Digital Government and Services (CA0067)

Digital government and services
Issue to be addressed
The Government of Canada is going digital, and that means we need to fundamentally change
the way we work. We want our investments in digital government to make Canadians’ lives
better, and we want the benefits of digital government to reach as many people as possible. To
achieve this goal, we need to follow the principles of transparency, accountability, and
accessibility in implementing new and evolving government digital technologies and services.
Commitment
The Government of Canada will apply the principles of openness to its digital services, allowing
it to meet evolving user expectations while enhancing transparency and inclusion. We will:
• develop a Government of Canada digital policy and data strategy roadmap for the
federal public service
• engage with Canadians on what digital and data transformation means for them
• create a performance dashboard to track service to Canadians
• publish analytics on Canada.ca website traffic
• prioritize open source code in developing digital solutions
• improve transparency and awareness of the Government’s use of artificial intelligence
(AI)
Lead department(s)
Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC); Canada School of Public Service (CSPS);
Library and Archives Canada (LAC); Privy Council Office (PCO); Statistics Canada (StatCan);
Innovation Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED); Treasury Board of Canada
Secretariat (TBS); other departments and agencies across the Government of Canada
Milestones
What will we do? How we will know we succeeded? What is our
deadline?
4.1 Create a digital policy for
the Government of Canada
(TBS)
Canadians are engaged on the
development of a Treasury Board digital
policy. Public input is solicited and
accepted via online platforms
June 2019
25
What will we do? How we will know we succeeded? What is our
deadline?
Input received is included in a summary
report to be released publicly
November 2018
A Treasury Board digital policy is
published. The policy will integrate
requirements with respect to service,
information technology, information
management and data, as well as
components of cybersecurity
June 2019
4.2 Develop a data strategy
roadmap for the federal public
service
(PCO/StatCan/TBS)
A data strategy roadmap is developed for
the federal public service to strengthen
the government’s management and use
of data for decision-making. The strategy
will:
• foster trust in the government’s data
stewardship
• demonstrate to Canadians that the
government uses data for decisions
that can improve their lives
December 2018
4.3 Engage with Canadians on
what digital and data
transformation means for
business, civil society, and
Canadians6
(ISED)
Canadians are informed and engaged,
offering bold ideas through online forums
and at least 25 in-person events
Feedback from diverse stakeholders helps
to inform future policy work
December 2018
4.4 Create a performance
dashboard to track service to
Canadians
(TBS)
Data on service delivery performance for
all major service departments is collected
and published via a dashboard on
open.canada.ca.
The dashboard indicates which services
are available online, and specifies service
December 2019

6. For more information, see the website for Canada’s National Digital and Data Consultations.
26
What will we do? How we will know we succeeded? What is our
deadline?
standards, fees, volumetric data, and
performance results
4.5 Publish analytics on
Canada.ca website traffic in a
timely manner, in the spirit of
sites like
http://analytics.usa.gov
(ESDC)
As a first phase, analytics are
understandable and available and for
public review for the top pages on the
Canada.ca site and key service portals
June 2019
4.6 Prioritize open source code
in development and
procurement of digital
solutions
(LAC/TBS)
Code for all new projects presented to
the Enterprise Architecture Review Board
(EARB) is publicly released within
6 months of launch, or a justification is
published
March 2019
Guidance is provided to departments on
how to remove barriers for developers by
publishing source code under open
licenses
Guidance is provided to departments on
the use of open standards
A business case for Open Source is
published
September 2018
A registry of open source code and open
source software is established to provide
consolidated access to government open
source resources
September 2018
Source code used in LAC’s Co-Lab
crowdsourcing tool is opened up and
available publicly for other institutions to
use
March 2019
An open source day event is organized September 2018
27
What will we do? How we will know we succeeded? What is our
deadline?
4.7 Improve transparency and
awareness of artificial
intelligence (AI) supported
public services
(CSPS/ISED/TBS)
AI supply arrangements and other
procurement vehicles are available to
support departments in experimentation
and innovation
September 2018
A Treasury Board directive on decision
support systems is developed to set rules
on how departments can use AI ethically
to make decisions
January 2019
An algorithmic impact assessment tool is
available to help institutions better
understand and mitigate the risks
associated with automated
decision-making systems
July 2019
An international conference on AI is
hosted by Canada in fall 2018. The
Summit will focus on themes of the G7
Statement on AI, in particular, enabling
environments that facilitate responsible
adoption of AI
December 2018
Through the CSPS Digital Academy, an AI
curriculum is established at the Canada
School of Public Service to help build
literacy on AI among federal public
servants. Curriculum will support the data
analyst community, raise awareness of AI
supported public services across the
government, and help to reach common
nomenclature aligned with existing best
practices
January 2019
Workshops, conferences, and AI days are
organized to increase awareness and
assist public service to skill-up on AI and
other emerging technologies. Where
possible, events will be open to other
sectors and to the public
Ongoing

Design Report

4. Digital Government Services

The Government of Canada will apply the principles of openness to its digital services, allowing it to meet evolving user expectations while enhancing transparency and inclusion. We will:

• develop a Government of Canada digital policy and data strategy roadmap for the federal public service
• engage with Canadians on what digital and data transformation means for them
• create a performance dashboard to track service to Canadians
• publish analytics on Canada.ca website traffic
• prioritize open source code in developing digital solutions
• improve transparency and awareness of the Government’s use of artificial intelligence (AI)

Milestones

4.1 Create a digital policy for the Government of Canada (Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat)

4.2 Develop a data strategy roadmap for the federal public service (Privy Council Office / Statistics Canada/Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat)

4.3 Engage with Canadians on what digital and data transformation means for business, civil society, and Canadians (Innovation Science and Economic Development Canada)

4.4 Create a performance dashboard to track service to Canadians (Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat)

4.5 Publish analytics on Canada.ca website traffic in a timely manner, in the spirit of sites like http://analytics.usa.gov (Employment and Social Development Canada)

4.6 Prioritize open source code in development and procurement of digital solutions (Library and Archives Canada/Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat)

4.7 Improve transparency and awareness of artificial intelligence (AI) supported public services (Canada School of Public Service/Innovation Science and Economic Development Canada/ Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat)

For more details about the commitment text, milestones, self-identified success criteria, and estimated completion dates see, https://open.canada.ca/en/content/canadas-2018-2020-national-action-plan-open-government#toc3-4

Start Date: August 2019

End Date: Varies according to milestone

Context and Objectives

This commitment builds on Commitment 6 from Canada’s third action plan. It is anchored in the Treasury Board Secretariat’s efforts to support the GoC’s transition to digital government through the development of a digital policy, and to establish a single integrated set of guidelines and rules to support federal departments and agencies in how they manage service delivery, information and data, technology, and cybersecurity. [25] The commitment is built around a proposed course of action but does not provide any indication as to what exactly are the “evolving user expectations” that are meant to be addressed and the specific “benefits of digital government” it seeks to ensure “reach as many people as possible.” Echoing views expressed by various contributors to the July-August google docs request for comments about the draft commitment, [26] one is left pondering:

What exactly is the problem here? Is it the “need to fundamentally change the way we [federal public servants] work” that is the perceived problem? Is it the need to ensure that principles of openness are applied and upheld to government digital services? Is the problem something else?

Commitment 4 aligns with the OGP values of Access to Information and Civic Participation. The extent to which the milestones align with OGP values is mixed. Four of the seven milestones [27] and their accompanying success indicators may contribute, in varying degrees, to altering the way federal public servants work while enhancing transparency and inclusion. This said, the many digital inequalities with which many Canadians must contend [28] point to the need for caution in equating the implementation of new and evolving government digital technologies and services with the harnessing of the benefits they afford.

Milestones 4.1, 4.3, and 4.6 are deemed to be directly relevant to the OGP value of Civic Participation insofar as the activities and processes set out for each of these actions involve opening up decision making to interested members of the public. Milestones 4.4 and 4.5 are likewise deemed to be directly relevant to the OGP value of Access to Information because they pertain to releasing government-held information. Milestones 4.2 focuses on internal government activity and is based solely on consultations with government departments [29] and agencies. Milestones 4.7 focuses foremost on diffusing information about artificial intelligence (AI) within the federal public service. Based on the value definitions provided in the IRM Procedures Manual, it is unclear how these two latter milestones align with any of the four OGP values.

Milestones 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, and 4.5 are all easily verifiable (i.e., either the propose activity has taken place, or it has not). However, and as noted in the public comments received via google docs regarding the July-August 2018 draft commitment, a number of the proposed indicators of success are of questionable merit given that they outline processes or activities to be completed rather than tools for measuring the extent to which an intended outcome has materialized. The verifiability of milestones 4.6 and 4.7 requires some degree of interpretation with regard to their measurability. Here too, the validity of the success criteria subject to question (i.e., do they actually measure/reflect what they claim to measure?) because it is activities to be completed that are specified rather than indicators for measuring whether these activities result in expected outcomes.

Nonetheless, Commitment 4 is an incremental positive step in working toward transforming existing rules governing the management of service delivery, information management, information technology, and cybersecurity that may complement the fostering of a culture of open government in the federal public service. Whether these changes ultimately contribute to enhancing transparency and inclusion will be subject to the digital policy itself, how it is implemented, and its acceptance by federal public servants. The Commitment is deemed as having a minor potential impact on open government in Canada.

Next steps

Commitment 4 is anchored in the notion of changing the way public servants and politicians do their work. Whereas milestones 4.4 and 4.5 deal with the creation of a performance dashboard and the delivery of performance analytics, the other five milestones are oriented toward developing and implementing administrative processes and procedures to further a cultural shift toward the internalizing of principles of transparency, accountability, and accessibility in the design, implementation, and delivery of government services.

Though its ambition is commendable, missing from the commitment is a clear articulation of, and a more precise focus on, the specific challenges and/or policy problems the application of “the principles of openness to its [government] digital services” is meant to redress. Throughout the consultations undertaken in preparing this report, civil society stakeholders acknowledged the political necessity and strategic utility of including a commitment oriented around public sector and service delivery reform in the action plan while simultaneously lamenting both the commitment’s breadth of scope and its perceived conflation of digital government with open government. Of particular concern in this regard, is the perceived risk of the momentum for open government losing ground to the notion of digital government; a concept that large swathes of the Canadian population encounter on a day-today basis. While digitalization and digital government complements and facilitates the implementation of open government, these concepts are by no means synonymous or otherwise equivalent. [30]

In moving forward with Commitment 4, it will be important to:

• ensure that internal and external government communications about OGP action plan initiatives clearly delineate between activities conducted under the auspices of digital government versus open government, and those where elements of both are at play;
• specify: (i) the government service delivery mechanisms that require modifying and why; (ii) which modifications will be implemented; and (iii) the indicators to be used to measure whether the modifications are resulting in the desired behavioural outputs and outcomes;
• for Milestones 4.4 and 4.5, to determine the types of data to be published, the target users of the data (e.g., average citizen, researchers, journalists, government departments), and the participating government departments and agencies.

Milestones 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3 are already well on track to be completed by the end of this action plan cycle. Work relating to Milestones 4.4 and 4.5 is ongoing and likely to require being carried forward into Canada’s 5^th action plan. With regard to Milestones 4.6 and 4.7 the issue is not whether these commitments, or some variation thereof, should be carried forward. Rather, any decision about this matter should rest, in large part, on first identifying what are the specific policy challenges and/or national priorities with which the Canadian government must contend and for which prioritizing open source code and/or improving transparency and awareness of artificial intelligence (AI) are likely to contribute to ameliorating within the context of an OGP action plan.

Transitional Results Report

Commitment 4. Digital Government & Services

Completion: Substantial

This commitment built on commitment 6 from the third action plan [41] and was anchored in TBS’s efforts towards supporting the GoC’s transition to digital government through the development of a digital policy and the establishment of a single integrated set of guidelines and rules to support federal departments and agencies in how they manage service delivery, information and data, technology, and cybersecurity. [42]

As per the information reported at the National Action Plan Open Government Tracker, four of the seven milestones comprising this commitment have been completed, with substantial progress reported for the three others. [43]

Substantial progress was made for milestones 4.1, insofar as throughout the first six months of 2018, TBS conducted public consultations during both the ‘ideas’ and ‘high-level policy’ phases of drafting a GoC Digital Policy. Input received at both stages was summarized in “What We Heard” reports. [44] This policy is currently pending approvals.

Milestone 4.3, which was completed in May 2021, involved ISED hosting a series of public engagement events about what digital and data transformation means for business, civil society, and Canadians. The last series of engagement events were conducted virtually between March 30 to May 13, 2021, by the Advisory Council on Artificial Intelligence’s [45] Public Awareness Working Group. [46] Some 400 people from across the country participated. [47] The findings and recommendations emerging from these meetings were meant to be published in the winter of 2022.

Milestones 4.4 and 4.5, which aimed to increase access to information, were completed. TBS created a performance dashboard that tracks public service delivery. According to the National Action Plan Open Government Tracker, the dashboard contains online availability of services, standard performance, fees, and volumetric data. Employment and Social Development Canada created web pages with analytics information on how people interact with Canada.ca. The information is also published monthly as a dataset on the open data portal. [48]

TBS made some progress in expanding the guidance and technology for the publication of open-source government code and software (milestone 4.6). In September 2018, it held an Open First Day in Ottawa. [49] Library Archives Canada published the code for the Harmonized Viewer component of their crowdsourcing tool Co-Lab in the repository. The Harmonized Viewer enables viewing of images, PDFs and audiovisual material online, in an English/French bilingual interface that meets government accessibility guidelines. [50] However, due to financial constraints, code for the full tool was not published. In 2019, TBS also created a public repository for open-source code and software through GitHub [51] and published a business case for open source. [52] What remains incomplete for milestone 4.6 are aspects of sharing guidance and the presenting of code for new projects to the Enterprise Architecture Review Boards (EARB).

In 2018, the Clerk of the Privy Council released a Data Strategy Roadmap for the Federal Public Service (milestone 4.2). Regarding milestone 4.7, TBS developed a Directive on Automated Decision‑Making that came into effect on 1 April 2019 and launched an AI prequalified source list of vendors. [53] It also hosted ‘AI Day’ on 4 March 2019 that brought together public and private sector representatives, [54] and ISED hosted a G7 Multistakeholder Conference on AI in Montreal in December 2019. [55] TBS also developed and published on the open-source repository an Algorithmic Impact Assessment to help assess and mitigate the risks associated with deploying automated decision systems. [56] Lastly, the Canada School of Public Service launched an AI learning program with materials available on GitHub. [57]