. They are saying a lot of the right things – useful stuff for anyone in industry or sector that has been conservative vis-a-vis online services (I’m looking at you governments […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: Playing with Budget Cutbacks: On a Government 2.0 Response, Wikileaks & Analog Denial of Service Attacks
Reflecting on yesterday’s case study in broken government I had a couple of addition thoughts that I thought fun to explore and that simply did not make sense including in the original post. A Government 2.0 Response Yesterday’s piece was all about how Treasury Board’s new rules were likely to
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Postal Codes: A Public Response to Canada Post on how they undermine the public good
Earlier this week the Ottawa Citizen ran a story in which I’m quoted about a fight between Treasury Board and Canada Post officials over making postal code data open. Treasury Board officials would love to add it to data.gc.ca while Canada post officials are, to put it mildly, deeply opposed.
Continue readingeaves.ca: The US Government’s Digital Strategy: The New Benchmark and Some Lessons
Last week the White House launched its new roadmap for digital government. This included the publication of Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People (PDF version), the issuing of a Presidential directive and the announcement of White House Innovation Fellows. In other words, it
Continue readingeaves.ca: The I Lost My Wallet – Doing Government Service Delivery Right
A couple of years ago I was in Portugal to give a talk on Gov 2.0 at a conference the government was organizing. After the talk I went for dinner with the country’s CIO and remember hearing about a fantastic program they were running that – for me – epitomized
Continue readingeaves.ca: Mainstreaming The Gov 2.0 Message in the Canadian Public Service
A couple of years ago I wrote a Globe Op-Ed “A Click Heard Across the Public Service” that outlined the significance of the clerk using GCPEDIA to communicate with public servants. It was a message – or even more importantly – an action to affirm his commitment to change how
Continue readingeaves.ca: Open Data Movement is a Joke?
Yesterday, Tom Slee wrote a blog post called “Why the ‘Open Data Movement’ is a Joke,” which – and I say this as a Canadian who understands the context in which Slee is writing – is filled with valid complaints about our government, but which I feel paints a flawed
Continue readingeaves.ca: Public Policy: The Big Opportunity For Health Record Data
A few weeks ago Colin Hansen – a politician in the governing party in British Columbia (BC) – penned an op-ed in the Vancouver Sun entitled Unlocking our data to save lives. It’s a paper both the current government and opposition should read, as it is filled with some very
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