‘In the public service, we find a way’: Five minutes with Meagan Collins, Treasury Board of Canada
This interview with Meagan Collins, chief of enterprise information management, Corporate Services Sector, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, is part of a ‘Five minutes’ series featuring speakers from AccelerateGOV, taking place in Ottawa on 21 October.
Meagan will take part in a panel session titled Better building blocks: equipping public servants to succeed.
What are you most excited about sharing at this year’s AccelerateGOV conference?
I would say I am most excited about sharing ideas with colleagues this year. I think a lot of us are feeling the financial crunch and need to be more creative in our solutioning to meet the needs of our clients, partners and stakeholders. Being able to collaborate on ideas, learn from others and utilise solutions already in operation in other departments can be useful and efficient in meeting our collective objectives in government, rather than feeling we need to reinvent the wheel each time.
What drew you to a career in the civil service?
I am from Niagara Falls and have worked in the service industry since I was 13 so in some ways it just felt natural. But also, we spend so much of our lives working, I wanted to make sure that time was being well spent doing things I believed in and striving to support positive change in my community. It’s not always perfect but I am really proud of the work I’ve done and the initiatives I have supported.
What have you achieved in your career that you’re most proud of?
I started my career in the public service working for the Canada Border Services Agency as a border services officer. I was able to see tangible benefits in ensuring the safety of our borders every day in a community where me and my family lived. I’ve now been able to work in several departments, both for the federal and provincial governments, supporting major water clean-up projects, supporting small and medium-sized businesses in Southern Ontario to scale up and create jobs, and facilitating major migration and asylum efforts – and all while innovating in the information technology space.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given in your working life?
I think the best piece of advice I received was from one of my superintendents while working as a customs officer. It could be an intimidating job at times, and I was only 18 trying to find my footing. He told me not to base my approach on anyone else, what works for them may not work for you because it will not authentically fit who you are. Instead think about your strengths, be confident in how those strengths will add to those of the team overall. People will trust you and want to work with you most when you are authentic to who you are. I have continued with that approach every day forward and have found it exceptionally useful.
What do you like most about working in the civil service?
The creativity of my colleagues. I have spoken on panels in the past with people from the private sector and they talk about their approaches with the best technologies, large budgets and 10-year directions with stakeholders and how slow and behind government can be in comparison. But I really look at it differently. We do have several more challenges than the private sector: whether it be changes in government and direction within five years’ time, restrictions on budgets or compromises on technological solutions, we still deliver. We digitise, digitalise, innovate, create and serve the public every day despite these challenges because we are creative and committed. It’s not always perfect, but what other industry is accountable to an entire country, partner countries and others around the world? We find a way and we do this by being creative with what we have and I love that about the public service.
Which country’s civil service or which government department or agency are you most inspired by and why?
My colleagues at Library and Archives Canada put together an online newsletter called Governance and Recordkeeping Around the Globe, which is an outstanding resource of information covering general news, events, trends, products and future initiatives by governments across the globe. These include advancements and governance on AI, digitisation and procurement. I have been especially interested in the UK’s guidance document on Contracting for Agile within the technological space. So often the procurement process works much slower than technological advancement and seeing how the UK has pivoted is very interesting.
Read more: How Canada is using data to turn good intentions into climate action
Can you name one lesson or idea from abroad that’s helped you and your colleagues?
I think governments around the world publishing and sharing their governance strategies on AI and machine learning have been extremely beneficial. I think all of us are grappling right now with a balance between technological innovation and human-centric policy design and service. Being able to learn from one another I think will be integral moving forward.
What’s your favourite thing to do at the weekends?
SLEEP! No really, I would say taking my dog for a little hike with a coffee in hand and a podcast on is one of my favourite weekend pastimes.
What was your first car?
I had a tan 2000 Pontiac Sunfire. It was a two door and over the years the doors were so heavy they started to sag so I had a screwdriver in my glovebox to jimmy the latch when it would inevitably jam. It was also my grandparents’ before it was mine and they specifically asked it had no bells or whistles – even the cigarette lighter was disabled. But it was mine and I drove it for almost 12 years.
What was the first piece of music you bought?
Shania Twain’s The Woman in Me was the first album I ever purchased with my allowance, and I’ve been a fan ever since. She was also my first concert, if you don’t count Sharon, Lois and Bram.
Meagan Collins will be joined on the panel by: Dorothy Eng, chief executive officer, Code for Canada; Innocent Bagamba Muhizi, chief executive officer, Rwanda Information Society Authority, Rwanda; Cordell Schachter, chief information officer, Department of Transport, United States; Karl Andreas Sprenk, director of digital skills coordination, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, Estonia; and Tara Holland, government data and analytics, industry principal, SAS.
About GGF reporter
