Celebrating success and learning from mistakes: The year ahead with Paul Wagner, CEO of the Canadian Digital Service
In this ‘Five Minutes With’ series, we interview senior civil servants about their achievements in 2024 and goals for the year ahead. This interview features Paul Wagner, CEO of the Canadian Digital Service (CDS).
What was your organisation’s top achievement in 2024?
The establishment and publication of a trilogy of documents that outline our successes (2023-24 Annual Report), a clear and ambitious strategy for the next three years (CDSNext), and a clear articulation of what we are working on (CDS 2024 Tactical Plan). These living documents serve to ensure that our current and future stakeholders, clients, partners and employees understand the value that CDS brings to the table on a daily basis.
What was the biggest challenge you faced in 2024?
As with taking on any new role and establishing a way forward, it was important to me that we respected the culture, successes and failures of our organisation in the development of a future vision. Not so much a challenge in the negative sense, but rather a challenge to the leadership of the organisation to balance stability with ambition.
Read more: Next steps for government transformation: Canada’s digital leaders issue a call to action
What are your priorities for the year ahead?
Iterating! That means celebrating success and learning from our mistakes. We have set out an ambitious agenda that involves scaling existing platforms, developing new ones where significant demand/impact exists and establishing a number of enterprise (whole-of-government) platforms that will help evolve self-service channels across government.
What change would you most like to make to how government uses digital, data and technology in 2025?
Seeing more and more departments leveraging the common products and services that CDS offers in the delivery of their programmes. ‘Powered by CDS’ needs to become the norm and not the exception.
What would your dream holiday destination be for a break in 2025?
I already have a few Canadian destinations booked (both coasts), but very much looking forward to sailing on the Ottawa River on our new (to us) Hunter 30T sailboat!
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