Season 3 premiere! For those of us in the digital transformation and government modernization space, we are feeling tired and burnt out. We heard a lot about this last season where we talked about how it seems like the efforts to modernize how government serves its citizens are stalled. Here in Canada it feels like we're stuck in the mud. We heard about projects stalling and innovation teams being disbanded. Most notably the Ontario Digital Service having been disbanded this past spring.

That's why this season on the podcast we're going to explore how we get unstuck, or as our guest this week says, putting in the "hard yards" of actually realizing the promise of digital government and modernization. This week we have Natasha Clarke, the Deputy Minister of Cybersecurity and Digital Solutions in the Government of Nova Scotia. Over the last 25 years, she has worked to build programs and services that are easy and accessible for the people that use them. That includes going from leading a 30 person digital service team to now leading Nova Scotia's shared services department of over 700 people.

In our conversation she talks about putting in the hard work of institutionalizing the digital mindset in government, the challenges and benefits of working on digital transformation in a smaller organization at the provincial level, and the work needed to build a strong foundation for modernization that'll result in real structural change over time.

Natasha is going to be speaking at the FWD50 conference in Ottawa next week (as are we!) so if you are planning to be there either in-person or virtually be sure to check out our sessions and come say hi!

Watch on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzBS4gQJ2L4

Related Links

• Nova Scotia Department of Cyber Security and Digital Solutions
• Natasha Clarke at FWD50
• What I wish my boss knew about digital, FWD50 Workshop by Think Digital

Chapters

00:00 Intro and Welcome

03:54 Interview with Natasha Clarke

07:43 The Nova Scotia Digital Evolution

15:16 Chief Digital Officer vs CIO

23:04 Lessons from Around the World

29:31 Scaling Digital Transformation

33:25 Cybersecurity

43:24 Setting Up Generational Change

56:42 Conclusion

Ryan 0:04

Natasha Clarke 3:54

Oh, Ryan, I'm so thrilled to be here, and likewise, I've been watching what you've been up to. And it's real privilege to be here joining you today to share a few insights.

Ryan 4:06

Thank you. And so, you know, as we start on this, I mean, I'm curious to have you share with people a little bit about your journey and how you got involved in this thing we call digital government. I know you've had, you know, an interesting and some, sometimes windy career path, which I which I resonate with a lot personally, but maybe you could share a little bit about you know, how, what kind of brought you into government, and why in particular, you got interested in this topic of how we modernize government for the digital era?

Natasha Clarke 4:35

Ryan 7:43

Yeah. And well, and then, I mean, I think that takes me exactly to where I wanted to go on this because, because I think even, you know, in your time in the Nova Scotia government, there's been this interesting evolution that's happened. And, I mean, we've seen this across jurisdictions around the world, this, this desire to, what I would might call, like, institutionalize this idea of digital government, right? And exactly your point, being user centric, you know, being agile, being, being open in terms of how you're approaching problem solving. And I'm curious, maybe you could, you could talk a little bit about the evolution within Nova Scotia, because, as some people might be aware, you know, a few years back now you created the Nova Scotia Digital Service around the same time that the Ontario Digital Service, and federally the Canadian Digital Service were created, but then that has kind of gone over a really fascinating evolution into becoming a full ministry, you know, and setting up the Ministry of Cybersecurity and Digital Solutions. So be curious if you can kind of talk about that evolution from kind of a small digital services team to now being a full ministry, and what that, what that has looked like, and for you as a leader, what that has been like?

Natasha Clarke 8:46

No but, I mean, I think there's a lot that I want to unpack there, and I think you're raising a couple of really interesting issues. I mean, number one, you know, congratulations. But I think that's testament to the approach that you were taking to have that buy in, to go from the 30, you know, 30 person startup team to suddenly taking on, you know, a ministry with hundreds of people that you're bringing all these functions together in. You know, I think as you've mentioned, you know, having that leadership air cover, taking the, you know, the showing by doing approach, seem to be really common elements you know, we see in teams around the world that are successful on this. I'm curious, I mean, two things I wanted to ask you about, maybe just to start with. You know, you talked about becoming the first Chief Digital Officer for the government of Nova Scotia. And this is still a relatively new thing in a lot of governments. Right? Almost every government around the world has a Chief Information Officer, but some could argue that position in the way it's been thought about, has been a bit of a relic of the 1990s early 2000s. Curious if you can kind of articulate how a Chief Digital Officer is different than kind of our traditional model of what a CIO is?

Yeah, it's a really great question and I certainly wouldn't espouse myself as an expert on, you know, CIO roles and things like that. And I think I feel like I read this in a Mark Schwartz book once about, like, the CIO C-suite position was created to, like, manage these people that no one really understood, right? And really hasn't been around that long when you think about C-suite roles. So from where I sit and having kind of actually had to kind of wear both hats, I don't know if it personally, I don't know if it matters so much about the title. Maybe it does when you want to indicate something feels and looks different, I think that that might matter. To me, what matters the most is a few things: your come-from place and your mindset, meaning my initial starting from place is not a technology conversation, right? And it's interesting how the system still, even to this day, oftentimes the first, the first phone call is a technology conversation, right? And I'm for the first one to talk about not actually being a technologist, really, I understand it enough to maybe get myself in trouble or be able to ask the right kinds of questions. So I think, to me, that's actually what's most that's one of the most important things is, what are the first like, how are you showing up in terms of the kinds of questions you're asking, the kinds of conversations you're having? But also, I think what's also really important is, and again, I think this is born out of kind of that historical formation of the CIO role, and IT teams, which is they were seen as kind of a supplier relationship, right? Something to control. So what that means is the teams have historically been under a command and control type of culture, right? And, and what that has done is it's diminished that expertise. And so I think the other piece that's really important is showing up as a servant leader, right? So one of the first ahas, or kind of interesting observations I had, and there was many, when I sort of took on this role as Associate Deputy in 2019 was; everyone was looking to me to tell them what to do, right? Because that was the culture in the organization, was we need the CIO to tell us kind of what to do and where we're going. I buy into the vision part, yes, that's absolutely the role that I have. But in terms of, like dictating how someone should do their role? That is frightening. Like I'm one person, I only, I have a level of expertise in a certain way. We hire people to be experts in the things that they do, and I want to hear from them about what makes sense, on how we need to approach it. And so I don't, to me, I feel like that feels like a pervasive issue with that kind of more traditional CIO function. So from where I'm sitting at Ryan, I guess it matters less about the title, unless you're trying to demonstrate something's different, and it's more about the leadership approach, your mindset, how, how you see this role as being very it is a, it is a part of the business. Like we aren't waiting for the business to tell us what to do. We are the business.

You are the business. Well, and I think you know, you benefit from the fact that your ministry combines that service part of it with the IT part. Under one umbrella, right? Which, which organizationally brings that together. And I think you're right. I think this notion of a Chief Digital Officer, it can do many of the functions a CIO has traditionally done, but it's a signaling mechanism, right, that this is different. And I think a lot of people listening will, you know, will recognize that this idea of kind of digital ways of working, modern digital, part of that is empowered teams, as you're talking about, and that's a different approach to the traditional kind of IT shop that is very much they get some requirements from a distant business team. They build a thing, they throw it back over the fence, not having any interaction with the actual people using it, or knowing whether it's what they need in the end.

Yeah. And Ryan like what I want to just pick up on that a little bit. One of the other observations, and we're still working on this, that was also kind of a really big aha thing for me. In some leadership work that I've done over my career, we spent some time talking about kind of relational components of being a leader, meaning you and I in relation, and what that looks like. And so learning about partnership, and what it means is that we both show up with 100% commitment to an outcome, right? When I first arrived, kind of again overseeing, kind of the traditional IT pieces, the language the organization used when talking about departments that we supported, because we were a shared service, right? Was client. They talked about departments as being clients. And I actually have such an allergic aversion to that, like that mechanism, to me, fundamentally the client, if you want to use that word is the Nova Scotia, it's the taxpayer, it's the person we are here to serve. Departments to me are partners, because when we show up, we're coming, yes, we are a shared service, and yes, there's service elements of that, in terms of how we provide best practice and our expertise. But it's back to this idea and this notion of multidisciplinary teams. And that if we come to the table, we are here to actually bring our expertise in, whether that's agile delivery or human centered service design or product management or data analytics, or, in this case, now in our world today, cybersecurity, all of those disciplines. But we also need to have legal and privacy and our program experts, and frankly, operational staff, frontline staff, involved together. And so that is actually something I was so strong about in terms of departments are not clients. But again, it's rooted back in that kind of old mindset that IT is that supplier relationship, it's something to be contracted and managed, which is that ticket-taking we'll tell you what to do, like the requirements, over the over the fence kind of thing. And I think that's I don't know if I would have actually really appreciated all of this if I had stayed as just being the leader of that digital startup team.

Yep, yep. Well, and as you said, I mean the language that people use, even in their day to day. I mean, it shapes the culture, right? It has a it has a real, tangible impact on that. It's a really interesting insight. I'm also curious, as you kind of went through this journey of going from, you know, Nova Scotia digital team startup, to full ministry. Was there inspiration or lessons learned from other organizations in Canada, around the world, you know, I think about the Government Digital Service in the UK, Ontario Digital Service, you know, you know, in the provincial government in Ontario. I'm wondering if, if you know, because you kind of, this all came of age during this period where you saw this proliferation of these kind of, you know, what I'll call kind of new wave digital teams and Chief Digital Officers being established. Were there particular lessons learned from some of those teams that might have been a few years ahead of you that you kind of took to heart or saw proved out as you as you've been building up your team in Nova Scotia?

Yeah, I have a saying. It's called R and D, rip-off and duplicate. 100%. I would say one of the one of the sad days for me is kind of the state that I guess Twitter and now X is, and I'm trying to kind of get reconnected on blue sky and things like that, because in those early days for us, especially when... we didn't know what we didn't know. And with GDS, especially, you know, publishing, you know, their principles, working in the open, it really did create, I guess, a force multiplier for us, like it helped to accelerate our thinking here, because we saw what was happening elsewhere. And I remember meeting Hillary Hartley for the first time. I think it was a Fed Prov territorial meeting or something that was in Ontario, and they had invited her to come. For me, Hillary Hartley was like a giant, like the shoulders of giants, right? Like you've got Tom Loosemore and Mike Bracken and Andrew Greenway and Ben Terrett and that, and that crowd, there's many many, Janet Hughes. Hillary was somebody that I remember reading about in Fast Company Magazine about Barack Obama's, you know, startup inside of government. And I remember just being an offer, of course, she gave me a gigantic hug and said, I have been waiting to meet you, right? And I'm like, You're so funny. All of that to say, and even yourself, Ryan and Nick Wise and the early days of CDS. I don't know if folks really appreciated how much energy you were all giving, at least to us here in Nova Scotia, to have the courage to keep going and to look at those patterns and not necessarily duplicate them here exactly the same, but contextualize them for us, right? Because we weren't in a position like back in the day, like when I had the when we were the 30 person team, like we we managed to wrangle one software developer from our IT shared service partner. I then subsequently, years later, learned, well, they probably only had three, right? But, you know, so we weren't scaling teams, let's say like a GDS was. But that didn't mean we couldn't take their principles and start to adopt them and practice them for ourselves. And so I have to say, the work that happened in those teams, and then we were very fortunate. David Eaves at Harvard was pulling together with, I think, Public Digital at that time, because then that would have been later on, was pulling together some digital teams from from across the globe to come together for some of these digital government convenings. And I remember my colleague, Arlene Williams and I going for the very first time, and we literally felt like these tiny country cousins coming and meeting, you know, the US digital service, Jen Pahlka, Hillary, Tom Loosemore and this gang and David had us line up to assess where we were on our maturity. And Arlene and I asked if there was another room to enter, which was, like, low maturity. Now, when I think back on all of that, like, I'm so proud of where we've come, but also, you know, having that community and being able to stay connected on social media and the internet and sharing, because we worked in the open was so, so important. And that is one thing I wish we had had a bit more capacity to do a bit more of early on, was a bit more of that open sharing. And, you know, we're starting to, you know, flex that muscle a little bit more for us now that was really a capacity issue. But, yeah, absolutely, I don't feel that we would be where we are today without the work that others have been doing globally, but also just being so willing to share and connect and take a call.

Well, and I think that's one of the interesting dynamics, you know, about this, and having been involved in that time that some of the work we were doing federally was help, helping the direction as well. It's kind of, you know, not to sound too cynical, but as I often say, in Canada, we kind of don't want to be first on anything, but we're happy to be fourth or fifth, right? So having, having those fast follower, you know, moments can be really helpful, but you're raising an interesting point about, you know, how smaller organizations or smaller levels of government, just in terms of, you know, in terms of resources and head count. And I'm kind of curious, you know, the theory of change on this, because I think there's, there's a line of thought that says maybe it's easier to make real change in a smaller organization versus in a large system. I'm curious your reflections on that?

I definitely feel that in some respects, we have probably have some similar challenges the scale might be different, right, when I think about some of the culture change, or the structural changes of like historical, like the Westminster model and things like that, and even what I refer to, and hopefully this is not inappropriate, like the classism system of government, right? Where policy is kind of above operations or implementation.

Which is a huge issue that we talk about a lot here. We had Jennifer Pahlka on the podcast last season, and this is a big theme I know of her work in the US. Do you think that's different in Nova Scotia? I think this is an important point. Like, is operational work more valued, for lack of a better way of putting it at a provincial level than you think it is federally?

I think it is, and I think it's a scale issue, right? Because, because we are smaller, you're not as removed. Now that, that issue, though, still exists, especially depending on where you are in the system. Some areas of government, it's more prevalent than others, but I would say writ large, that hasn't been as significant of an issue for us. And I think it's a scale difference, because, because, because we, I mean, we just tipped over to a million people in Nova Scotia, right? So, which is big news, and it's awesome, but our government is not like I literally text and chat and call and have meetings with the minister on the regular right? That's not necessarily, and I mean, I appreciate I'm a Deputy Minister now, but that wasn't even happening as an Associate Deputy, and even as an Executive Director, I could have some regular briefings and check in times with my minister. I don't feel that that's necessarily the case depending on your scale and size. So I do think there is a scale, there's a benefit and a negative with scale, right? The downside for us is that it is harder for us, like the FTE head count thing is, is something that we have to always be very sensitive to, you know, not having too big of a government and public service to like this population that we have. So I think we've had to be very innovative about how we, how we fund teams or buy teams. So we find ourselves sometimes buying teams, maybe more often than maybe a larger government would. So I just feel like you have to understand your scale, challenges and opportunities, right? Because there it's a double edged sword in some ways, right, but I do feel the challenges are all very familiar. It just might be different due to scale, and something might be a bigger challenge for me. So the labor market here at Nova Scotia and finding digital talent is a real challenge, versus maybe if you're situated in Toronto or Vancouver or London. Now they have talent challenges, though, as well. It's just in in different ways.

But I think it's an important lesson, right, that a one size fits all approach almost never works, but, but you know, even if there are common challenges that tailoring it to the local context, in my experience too. I think is really, really important around that. I wanted to talk about cybersecurity for a little bit because I think, you know, one of the things that struck me when your new ministry got announced is that, you know, cybersecurity is prominent in the title. In fact, it's the first word in the title, Ministry of of Cybersecurity and Digital Solutions. You know, this is, obviously, I kind of feel like cybersecurity is basic table stakes for anybody doing, doing, you know, digital work in the modern era. And there seems to sometimes be this, this kind of balance that folks have to face between, how do you move fast, you know, and innovate and still have trusted systems that, that can withstand modern security challenges. Be curious, your kind of thoughts on how you've been approaching this in Nova Scotia, and maybe even lessons learned along the way? I know you've had, you know, some, some very public cyber security you know, issues with the Move It, the Move It situation that happened a few months ago, which, which you may want to share some folks, and just in general, you know what the approach has been in Nova Scotia to make cyber security very central to what you're doing around digital?

Yeah, cyber security... you know, when I first started out in this in this business or in this world, I guess, it wasn't actually the main storyline, right? Like it was something that was kind of in the backdrop, more nuisance based types of things. Man, if that is something that I can comment on in terms of the type of change that's happened in my 15 years in the public service, it's that's an understatement, right, in terms of what's happened. So I feel that putting, having our department name, named that, and having that being the first kind of prominent component of it really does speak to the government's commitment around how important this is and why what I think is really unique about what we're doing here, I believe, and I'd be open, certainly, to hearing from others on this. But because we are a digitally led organization where we have our, our you know, the principles around user needs, making things, you know, make it easy for people, make it simple, being agile and responsive, but also, really importantly, working in the open. I think that is, that does that holds true all the way through. Now, obviously I can't, I cannot discuss components of our cyber security posture. That's that's not best practice. What we're trying to actually work on as a part of our overall cultural change in the department, at the same time as doing the change in the in the whole system is. Is bringing in that multi disciplinary approach. So traditionally, we saw that cyber security was this kind of team off to the side doing its kind of own thing and really being kind of like an auditor, of like what people were doing. I'm not suggesting for a second that those components are not important and still a part of an overall program. But what I think we need to think about is, we have moved from cyber security being something that can be controlled and managed into a world of complexity, and so you cannot use the same approaches that worked in the past, which was maybe that kind of checklist checking of things to tackle those types of issues now. So what that means on the ground for us is very much kind of a security by design approach, meaning we want to embed security mindset into our teams right from the start. So just as we focus on users, we also need to think about privacy and security, and these things cannot be at a total cost to each other. We have to understand how you balance all of that, because if we only focus on cybersecurity risk, we might actually miss doing something that actually prevent, like creates a larger risk if we don't deliver this service, right? So it is attention, but I also believe you can work through that if you have that kind of multidisciplinary approach. And maybe that's Pollyanna of me, but certainly that's from a mindset and a culture perspective, that's the way we're trying to move. That this is everybody's responsibility, we have to think about this right from the beginning, and if we design with those things in mind, meaning, don't put this data on the internet if you don't need to. And man, that was certainly something that we learned through the Move It experience. And then I would say, you know, this is a journey for all of us, for sure, like we are on a journey. We don't have this all figured out, either. But also, I really believe strongly that we cannot use the methods and approaches of the past to help us in the world that we are in today, because it is changing so rapidly. And then in terms of kind of the Move It experience, I think we were less than 10 days as a new department like I was appointed a deputy minister maybe seven or eight days before this happened. And I wish it hadn't happened, obviously, the effects that it's had on Nova Scotians, I was affected as a public servant. I did not, I would not wish that on us.,for sure. I am, however, very proud of the response the team, the team did, or the team, how they stepped into this as quickly as we were able to, but really also also holding true to those principles that we talked about; transparency, working in the open as much as we could. So the minister and I were very committed, for example, to sharing with Nova Scotians, even if we didn't know everything, even if we didn't have all the answers, keeping people informed throughout as we were able to learn more. And definitely we, you know, we obviously published our lessons learned. You know, publicly, again, not getting into some technical details that would reveal our cyber posture, but there was a lot to be learned that I think translates even into that broader Digital Government agenda. You know?

Well, and I was going to say, I think, you know, the report's really interesting. We'll post a link to it in the show notes, for those who want to learn a little bit more about, you know, this particular case study and the response to it. And one of the things that report about the Move It breach kind of highlighted was the need for training, you know, at an employee level. Because I think you're right that multidisciplinary approach is the antidote to both, you know, cybersecurity challenges, but also making sure that cybersecurity isn't just seen as in opposition to innovation, but, you know, is paired up with it. I'm curious, I mean, this kind of maybe transitions us a bit to talking a bit about, how do we, you know, inculcate these types of behaviors in the public service? Because I feel like there's these bundle of modern, digital era behaviors, things like being agile, being user centered, working in the open that we want to see employees, you know, building into their work, regardless of whether they're in IT or policy or programs or wherever they are. I know your team has been doing some work on, you know, trying to strengthen this within Nova Scotia. So wondering if you can kind of talk to your experience of, how do you do that transformation at an individual employee level throughout the organization?

Yeah, definitely. And I, you know, obviously, I feel like in some ways, we're still starting on that journey. I mean, some of what I talked about earlier, about working alongside colleagues in the organization that wouldn't necessarily see themselves as digital people, the traditional kind of sense of digital people. And I think that's taken us like obviously, it's gotten us quite a long way in terms of teaching by doing with others. The other thing I just want to highlight on because then I'm going to touch on some work we've been doing around our digital code of practice that I think is really important is that finding people in the organization that are doing like minded things that are very values and principle based like principle based aligned. They might not use internet era language like they might not talk about user needs, but we know that we have paired up with others in Nova Scotia that are doing restorative work, that are using different approaches to, you know, dealing with social or social justice issues. So I do think there's something in there around how you find other like minded folks to help build that capacity and use words and language in a way that resonates with, again, the folks that might not be inherently digitally native, while at the same time, I do really believe that as public servants, I think digital competency is as important as, as a deputy, I have to have some financial and budgeting competency, right? So we are, I'm hoping, very soon, going to be in a place to be able to publish our digital code of practice. We, as I said on the outset, like we've been so focused on delivery, I feel like we haven't focused enough on writing some things down, but we have reached a place now where in order to scale this in the system, we need to demonstrate to folks what good looks like. And I think I just read recently, I want to say it was, might have been a public digital post around patterns and anti patterns. And I think just all of those examples of how we frame up to folks, how to think about what good looks like is really, really important. And so I'm, I'm really excited to be able to finally be in a place where we can start to publish those things, but we've been doing some things in small ways. I know everyone's talking about AI right now, like, I can't, I don't know if I go to a meeting where someone's not saying, you know, Tash, we need the AI. I really think all of these principles, all of the things we've been talking about in the digital government context for as long we have, are just even triply important. And I know Jen Pahlka talks a lot about that, like in her book and in her in some of her recent posts, it's just even more important. And we certainly learned that through kind of the Move It experience around even the data literacy and the public service, right? How we need to improve these things, and I don't see that as necessarily just my job or the department's job, but we are here to support the organization in helping to understand how they tackle and approach these things. They shouldn't be afraid. We're here to help, and it only is just going to make us all kind of better and stronger. And I, like I said, I am excited about being in a place where we're going to be able to get out there and share some learning through this digital code of practice. And you know what? We'll iterate on it, we will absolutely learn more from our own experiences that will help us to refine and tweak that as we'll continue to learn from others as well,

Well, and I have to imagine, I mean, I, you know, I subscribe to the notion of showing through doing is really powerful. But at some point, you know, putting pen to paper and capturing that, I think, is important for kind of institutional memory longevity. And this kind of leads me into thinking about, you know, how do we make sure that digital teams and the work that you're doing is able to kind of endure beyond short term mandates, right? And, and, you know, because I think, I think thinking about how digital evolves throughout leadership changes. And that leadership change could be, you know, deputy ministers changing. It could be political changes when new governments come in. I feel like we're now at this level of kind of maturity where some of these digital teams have been around for pushing a decade or more, where we're starting to see, you know, new administrations coming in. And I'm curious, you know, any insights you have on, on how do you set these teams up for the long term, recognizing that some of this work is probably generational in nature?

Yeah, it absolutely is generational. Like, when you think about it, and I have to remind myself of that, because I'm so impatient that, you know, I'm here for a very short duration. Like, I mean that generally, as a human being, right? Like, I have this little tiny window of time, and what's, what's the legacy need to look like, or what needs to kind of be be put in place to make sure this carries on? For me personally, I had probably a little bit of a teary moment in the last year with our executive team here at the CSDS, and I can't remember the specific context of it. We might have been in a workshop together. Actually, it may have been even like a local kind of networking, where people were giving talks and having being on panels, and everyone was, everyone was talking about the things we were doing, the principles, the messaging, all the things that I feel like, personally, I've been saying for a long time, and as a as a leader, and it's just as a human I'm like, I felt like this weight coming off, like there are all these others now that are, that are passionate about this mission and are committed and... and it's not that I felt like it was all up to me. I didn't, but that that I did feel like a weight of it sometimes, and I want to make sure that when my time is up here, at terms of working with the provincial government or what have you, that it does carry on, that the essence of this mission does not get lost because it's so important. Because it's really about the relationship we have with Nova Scotians and with, with citizens. So I do feel that you come, you get, you have to get past the showing by doing, and there are some harder levers I think that do need to be, kind of be put in place, having the formation of the department, certainly, in my opinion, really did help to solidify that, we have, we have our own section of the Public Service Act that outlines the pieces that we're responsible for and, and certainly there's components of digital transformation and digital government and all the language in there. But I feel that that scaling of of these practices and the the learning is also going to be really helpful in terms of carrying that on. And I think one of the things I've reflected on, and this is where you're the meeting the people where they are as well, is like, don't get so tethered to things being your words or your approach. Find what that core value is, or the core element of that shared objective is, and it's okay to kind of sway in a direction if it means you're ultimately going to achieve that same outcome. But I do feel like you do need that balance of kind of the harder levers of government, which are institutional structure, legislation, policy, those things really do help, because that's what we're all, that's all what we do here. We follow the rules, right? And so, you know, how do we kind of nudge those rules in, in the way that makes sense, but they aren't, so they're guiding, and they're not restrictive. Because if there's anything I have also learned on this journey, Ryan, part of what we're here to try to do is create an organization that can be agile and responsive. Change is not something that can be controlled and managed away, which I think is what that kind of traditional approach, that risk aversion approach takes. If anything I have learned from a pandemic, floods, wildfires, you know, all of the challenges that we're facing in society, our government institutions have to be agile and responsive, and we can only do that if we create ways of working that are principle based, that are that approach the problem from really understanding the problem before we jump into solutions, and ways of practicing and working that, that are responsive, that don't tether us down to these rigid kind of approaches, but yet we can still hold ourselves accountable and be transparent about what we're doing.

Yeah, no, I love that. It resonates alot with me. I think in particular, you bringing up this fact that some of those hard levers we have to pull on, whereas in my experience, I think in Canada, we've been a little bit reluctant to make the bigger structural changes that we need to, sometimes to institutionalize these approaches. And it kind of leads me to my closing questions. I know we've only got a few minutes left, but I want to ask you maybe first a bit of a glass half empty question, and then a glass half full one, you know, on the half empty side, I mean, you know, I worry a little bit that we're in a little bit of a lull right now in Canada, particularly around digital government, right? We've, you know, last season we talked about the Ontario Digital Service being disbanded. I know a lot of digital teams are trying to think about, what does impact look like for anybody who follows, you know, the UN has their egovernment rankings and can, the new rankings came out last month. Canada has dropped from- to 47th place in the world, down from a high of Third, you know, in 2010. And I know you do a lot of work, not just in Nova Scotia, but with the joint councils and across Canada, working with other jurisdictions. You know, here from coast to coast, I'm wondering if you see warning signs ahead for the digital government movement, and where you think you know some of the some of the barriers are that we're going to have to overcome, specifically in the Canadian content to move forward?

Yeah, we probably could do a whole podcast on this, Ryan, as I feel pretty passionate about it, in terms of Canada and the challenges I think that we are facing. We have a productivity problem in the country. I don't think I'm stating anything that's like, not fact out there, and that does concern me, especially as a parent of like a soon to be 16 year old and I think about the future. And I, but I also feel invigorated that we have, we know, I see the pathway forward in terms of the some of the things that I think we can be doing. And so I know David Eaves is doing a lot of work now on on digital public infrastructure, and you can see globally those jurisdictions that really have done investment in that, in those spaces, and how they are really kind of probably ranked a bit higher on those rankings. And so I do feel that we meet, we need to move past kind of what I would call the first generation of digital government, where it was this radical kind of focus on the user and and really trying to be kind of a bit disruptive in terms of the thinking. And I'm not suggesting that those efforts don't still need to be done in Canada. What I do think we need to move past, though, is into this next phase, which I would call the kind of harder yards, which is some of that we do need to talk about digital trust and credentials, and how people can engage in the digital economy in a safe way, and we provide those foundational documents today, and how can we be doing that in a better way? You know, when I think about data exchanges and how we can better use data in this country to reduce friction for citizens, but also be more transparent and and create better service experiences. The other observation I think I'm making is that IT in a lot of jurisdictions, or digital, is still seen as kind of a cost center or a function that falls underneath sort of another ministry, and having the lived experience of going from, you know, that I have, I guess, of being kind of an executive and then an Associate Deputy, kind of within a department, and again, really important that all of that happened. To now being kind of a deputy with a seat at the table, very connected to kind of what is happening across the whole system, I can now really see the impact that that has had in terms of our ability to influence real system transformation, sort of stepping beyond kind of the one off services. We are working on transformation as an example, with our Registry of Motor Vehicles program with the departments of Public Works and Service Nova Scotia at large scale now, and that is going to not just modernize technology and digital services, but also kind of the way under which they can deliver policy and legislation. And so I do feel, I do worry about our slipping, I guess, or what, what we're doing currently, but I just feel we we can take some bold steps, but we do need some courageous leadership, I think, across all levels of government, collectively, to take those steps. But I feel like the pathway isn't that complicated in terms of what we need to do. How we need to do like, how we need to lock arms to do it, I'm not going to suggest for a second is easy, but we have to do it. And I believe in our country, I believe in in the public servants that are trying to do this work. But I do worry that we might slip back into kind of these traditional ways if we don't keep our eye on kind of where the future is and where we need to go.

Yeah, and well, and I think particularly in Canada, being a federation, you know, it's complicated, right? Because you need political leadership, federally, provincially, municipally, with indigenous governments, I think, to be able to come together to really drive it. Okay, glass half full question to end this off, what are you most proud of that your Nova Scotia digital team has accomplished? And what are you looking forward the most to in 2025?

I just have to say, I am really overwhelmed on the regular by the people I get to work with every day. Obviously within the CSDS, but also, like the broader public service, I, what I'm most proud of is our ability to rise to the occasion. And here in Nova Scotia, we've had, we've had a few tough goes lately, in the last year with a, you know, like I said, we've talked about, you know, some wildfires and floods and and a number of different challenges that, that citizens have faced here. And I continue to be very proud to call myself a public servant and to be a part of a team that we, we've responded, we've delivered services, you know, in 24 hours, to be able to help a Nova Scotian, maybe in some small way. And the list is too long for us, for me to chime on about here in in the podcast, but I would say that's, that's the thing I'm most excited about. And then in terms of the future, you know, we, it took a lot longer than I anticipated to set up a new department. There's a lot to that. So I feel that, you know, we've just come out of that kind of year. I'm really excited about really, kind of getting into some nitty gritty things that are really the hard yards funding and how we buy teams, and some of those pieces that I think if we can start to tackle some of that, and there's a real, I can see an energy for it with my colleagues in those spaces, and so I think I'm really excited about that. But bottom line, none of this happens without the great team here at CSDS, and I consider myself very privileged and lucky to be a part of it.

Well. Thank you and and we are privileged and lucky to have your team in Nova Scotia doing this work. Thank you for your leadership and driving this forward. As you know, as you said, I think we need leaders at all levels of government to make this happen, and I have always been impressed with what you've been doing in Nova Scotia. I think it continues to build, and I do, frankly, think it's one of the bright lights we have to look at here in Canada. So thanks, Natasha, I appreciate you spending time with us today, sharing your story, and we'll look forward to having you back in the future and sharing some of that progress and seeing what's happened in Nova Scotia.

Thanks, Ryan.

My thanks again to Natasha for taking the time to share her story and the inspiring work that she and her team are doing in Nova Scotia. It always gives me hope to talk to people who deeply care about their communities and are focused on the work of making life better for their fellow citizens. If you like what you heard today, Natasha is going to be giving a presentation at the Forward50 conference next week in Ottawa. Go to Forward50, fwd50.com to register and get your tickets. Forward50 is always one of the highlights of my year, and a great place to fill up the gas tank, so to speak, if you're looking for inspiration. And in fact, some of my Think Digital team and I will be there too, where we're running a workshop, provocatively titled, What I Wish My Boss Knew About Digital. We're also going to be recording more episodes for the podcast this season from the conference floor. So if you're able to make it in person, come find our podcast booth and say hi. We'd love to talk to you. And that's the show for this week. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure to like and subscribe, and if you're listening on your preferred podcast app, please leave us a five star review. And finally, get in touch with us by emailing us at podcast@thinkdigital.ca, visiting our website letsthinkdigital.ca, or using the #letsthinkdigital on social media. We'd love to hear from you. 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.