(Help shape the future of this podcast! Take our Season 2 listener survey at LetsThinkDigital.ca)

If there’s a running theme this season on the podcast, it’s about how we seem to be stuck in the mud when it comes to our efforts to modernize government for the digital age. Check out our previous episodes this season for some insightful and thought-provoking perspectives on why this might be the case.

So how do we get unstuck? One of the key factors that many of our guests have pointed to is the need for political leadership. And our guest this week for our Season 2 finale is the perfect person to talk to about this.

Terry Beech is the Canadian Minister of Citizens’ Services. He was appointed into this role by Prime Minister Trudeau in July of last year with a mandate to drive digital transformation in some high profile service areas, as well as accelerating and expanding the use of the Canadian Digital Service across government.

In our interview, we talk about his vision for how to modernize government, the challenges of bringing legacy systems like Old Age Security into the 21st century, why the Canadian Digital Service is needed now more than ever, and how getting voters to care about digital may not be as hard as you might think.

Watch on YouTube

https://youtube.com/watch?v=QsdpMTv9x1Q

Related Links

• Minister of Citizens' Services Mandate Letter
• Terry Beech Official Biography
• Canadian Digital Service Website
• Season 2 Listener Survey

Chapters

00:00 Intro and Welcome

02:56 Interview with Terry Beech

14:42 Priorities for the Ministry

25:18 Modernizing Old Age Security

38:44 The Future of the Canadian Digital Service

46:18 Getting Voters to Care

55:01 Conclusion

Ryan 0:04

I'm Ryan Androsoff, welcome to Let's Think Digital. If there's a running theme on this season of the podcast, it's been about how we seem to be stuck in the mud when it comes to our efforts to modernize government for the digital age. We've talked about how evolution isn't always enough, and whether the state has the capacity to implement the big promises that have been made. We've talked about how we need to pay attention to the plumbing, so to speak, the infrastructure needed to deliver and not just the shiny headline grabbing digital projects that get announced and then sometimes forgotten. We've had the conversations about the challenges of getting digital talent into the public sector, and the importance of building political support. And the last episode, we paid tribute to the Ontario Digital Service, a groundbreaking digital innovation team that, as our guests argued, met a premature end before the real digital transformation could take hold in the Ontario government. So how do we get unstuck? One of the key factors that many of our guests have pointed to is the need for political leadership. And our guest this week for our Season Two finale is the perfect person to talk to about this. Terry Beech is the Canadian Minister of Citizen Services. He was appointed into this role by Prime Minister Trudeau in July of last year with a mandate to drive digital transformation in some high profile service areas, as well as accelerate and expand the use of the Canadian Digital Service across government. So often, we only hear from our political leaders in 32nd sound bites. And that's why I'm so grateful that Minister Beech was willing to take the time to have an extended conversation with me about his vision for the future of government in the digital era. In our interview, we talked about his vision for how to modernize government, the challenges of bringing old legacy systems like Old Age Security into the 21st century, why the Canadian Digital Service is needed now more than ever, and why getting voters to care about digital may not be as hard as you think. But before we start, I just wanted to thank all of you for listening and watching Season Two of Let's Think Digital. We've been thinking about the future of this podcast, and we'd like to hear your honest opinion on whether we should continue on. Are we talking about the issues you care about? And are we reaching the right audience? If we're going to do a third season of the podcast, we want to hear what you'd like to see in it. So please take a few minutes to complete our Season Two listener survey, which you can find at letsthinkdigital.ca. And now, here's my conversation with Minister Terry Beech. Minister Beech, welcome to Let's Think Digital.

Terry Beech 3:00

Well, thank you for having me. And now that you've given me my official title, let's just agree you can call me Terry for the rest of the podcast.

Ryan 3:06

Perfect. Will, will do. So I want to start off with, you know, you were appointed into this new portfolio of Citizen Services last July. I'm wondering, you know, for those who are listening who might not be familiar with it, because it is a new portfolio in the federal government, if you could just give a bit of an overview of you know, what it includes and the types of initiatives that you're responsible for?

Terry Beech 3:29

Ryan 8:52

And that's great. It's a helpful overview. A lot to unpack there. And I think we'll we'll talk about a few of these things over the next few minutes. I mean, before we, before we dive into a few of those specific topics, I was curious, you know, for you personally, when you were appointed last year, I mean, a number of people noted in your background, that you were an entrepreneur before you got into politics, and you started a tech company. And so I'm actually kind of wondering how that background for you as having been in the tech industry, you know, helps you or changes your perspective as Minister now that you're leading the charge on modernizing digital services? And also just you know, has, did anything really surprise you when you started the job? And you know, has your perspective changed over the past 10 months?

Terry Beech 9:35

Yeah.

But for me, it's about setting the culture like this matters everyone, like I do care about whether or not somebody got confused and got knocked into a call center and how long they had to wait and like being... making, rising, like, how do I say this in a way that doesn't insult anybody? I think, just, there's a bunch of people that focus on policy and traditional government, those people rise to the top.

Yep.

And then there's a bunch of people that implement policy, and those people are like, on the ground. And there's a lot of space between the people that are thinking about policy and the people that are implementing, and we need to narrow that gap.

Absolutely.

Because there's just not enough, you know, at the senior ranks of our bureaucrats, like standing over the shoulders, watching the actual process that people in the frontlines are going through. And realizing that there is a lot, like I'm, we're looking at ways to improve with AI and machine learning, but honestly, just things like progress bars and simple design. Would get us 90% of where we need to go in terms of spectacular improvements in customer service for Canadians. So I've gone on off on a tangent. So maybe I'll look back at you.

No, but it's, but it's an important tangent. I was gonna say, you know, this issue of that divide between policy and delivery, I mean, we've talked about on the podcast a number of times this this season, including, I know you're familiar with Jennifer Pahlka's book Recoding America, we had.... I think you've got it with you there. Exactly. Yeah.

I think she signed it for me actually, yeah.

Yeah, and, you know, we had Jennifer on the podcast a few months ago. And this is I think, one of the cruxes of her book, which is true in the US, is true in Canada, I think is true in a lot of places in the world, is there is this kind of cultural prioritization internally of the policy people, they tend to be the ones as you said, who go into senior management roles, and those Operational Insights around delivery get lost somewhere around the way, right? And that ability to actually kind of execute and get things done, you know, we're not well set up. And we've seen that I mean, you mentioned the passport issue last year, there's been a whole number of other ones that have kind of popped up. So I mean, great to hear that this is kind of top of mind for you, and something that you're thinking about in this new role. And maybe that just kind of transitions me to ask you a little bit about, you know, what your kind of big priorities are? You know, we've got probably 12 to 18 months left in this mandate, depending on you know, on on how things go. And I noticed in the last budget that came out a few weeks ago, you know, a few big commitments related to your portfolio, including, you know, billions for OAS migration as you were starting to talk about. A smaller amount, though, for digital credentials, which is obviously a piece in your portfolio. So just you know, wanted to get a sense from you kind of coming out of the budget and kind of looking into, you know, the second part of this mandate, what's top of mind for you in terms of things that you'd like to get accomplished, you know, before the next election comes upon us?

So I think it'd be interesting for your viewers to kind of pull back the curtain a bit and talk about where our mandate comes from in the first place, anyway. Because here I was a new minister, as of July 26, I was coming from the Ministry of Finance, right, because I was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister. So I'd gone through two budget cycles and two full economics cycles, and had actually benefited from being a part of that process and understanding how things are prioritized and kind of how the sausage gets made when it comes to the budget. And I was actually put into a position where I was asked to write my budget letter before I had my mandate letter. So when I became the minister, it was like, read everything like, so for most ministers, you would become a minister of an existing file. And you would kind of already know if you've been around government for a while, where the challenges are, what the existing mandate letter is etcetera. Whereas this was like, total Greenfield opportunity. So I took the first number of weeks and months as we had to hire a Chief of Staff and build out a whole new minnow team and everything, to just read everything. And I just read and read and read and read. And then I prioritized like what I wanted to focus on into like three tiers of categories. The third tier was like, these are things that we're kind of already good at, and we've been doing it for years, it's probably not gonna be a big issue, and it's probably not going to have significant room for improvement. So, you know, manage by exception, if there's problems tell me, but like that stuff should just kind of go. The second category was, you know, these could be, you know, any of these things failed, that would be a big problem for us, some of these might be politically sensitive. And there's some real opportunities here. They're not maybe our most significant opportunities, but we should pay more attention to those and we should be updating those maybe, you know, more regularly than the ones in the third tier that I probably won't see unless there's a problem. And then the first tier was like, this is like really great opportunity to have a big impact. If we don't do it right it's a big problem. And those were kind of the ended up being like the dental, digital, customer service kind of overall categories. And so we put this budget letter together that was basically like, listen, given where we're at, and what we think we can do in the next year, and where we think the trajectory of the file is going, this is what we would do. And then when we were done, like between the minnow, which is my political staff, and the department, like we were all just very on board with this kind of vision that we had set out. And we still didn't have a mandate letter. So we actually sent the mandate letter over and was like, Hey, we don't have the mandate letter yet, I know you're still working on it, etc, because it takes a while for those to come out after the appointment process. And the budget letters are confidential, and the mandate letters are public. But I would just say that we were very happy with the mandate letter, because it was a very good reflection of the things that we were looking at in our budget letter. And so if you go through our mandate letter, which is publicly, publicly listed, those are the things that we're trying to get across the line. If you were to ask me what my unofficial mandate is, like, things that I think about on a regular basis or things that I'd love to be known for after I'm completed this job or moved on to the next thing or whatever, I really think that a nice unofficial kind of goal is to get Canadians out of standing in line and to get them off of waiting on hold. And that's one of the big benefits of process improvement and embracing digital and kind of being at customers, you know where they are, you know, I go to talk to people in passport lineups. And you know, some people they bring their family in, they've, they've planned for a seven hour journey from rural or northern Canada, they might have had to take a flight, they might have to drive, they have to pay for hotels, you know that that process of just getting their passports that we take for granted, could be $1,000 expense, and that's not even with the passport fee. And here I have this opportunity. We have this opportunity as Canadians to say, Well, wait a second, what you can just do that from your computer. Well, what else can you do from your computer? So it's really identifying those things that we can change relatively quickly, that will have the greatest impact. Another example that came up recently that is not in my mandate letter, been touring the country and spending a lot of time like talking to frontline service workers, like what do you spend your time on? What's most frustrating for you? What's stopping you from being more efficient, etc. I'll give you two examples. One, if you go into Service Canada office, a lot of offices, its people going in to apply for SINs, social insurance numbers.

Yep.

Or to like to renew them. And for a lot of those individuals, like a bulk of them are people working on like, student permits or foreign work permits, like and so they literally they arrived in Canada, they've already got their work permit or they got the student visa, and then they head to Service Canada immediately get in line to get the social insurance number because they need it to open a bank account, or they need it to go to work or whatever. So like, that's like in Montreal, the second busiest office in the country, that's 74% of the people standing in line, it's just that one thing. And yet we've launched this eSIN program, where you can do it online, and you can, there's no need for you to actually come down and stand in front of somebody else who's trying to get service that day. But people still want to come in and stand in line. And a big reason for that is one is habit, right, their employers or their universities, or schools are telling them that something they need to do, it's written into the manuals and the like. But the other aspect is, is if you walk into a Service Canada office, you can guarantee you're gonna get a SIN, you're gonna walk out with a SIN. So it's like one day, whereas the eSIN program, you can apply, it's probably going to be a day or two, but we guarantee it within five days.

Right.

So we need to figure out ways to make that easier. And part of the thing that we're working on is, well, wait a second, if we have enough information to already issue you a work permit. And we already have enough information to issue you a student visa, why aren't we just issuing the SIN when we issued the permanent visa? Why are we making even come interact with Service Canada at all? And so that's literally an improvement, where we could take 74% of people standing in a Service Canada line up in this one location as an example.

Yep.

And just eliminate that need. So stuff like that is very exciting. And then a second example that I'll give you, and this works with, because a lot of this stuff is like when we talked about digital credentials, which I'm sure we were, we have to talk about the interoperability of them, the ability for them to work with what provinces are doing, and increasingly what municipalities are doing.

Yep.

But I was, I forget her name off the top of my head, but I was in the White Rock office or the Surrey office and one of the, in that area in BC. And a lot of the really hard passport cases are the custody cases, right? So, you, people literally come in with their legal case file and put it on the desk, and say, like, I would like to get a passport for my child. And of course, this is a significant request that we have to take very seriously. Because if it's, they don't have a legal right to actually get a passport for their child. And this can be somebody taking the kid out of the country. And that leads to all kinds of problems. So obviously, because we take it very seriously, like you've got to go through all those details and be sure that this is possible. And even during the pandemic, the custody side, because there are so many babies and so many divorces during the pandemic that led to a lot of the bottlenecking. But we have to start asking questions like why are we doing that work in the first place?

Yep.

So if there is a legal decision made in a Provincial Court somewhere that somebody has certain rights for custody and somebody else doesn't, or both do or whatever? Why can't a credential be created to say that instead of having somebody with no legal background, or custody experience having to interpret this legal decision? And so I've had conversations with my counterparts so far in BC and Alberta who both have digital credential programs that are ahead of the federal government and in Newfoundland and Labrador, who are also looking at that technology, and just said, Hey, can you help me out? Can you talk to your attorney general? Like, is this something that we can do together? Because it would make life a lot simpler for us, it would provide a better customer service experience. And I don't actually think it's that much more work for them, who control the courts where these decisions are being made to give some sort of certification that allows us to answer that question. So the reason I gave you those two examples is because one is relatively new, and it's just from asking questions, and the second, is us just not taking anything for granted. And just asking, why about everything like, okay, is that the most efficient way we can do it? And why are we doing that in the first place? And just empowering a bureaucracy who has not been empowered to ask those questions is really motivating. Because there's a whole bunch of really great public servants who are really smart, who have tried to implement solutions like this and it wasn't in the budget that year or somebody along the chain of command said, No, and it only takes one to say, no, that doesn't happen. Or I tried that nine years ago, and for some reason, it fizzled into, and so I've been sending the message to public servants across the government every chance that I get, is like those days are over. We are going to be an innovative government. We are not going to look for reasons to say no, we are going to look for reasons to say yes, and that is a culture shift that will really help make Canada more efficient.

I mean, great, great examples and I appreciate you bringing them up because I think even you know the ones around trying to get the court systems integrated across jurisdictions, right? This is one of the unique challenges almost, that we have in Canada is our federated model. And the fact that we haven't kind of moved to kind of one set of digital credentials, really makes it tough for people who are kind of caught between the friction and in those different levels of government. So I think those are really interesting examples on kind of the client facing side, I did want to ask you quickly about, you know, big programs like OAS that you were talking about, or the broader Benefits Delivery modernization program, which are, you know, big investments, like billions of dollars going there. And I know it's multi year timelines around that. But what is, what is that process improvement going to look like for people? I mean, will that change the experience for people applying for OAS, or is this mainly around like stabilizing the back end, and as you mentioned, you know, getting off of technology that's, you know, six plus decades old?

Uh, it's gonna be both. So it is transformative. And it is also just making sure the system continues to work by taking it off of our archaic system. So I mean, goal number one, and foundation is it has to work.

Yep.

Right? And we will not push live any product out of production, that we are not 100% certain meets the criteria, because if somebody doesn't get their OAS payment, that is a devastating consequence, right? People depend on those payments. So we, in the summer pushed out the first 600,000 people on the OAS, we are just approaching a year, and the experience that everybody has is no difference. And that is a great thing. Right? It is just them continuing to get the payments as they always have within that category. And by the end of the year, I believe we'll add the remainder, or at least that's the target, like I said, I say that, we, that is our expectation, and we will not push a product unless we are 100% certain that it's going to work. So I'm not guaranteeing it, but that's what I'm pushing for. And that'll be another 7 million individuals, they'll be joining the program on Curem. Once the program is there, and it's working, there is also transformative, transformative elements to it. So the ability to have a government wide app, so that you can actually apply for employment insurance as example, on your phone. So imagine in the wildfires that hit us last year. And it looks like we're going to potentially have another bad season. We, we had to evacuate large sections of the North, you have individuals that are coming into centers, and we're literally going there with tablets to be like, let's sign up for your EI, because if you can't work, you have still bills to pay.

Yep.

Well, imagine the ability to just open your app and kind of see that. Another thing that I think what kind of two elements, one, I think it's kind of ridiculous that we ask individuals to reintroduce themselves to the government every single time they get a new service, even if it's in the same department, sometimes, it's, it's not like we don't have the information, but there's a lack of sharing of information around departments. So that's something that I'm working on is kind of using Service Canada to get our hooks into the other ministries that have people's information and consolidating it into a single user experience profile. Because, I mean, the government itself has grown up in kind of a siloed manner with everybody controlling their own IT systems.

Yep.

But it should not be a mystery to you and I to know what information the government has on us, right? That is our information, we should be able to control our data, we should be able to know that. So imagine in the future, a dashboard, where you can kind of log in, and you can see all of the programs that you utilize or qualify for. So obviously your taxes is an obvious one, your Social Insurance Number, etc. But imagine grayed out boxes. So like, for example, there's like 330,000 single mothers in Canada who don't get the Canada Child Benefit, because they haven't done a certain amount of paperwork. We can literally gray that out on that person's dashboard and say, Listen, we think there's like $10-15,000 that you qualify for, would you mind just providing us with this information?

Yep.

And that goes for a whole bunch of programs. And all of a sudden, it's a joy to turn on your app and be like, Well, I wonder if there's other stuff like, Hey, I'd really like to retrofit my house. And I've heard rumors of this energy efficient program or interest free loan program that the government's providing, and I can just get the details there. The other thing that it does is, once we have that unified experience, we don't have to ask you for information that we already have. So when we, I told you earlier in the podcast that we mocked up the user experience for signing up for dental if we had digital credentials. So it's right now it's like, okay, you're Ryan, and this is your birthdate and this is the address that you live in. And here's some verification information and oh, by the way, we need to know all of this stuff in order to see if you qualify for dental care. The Experience Center digital credentials is much more of like, okay, sign in using your unified government login. And then we go, would you be okay sharing all this information with the health ministry and it would literally lists like your name, your address your, all those things that we would ask you for otherwise, it just lists them all and says like, are you okay if we share this?

Yep.

And then we only have to ask the additional questions, which in this case, is some information about your current dental coverage?

Yep.

Right? So instead of it being like an eight minute process and multiple pages in a forum where you can get lost or validate or errors, you lose access the internet, you would sign in, you would answer one or two questions, and you would submit, and we could actually instantly approve you. And we could digitally deliver your your dental benefits card to you in your digital wallet. It's, so you can imagine you could walk into a dentist, and you could say, I'd really love to get treated. And they'd be like, are you part of the government program? And you go, No. And you sign in, Yes. Now I am and, and you're getting your dental care service a minute later?

Yep.

Right. That is the world that we are building. And that is what the new ministry of Citizen Services is all about.

Well, and I'd say I think that's probably what the expectations are of a lot of citizens today in a digital world, right, like as I often say, people kind of live, you know, in an Amazon and Netflix and Google world. And so what they expect in terms of modern digital service delivery is driven by that. And that's, I think that that aligns with the vision. I mean, the challenge, of course, always is, as you kind of alluded to, we've got these processes and ways of working, that have kind of calcified over time in government, there's a lot of you know, there's a lot of inertia in there. And this, I mean, this, this kind of spans the spectrum, right? It's, you know, this notion of how do we be more human centered or user centere in government? How do we be agile, this even even kinda touches into procurement, right? Like our procurement processes, and our financing processes of projects in government tend to be based on more traditional waterfall ways of working. So I'm curious, you know, as Minister, how do you kind of make the case to be able to change these very kind of long embedded processes in government and make that cultural shift? And I mean, do you sense there's openness to it? Or do you have to do a lot of convincing of your colleagues and those within the bureaucracy to be able to move in this direction?

Yeah, I mean, I think any minister probably has a certain amount of sales that they have to they have to take on. And I mean, there's a lot to unpack in that question. I mean, the other thing, I mean, you mentioned about what people expect from a private sector experience. The other thing that they expect from a government experience is that, you know, complete privacy, right, complete control over their own data. But also, that that data will never be exposed to anybody. So there is a, there's a massive issue that we have with guaranteeing that the privacy of the individual is respected, but also that our systems are unhackable, because if that genie ever let out of the bottle, that can cause a lot of problems.

And as I was gonna say, the bar is a lot higher for government than it is for you know, a small, scrappy startup getting going.

That's right. And so and that's another vulnerability that we have, by having all of these kind of siloed departments, you can upgrade one department, but then you know, you can, you can approach a vulnerability in a less upgraded department. So consolidating around, you know, state of the art practice, and putting like a one wall in front of you, and individuals that might be trying to get that data. And be able to focus a lot of energy and making sure that's top of the line, secure, meets, you know, standing modern standards and exceeds them is very important. In terms of selling other ministers and procurement processes and the like. So you, you talked about waterfall, and I'm going to assume that your, your audience is sophisticated enough to know the difference between waterfall and agile?

Well, and I was gonna say, I often describe waterfall as you know, if you were building a bridge, right, it's that old kind of engineering approach, if you got all the requirements laid out ahead of time, and then you just execute on it. Whereas, you know, agile in the software development world is, you know, is very much saying how do you deal with complexity and uncertainty and be able to have those very kind of tight, you know, release and iteration cycles?

Yeah, so the Benefit Delivery Modernization Program is an agile program. And it's not only the the most substantial project the government's ever taken on. It's one of, one of the, it's not the first but one of the first that has embraced agile. And why is that necessary? Because when you go back to how the current benefit delivery system was built, you have to go way, way back, you know, 63 years ago to the time of COBOL, and mainframes and technology that was built for a specific purpose in an environment that had no internet and no modern regime of standards, etc. And then over time, though, wouldn't it be nice if we could take that data and do this or that and so government stacking different independent programs that kind of took the existing infrastructure and added a new element to it. So in order to modernize, the first job you have to do and actually Recoding America talks about this in California, which had to go through a similar process, you have to unpack the data model.

Yeah.

And it is unbelievably complex, to the point that, you know, some of the people that did the coding for that are either no longer alive or nowhere near government, right? And so, there's a lot of assumptions of like, we think this is how it works. And that's how it works in the like. And so, with your bridge building example, it is very difficult for somebody to go like, Well, I'm gonna design the perfect system over here, because they don't have all the information for how the current system is actually operating over here.

Yep.

And so there's a whole bunch of learning and work that has to happen, and you have to adjust and be agile on the fly. And so for modern technology procurement, or for modern coding or design, the way that you cope with that is you look at comparables, you and you adjust your budget as you go. And you and you provide a certain level of contingency. In fact, there's a lot of really great books that have recently come out about new ways to model the cost of large projects, not just in IT, but bridge building and sewer treatment plants and everything else.

Yep.

And so one of the challenges that I have is, in a in a in an IT project that is that big, obviously I need contingency funding, right? I need if there's something that's happening, I want to launch 7.1 million people onto OAS by the end of this year, you know, something's gonna happen along the way, where like, Oh, we didn't take this to account or this new problem that we didn't know was a problem before it came up. And if we still want to meet that deadline, it's going to have these costs or we have to get this work around, we have to code this or code that. But then you go into a traditional funding environment where you have to respect the budget cycle and Treasury Board submissions and and you know, this decision making legislative process that is by design slow to make sure that we're getting it right, when the most efficient system of technological development is fast and agile and decision. So a lot of that is educating the good people in the financial department and around the Treasury Board table, and looking for ways to think and procurement for thinking about ways on how to think about those problems in a modern context. And we are taking on those challenges. And I think that we are improving how we're dealing with that kind of complexity.

I mean, it's good to hear that those conversations are happening. And I agree with you. I mean, these are long standing processes. You know, as you said, sometimes, government being slow is a feature, not a bug, right. And it's designed that way on purpose. But I'm pretty strongly of the belief that we got to find ways to modernize some of this for these modern ways of working. So it's, it's great to hear some of those conversations are happening.

And I think, I think one of the ways you asked like, how are we like selling people or people coming on side? It's like when you sell anything, it's through successful implementation. So right now, there is a kind of, it's kind of humble bragging by bringing this up. But like, people are very satisfied with the dental process, right? The dental process went through a customer user experience design process that has never existed in the Government of Canada before. And it is going smoothly by design, because that was the focus. And now we're seeing the cost savings of it. And now we're seeing the efficiency of it. And now we're seeing how beneficial that approach is.

Yeah.

And so that naturally makes people go like, Okay, let's do more of that.

Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, I often say, you know, you can only innovate at the Speed of Trust, right? And part of building trust up is, is delivery, right?

I might steal that quote.

You're welcome.

You can only innovate at the speed of trust. I like that.

You're welcome to. I did want to ask you about the Canadian Digital Service. Because you know, this is a team near and dear to my heart, as I think you know, I was one of the co-founders of it, you know, years ago now. And I noted of interest when you got appointed as Minister, CDS moved out of Treasury Board Secretariat to under your portfolio. I'm curious a little bit about, you know, your sense of what CDS' mandate is going to be moving forward. And particularly, because as you might be aware, the Ontario government recently shut down the Ontario Digital Service. And so there's been a lot of discussion in digital government circles as of late as to, you know, what's happening with these digital services teams like like CDS. So just curious to get your take as minister as what kind of you see as the future of CDS and kind of its role as part of the broader ecosystem in the federal government?

Yeah. And I mean, in the book that we referenced, Recoding America, they have their own version of CDS as well in the United States and I actually spent some time not just with the author, but with some of the major players in the book, to talk through their experience and some of the lessons learned. So I'd say a few things. One, I think the CDS is an incredible opportunity. I think that it has been underutilized. I think that there was probably some, we'll call it like deceleration because of the pandemic and just some of the distractions that kind of happened. And I would also say that I don't quite have my head around what the future vision of it is. The head of the CDS has changed recently, went from Jessie Adcock to Paul Wagner, who's leading it now. I had asked for a vision of the future, which was being drafted with a with an April 2024 deadline, it's May the 3rd so that's something we're working through.

Yep.

But listen, I mean, if we think about why CDS was moved to the Citizen Service Mandate. Service Canada has been given, and Citizen Services, has been given this mandate within Service Canada, but it's not just within Service Canada, it is a broad mandate, to look at how we are delivering services across government, which means I am dipping in to other ministries, which is why the relationship with my other fellow cabinet ministers and other departments is so crucial and important. At the end of the day, when you find a process improvement in one ministry, there's a very good chance that there are 30 other ministries that can benefit from that improvement, almost overnight.

Yep.

But we have a situation where our HR departments don't necessarily cross-pollinate as well as we might think. So I think one, like really useful tool for the Canadian Digital Service, is to be a collection, not just an innovator who can solve some of these problems, I saw a really great, I can't talk about it, but I saw a really inexpensive AI solution that will be transformative if it works, that I'm very excited about. And I told the minister that presented this to me, you've got to wrap this up as a case study and deliver it to us because I can think of all these different locations of where it can help. And so you talked about innovating at the Speed of Trust, I think we need to make the Canadian Digital Service kind of the trusted source of innovation, where departments can feel free to go to the Canadian Digital Service with problems that they have not necessarily with solutions. But with Hey, this is taking too long, or this isn't efficient, etc.

Yep.

And that's one direction, I think that the information should travel. And then the other information, I think, is like, hey, we just solved this problem for Border Services. We need to send that out to our trusted group of other ministries to say like, is this something or a piece of technology that you think you can benefit from? And how can we help you integrate these same solutions in your department? So I think there's a two way street that can be created there. And I don't. but I don't, I don't think that's, I don't want to predefine the scope because this is an exercise that I've asked them to take on. And I really want to see where they take it. And I don't want them to listen to the minister talking on a podcast and be like, he defined where he wants to. So that everybody in the CDS working on the mission hears this, just ignore what I said. And I look very forward to your ideas.

Fair enough. But but is it but, it's fair to say it sounds like from what you're saying that you still very much view CDS as having a whole of government mandate, even though it's at Service Canada?

100%.

Okay.

100%. Definitely, yeah, we need to grow and improve the technical capacity of the public service overall. CDS can be one place for that.

Yep.

But we really need to, we need to make sure that we have people who understand state of the art technology, because a lot of the times you can only solve problems at the rate within the realm of the technology that you know, and there is a lot of out of the, you know, off the box out of the shelf solutions that are available, where it's like, oh, yeah, we could design that and think really hard about that and put 100 coders on that for a couple of years and come up with a solution. Or we can pay that guy $20 a month. And that solution is already been created.

Right.

And so having that type of people around who are state of the art within the government, is exactly what we need to do. And it's a really interesting opportunity for us because one, there's kind of a surplus of technology workers that are available right now given what's going on in the broader climate. But two it, if you are thinking I really want to use my skills as a technologist or as a coder or as a user interface designer or whatever, to really make an impact and to really help people in my country and to increase the productivity of my country. There is no better sales pitch in the Government of Canada. You literally get to roll out things that benefit 40 million people plus, and you get to see those benefits almost instantly, the rollout across the country. So that hasn't, that's not a pitch that I don't think has necessarily been made. But if you talk to some of the people that are doing some of the most exciting work within the Government of Canada, like these people are really transforming how our government works. And as we kind of creep towards this goal of, you know, I told you how we dropped from third best in digital government down to 32nd, like, we're a G7 nation, we have the education system, there's no reason we can't be first.

Yep.

There's no reason at all. So we need to attract those people to come into the government and help us reach that goal. And, you know, it's, it's going to, the people that get to doing that at this stage are going to have a lot of fun, and they're going to make a lot of really big impact.

Yeah, no, it's, I mean, that, that notion of how do we attract better talent in is, I think, a perennial issue and so glad to hear that that's that's top of mind as well. One last question I wanted to ask you before

One last? We're at the end?

Hey, I'm happy to talk for as long as you want to. So I'll ask more.

How long have we been doing this for?

We're I think I think we're up at the 40 minute mark now.

Let me compliment your interviewing skills, because this has been a treat. I mean, I when, when they asked me if I wanted to do the Think Digital podcast as like, you mean, like, go out and nerd out for an hour? Like absolutely, yeah, like, thanks for thanks for letting me do this. But sure, whatever.

No, it's, well, it's a pleasure, and we'd be happy to have you back to, you know, in the future to talk more, but I did want to really, you know, make sure to get your perspective as an elected official, right, you know, the the notion of political leadership around all this. Because I think one of the things I've seen globally and some of the work that I've done, and certainly we've talked about on the podcast, is that kind of necessary ingredient out political leadership, to move digital transformation forward in government. And, you know, I'm curious your perspective on number one, kind of what's the awareness of this? Right, because I think I think, you know, digital can sometimes be a nerdy issue, I would argue it's kind of the heart of modern government and so it needs to kind of transcend you know, the IT nerds to being something that everybody's talking about. But you know, both I mean, in the corridors of power when you're talking to your colleagues in Parliament, but also like back home in your writing, I mean, I know you're, you're, known as a very hard working constituency MP, I saw in an article, you were saying, you know, you knock on 10s, of 1000s of doors every year. Do these issues that we've been talking about today, do they come up, do your constituents talk to you about them? I'm kind of wondering your sense of general awareness of this, and how we get more political attention on these issues, particularly given that we're likely going into an election year next year, you know, how do we get this as part of the public discussion around the future of government?

So first of all, thank you for your compliments on the door knocking because that is, I spent a lot, 67,000 doors in 2023, we're going to top it in 2024.

It's, it's, it's a lot, it's a lot of, I used to work in politics back in my 20s. And I knocked on a lot of doors myself back home in Saskatchewan. And so I know exactly how much work it can be.

I mean, that and the reason that we do it so much is because that's really what gives me the confidence to go back to Ottawa. And when I have a conversation with the Prime Minister, or Cabinet colleagues or caucus or, or in a debate in the House of Commons, that's where I get my confidence from. I'm just not confident unless I'm hearing from what actually people are experiencing on the doors. In terms of political leadership on this, there's absolutely a role, there's a role inside of government, but there's also a role within the public. And you know, I tell them stories all the time as best I can with like, I think passport renewal, that's a pain point that people can understand and get their heads around really easily. But also talking about like what the province is doing. So you know, the province of BC has launched a digital credential, I have it on my, and it's an app on my phone. And a couple years ago, for the first time, I renewed my insurance online. And this was a new service that the governor of BC had brought in. And so if you think about my old experience, I would drive across the second Narrows Bridge over to the superstore in North Vancouver, I would walk up to the autoplan center there at the front, I would get to the front, meet somebody that I probably never met before. Although I think once I had the same guy twice, just in case he's watching. I walked through my life story of car insurance or what I think I need, I, I walked back and take a picture of my odometer because I forgot to do that come back in. I leave with some anxiety that maybe I don't have the right coverage, right, I put a little sticker on my license plate, I drive home and all in all, you know, it's a couple of hours to do that, right. And then I think about what it was now. So when I did it the first time it was a little more complicated because I had to go through a process to verify my digital credential. But now that my digital credential is verified, I just did my renewal a couple of months ago, and this is the process. I get an email saying, Hey, your car insurance is about to expire. Would you like to renew it? I go yes, I click a link that's provided in the email. When I get there they go Well, we need to make sure it's you. So if you open up the app on your phone and just show that it's you with your digital credential that goes yes, no problemsjust click the button, now they know it's me. They go this is what you had last year. Would you like it again? I go Yes. And they go, Oh, this is the credit card we have a file for last year, would you like to use it again, I go yes. And they go, congratulations, you have car insurance, print out this form, put it in your glove box, right. So a two to three hour experience has just become like a two minute experience and I didn't have to leave my house, I have the insurance in my car, you know, people will remember the days where like, you had to put the sticker on your car, and you forgot to renew. And now you can't even take your car to the place because it's not insured, you have to cab like, just so much more convenient. And people start experiencing that just in the slightest little way. They're gonna start expecting it. And they're gonna start wondering, What do you mean, I have to come down there and stand in line like, what what century are we living in? So I think telling those stories and communicating them, of course, there's this, this isn't even addressing the whole tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, digital ID, World Economic Forum, like there's a lot of people that are trying to throw a lot of like things into this. For anybody watching this digital credentials is just your driver's license information that we already have, right? It's just available on your phone, right that Ukraine has a digital passport. So you can go on a plane with your with your phone and like, and it is the next logical step to providing a seamless customer service experience, and has two big benefits that are good, it's a win-win. One, it's easier on you as the customer, right? It makes everything simpler, everything is more easy. And the second thing, also to your benefit, it makes it less expensive for government, right? So we're going to be able to save money, become more efficient, which will allow us to provide more services and provide a better quality of experience going forward. I've had some public servants who have said, Wait a second, if we're automating, or digitalizing. Like are we worried about jobs? And the thing that I tell everybody is like, listen, we have no shortage of ambition for what we can deliver to citizens. And like the launch of dental care, and PharmaCare and child care, and all those things, I think show that we have this ambition. What we do lack is resources. And so it is in all of our interests to make this as efficient as possible. And if you talk to some people that are like somebody's doing a Phoenix program, visiting 90 different screens to do, you know, to deal with like one claim, that's not a very good job anyway, right? Like, we want people being able to have good jobs, where they're being able to serve the customers in front of them easily. And if we do all of those things right, it means we'll be able to do more for less money, and it'll make our country more productive. It'll make our businesses more productive. It'll make our people more productive, and it will make us all better off. So is there political leadership needed to sell this? Yes. And that's my pitch.

It's a great, no, it's a great pitch. And I think, as you said, I think if we can get people thinking in terms of those very tangible benefits, hopefully from kind of the bottom up, you know, it kind of percolates across that. I mean, I've always kind of liked to hope that, you know, digital is kind of a nonpartisan issue that everybody wants government that's more effective, that's more efficient, that gives better services. And so, you know, it's great to see that we have, I think, an increasing number of people thinking about this, and, and my thanks to you for the work that you're doing and taking on this role. You know, it's, it's a new position, obviously, but I personally think it needed one to have somebody around the Cabinet table whose full time job it is to think about how do we improve services. So thank you for the work you're doing. And thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us today. This was super interesting. And I think for our listeners, gives some really important insight, you know, your priorities and how you're approaching this from, from your position.

Well, it's been an absolute pleasure, I'm happy to come back anytime. I would say one last thing, because this has been the other worry that some people have had, they hear me get so passionate about digital, and then they talk to me about well, wait a second, maybe I don't have access to the internet, or maybe I'm not good with computers, or I have a disability doesn't allow me to have a digital experience. And what I want to make everyone aware of is that our strategy is digital first, yes, but it is not digital only. So when I talk about taking all those people out of line, that is taking people out of line not to eliminate the line, it is to take those people out of line so that when you go stand in line, there's less people standing in front of you. And so even on the dental care program, I did the big announcement this week, I talked about all these, you know, 10s of 1000s of people that signed up online, which is for a lot of people, that's the experience that they want. But for the people that still want to go stand in a line or are just more comfortable picking up the phone and calling Service Canada, those traditional channels, those are still being provided, they will always be provided. And you can expect a better customer service user experience, because for every person that chooses to use the digital service, that's one less person that is taking away a customer service experience for you. I just want to make that clear so that anybody that has that concern can let that concern wash away.

That's a great, no, thanks, thanks for that. And thanks again Minister beech. Really appreciate having you on and we will most definitely take you up on your offer to have you back next season.

Sounds great. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. And that's our show for this week. We're gonna be taking a bit of a hiatus over the summer as we prepare for the next season. But while you wait for us to return, make sure to catch up on previous episodes from this season and the first season. We'd love to hear which one was your favorite. Let us know in the comments below on YouTube, email us at podcast@thinkdigital.ca, or use the #letsthinkdigital on social media. And as always, please remember to like and subscribe. And if you're listening to us on your favorite podcast app and you enjoyed this episode, be sure to give us a five star review. This really helps us to grow our audience and reach new listeners. We're also on the web at letsthinkdigital.ca, you can visit our website and sign up for our newsletter and also catch up on past episodes of the podcast. Today's episode of Let's Think Digital was produced by myself, Wayne Chu and Aislinn Bornais. Thanks so much for listening. And let's keep thinking digital.