Relive all the sessions from AccelerateGOV 2024
Bringing together public service leaders with an interest in government digital transformation, AccelerateGOV explored how to deliver transformed public services.
You can watch the sessions from the conference, held on 21 October in Ottawa, on demand on the AccelerateGOV website.
Roundtables at AccelerateGOV explored key topics with colleagues from across government and the public service. The roundtables provided an opportunity for leaders to exchange their views and experiences and hear from peers tackling similar issues related to:
- Streamlining public service operations using modern technology
- Data-driven transformation and improving government service delivery
- How to harness new technologies to deliver missions at scale
Streamlining public service operations using modern technology
In this roundtable session, supported by knowledge partner Workday digital leaders from the Canadian government exchanged views on how best to streamline public service operations using modern technology.
Talk around the table quickly turned to the importance of fostering cultural change that can take technological change in its stride. Some delegates said that legacy cultures were arguably more influential than legacy technologies in holding public services back. While legacy technologies may limit service delivery in practice, they said, cultures that reinforce ‘the way things have always been done’ make those limitations a matter of principle.
The uncomfortable truth about legacy technology systems, meanwhile, is that they reflect the way public services were best delivered in the past. Delegates then stressed that many processes that appear to be digitised are often tethered to the analogue age.
One example is the role PDF files have played in streamlining modern public services. Though PDFs have certainly aided the transition from paper to digital documents through scanning technology, they remain intricately tied to those paper processes. Delegates said that true, frictionless digitisation means breaking free of the analogue world and completely redrawing the map to service delivery.
“Ask a lot of people what digital is, they’re going to say: ‘That’s like when you take a paper form and make it a PDF. That’s not digital. That’s working analogue in a digital world, and that is where we’re collectively failing.”
Updating onboarding and breaking silos
Onboarding of new staff was another area that some delegates felt demanded better streamlining through modern technology.
Often when public service organisations onboard a new employee, their information is typically circulated to several different siloed departments, namely finance HR, IT and data.
According to one delegate, this information goes to eight different teams across these silos.
“We haven’t thought about how we organise ourselves in 2024,” they added.
Some departments are making serious efforts to break down silos, however. Another delegate said that their team was working to restructure and reprocess the way that we do things around agile product management.
For them, the biggest challenge going forward would be getting government support to fund the transition. “Basically, we have to invest before we see the benefits of it,” they said.
Part of the agile approach is giving teams the flexibility to try things that might fail now, so that they can arrive at what works later. However, some delegates said that what is so often missing in the public service’s approach to removing operational frictions is just this openness to failure.
One delegate said they felt government simply did not provide enough innovation spaces (sometimes referred to as sandboxes) to let public servants “test and learn reflexes”. They rejected the idea that this came down to a problem with procurement. Rather, they said government simply didn’t “recognise the value” of spaces that are specifically intended to help teams test hypotheses and innovate through iteration.
Learning to think and speak digital
Delegates also discussed how to create a shared vocabulary between public servants in digital teams and their colleagues on the frontlines so that teams can communicate more effectively about how already available technologies that would benefit frontline staff.
According to one delegate, this could be achieved by letting new junior employees with strong digital skills demonstrate to colleagues the capabilities of such technologies. In other words, rather than training new staff to get to grips with the way their older colleagues work, older colleagues should be learning from younger entrants.
Another delegate suggested mixing younger employees with mid-tier team lead managers to force older employees out of their comfort zone.
Having tried this method already, they said: “We’ve been putting new processes in place [by] forcing the team leads and the managers to adopt how their [younger peers] work.”
In conclusion, they added: “It doesn’t always work out the way we’d like it to be, but we’re getting some really, really interesting results, because we’re slowly seeing a change in the mindset.”
The ‘Streamlining public service operations using modern technology’ roundtable was supported by knowledge partner Workday.
Data-driven transformation: Improving government service delivery from cloud to ground
At a roundtable on ‘data-driven transformation’, top digital and data leaders debated how governments can realise the potential of the data they generate and hold – providing new tools for public servants, reforming business processes, and transforming the services provided to citizens.
Across a wide-ranging discussion, supported by knowledge partner Dell Technologies, these were the key messages stood out as useful lessons for all those involved in applying digital technologies to transform how government operates.
- Create a data community
Establishing a government-wide network provides those involved in data projects with a supportive community where they can seek advice, ideas and assistance. “We have a massive data community, with a repository of information on how people have done things in the past; and it’s probably our most active community,” said one participant. “We have the same,” responded another. “I can’t stress enough how important it’s been as a driving force behind the growing data maturity of the organisation.” - Ensure there’s clear ownership of the agenda
Once your department has a data strategy, one senior leader advised, allocate delivery to named individuals across the organisation – giving them responsibility for generating change, with the support of the wider group. “We’ve got all the directors owning different capabilities that we’re trying to develop, managing specialised teams on behalf of the ministry – so everybody feels like they own part of the work,” they said. “We find where the expertise is, leverage it, and share it across the organisation.” - Reform governance and procurement
The simple reality is that traditional civil service systems of project governance, commissioning and procurement are completely inappropriate for contemporary digital technologies. “It takes two years to do a requirement, two years to procure, two years to deliver. Guess what: the world around us has changed 17 times, and it’s no longer relevant,” commented one participant. “How should we structure our governance mechanisms to allow agility in delivery, and to think differently about risk?” - Address legislative barriers
“Our legislative framework is complicated, and it’s accumulated a lot of pieces over multiple decades. Now is the time to start thinking about clarifying the system,” said one senior digital leader. This “might not be a tomorrow solve”, responded another, but many laws do unnecessarily restrict innovation and improvement – closely defining business processes, for example, and restricting the use of data. “One of the smartest things we did in the last five years was put a clause into the Access to Information Act requiring us to review it every five years,” said one leader. “Unless you have some forcing function like that in legislation, it just accumulates.” - Focus on data quality and standardisation
“Regardless of what technology you’re applying, you need to be able to trust your data,” said one leader: data is the fuel for all digital technologies, so it must be clean and accurate. “There’s no AI project that’s been successful without quality data – and I want to stress quality over quantity,” commented another. So digital leaders should strengthen data management, and introduce government-wide standards that enable data to be understood and shared across the civil service. “We need structured data in order to leverage it,” said a third participant, urging colleagues to adopt the common standards being developed by central digital chiefs. - Use only the data you need
“We tend to say: share everything! But if we’re moving into the cloud, there’s new security threats there,” said one participant: if a service only requires a slice of the data available, there’s no need to expose the rest to risk. Citizens are more comfortable with public services that use the minimum amount of data required for delivery, said another. And a third raised the prospect of deleting datasets when they’re no longer required: central bodies are “pleading with departments and agencies to dispose of some of these things,” they said. - Apply AI with care
“We have these wonderful tools that can look through these reams and reams of data, and do some very dangerous things if we don’t apply the appropriate values and ethics to how we’re using these tools,” said one senior leader. Another pointed out the risk that, if AI systems are trained on data that itself contains evidence of discrimination, biases are introduced into decision-making: “Are you making bad decisions more quickly?” they asked. That doesn’t mean that public servants can’t use such datasets in AI systems, replied a third; but they do need to understand exactly how they’re biased, and compensate carefully. “Go in with your eyes open, and understand the context in which the data was created,” they advised. - Publicise successful projects
“When one division has shared data with another to inform decision-making, we make a two-minute video and show it to the executive team so that everybody’s talking about it,” said one digital leader. “These little things keep spinning the energy in a positive direction for the strategy. It’s something simple, but it’s very powerful.” Publicising successful digital projects rewards all those involved in delivery, illustrates the potential to replicate that success elsewhere, and demonstrates the benefits for public servants and citizens – giving the agenda additional profile and momentum.
The ‘Data-driven transformation: Improving government service delivery from cloud to ground’ roundtable was supported by knowledge partner Dell Technologies.
How to harness new technologies to deliver your mission at scale
Senior government figures also came together to discuss how government organisations can harness new technologies to deliver their mission at scale.
The discussion, supported by knowledge partner AWS, opened with a debate on the blockers stopping governments doing things faster and better.
Some delegates believed there is too much focus on technology solutions and not enough on service design to simplify processes and improve the user experience. As one put it, there is a greater need to “love the problem, not the solution”.
“If you love the problem, you will figure out how to address it and solve it,” they said.
Several attendees highlighted a need to leverage common platforms and services across government instead of duplicating efforts. Dropping the “we’re special” mentality is key, one said.
A major theme was the need to invest in upskilling and digital literacy across the entire organisation, not just the IT teams. Cross-functional teams were one proposed solution to this
“The fact that you break apart the IT and the business silos, you bring them together into a team to love the problem and actually solve together,” makes things go faster, said one delegate, echoing the earlier comment.
Another key takeaway was the need for strong leadership engagement and a clear digital transformation mandate from the top. Speakers highlighted the impact of having a dedicated digital minister who can drive the agenda and keep the focus on user experience and outcomes.
New technology needs new thinking
In terms of how to harness new technologies such as the cloud, delegates also emphasised the importance of establishing a clear understanding of the economics and operational implications before embarking on large-scale migrations.
For example, one delegate described the challenge of balancing central government’s demand for predictability with departments’ need for flexibility and agility in cloud procurement.
“We need to be able to spin up a VM [virtual machine] in 20 minutes, not 20 months,” they said, adding that the model of large, infrequent procurement processes is “killing us”.
Traditionally when governments fund infrastructure, costs are capitalised over time but cloud consumption appears as continuous operational expenditure. “It looks bigger on an annual basis, but it’s less lumpy,” said one participant, noting that cloud also allows for more flexible spending and management through on-demand resources.
They said, therefore, that effectively leveraging cloud services requires the right skillset. It is not just a matter of “forklifting” over everything that was in the data centre “without transforming”.
Buying AI
On the AI side, one delegate noted the challenges of procuring AI tools that quickly become outdated. They advocated for more agile procurement processes that allow governments to access the latest AI capabilities as they emerge, rather than being locked into multi-year contracts.
On buy versus build, several delegates said they would ideally use a commercially available large language model (LLM) and tailor it to their specific data and context. However, they acknowledged that too much customisation could weaken the LLM’s overall capabilities and that finding the right balance is a challenge.
The group also discussed the need to ensure confidence and transparency around the use of AI, particularly in mission-critical public services. Concerns were raised about algorithmic biases and delegates agreed on the importance of having independent oversight and validation of AI systems before deployment.
Overall, the key themes of the discussion were the need for more flexible, outcome-focused procurement approaches that enable rapid adoption of new technologies, while also addressing governance, security and public trust considerations.
The ‘How to harness new technologies to deliver your mission at scale’ roundtable was supported by knowledge partner AWS.
You can register your interest to attend AccelerateGOV 2025 here.
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